By Ben Gilbert posted Aug 23rd, 2013 at 12:04 PM 111
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Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida is a passionate man. He cares about games, he plays games, and it shows. When we ran into him at Sony’s Gamescom 2013 press briefing, he was sitting next to and casually chatting with indie game dev Rami Ismail — one of the dozens of indie devs bringing a game to the PlayStation 4. He kicked off PlayStation’s Gamescom show with a confident and persuasive argument for his employer’s new console: a casual walkthrough of the dashboard, followed up by a demonstration of watching a friend’s livestreaming game which he seamlessly jumped into.
He then grabbed a screenshot of the game in-action and posted it to Twitter directly from the console he was using on-stage. It was muted and powerful in terms of delivery; in so many words, Yoshida and Sony "showed," while Microsoft merely "told" (Redmond’s equivalent demonstration was shown to press but not allowed to be filmed). We sat down for a lengthy interview with Yoshida — commonly known as "Shu" in the game world — to talk about not just his presentation at Gamescom, but also his affinity for the world of indies and gaming in general. "It’s personal to me and many of us working at PlayStation," he said of his work with indies. "For many years, we’ve been big fans of working with small teams. They take chances. They come up with something unique, and sometimes it’s very personal."
Given our love for Oculus Rift’s virtual reality tech, we couldn’t help but ask Shu once more how he felt about the system and what his love for it might mean for the PlayStation 4. Head below for the full interview, full of wide smiles and thoughtful commentary from one of gaming’s most passionate individuals.
