In an interview earlier this year, former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida revealed that he'd overseen the cancellation of two separate games that were $25 million deep into development. Now, he's revealed the exact nature of that pair of games. One was, it seems, the long-rumoured sci-fi project from the God of War devs.
"One was actually an internal game developed by Santa Monica Studios," Yoshida says on the most recent episode of Simon Parkin's My Perfect Console podcast. "Not a God of War game – a new IP. It has a really amazing concept, and really interesting gameplay ideas. Of course, Santa Monica Studio people are very, very capable of creating high-quality art. So we supported [them for] many years, but after $25 million, they came to me and said that we have to stop. I do not exactly remember the reason for it. The team was not able to find 'the game.' It was a great concept. Great idea. But the gameplay didn't really come to be."
Yoshida served as president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios from 2008 through 2019, and it's not clear exactly when this new IP was in development. While Santa Monica Studio does some support work on other titles, the main dev team has exclusively made God of War games since 2005.
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While canceling games isn't unusual for Yoshida, he says he usually tried to do it before $25 million worth of development resources had been spent. "I canceled so many games," he says. "No one knows most of the games, because we canceled early enough. We tried to try a new idea, do the prototype, and if it's good, continue. If it's not good, rework or stop. So early cancellation doesn't cost us much. However, if the game was kind of making progress, and very promising vision went on and on, after $25 million it was a really hard decision. But I think in that case, Santa Monica Studio by themselves, was like, 'probably we have to stop.'"
What of that other $25 million project Yoshida mentioned previously? He offers less in the way of specific details there, but apparently it was in development at one of Sony's European studios. "There were many, many good games from Europe," Yoshida says. "But one game was a big-budget project [that] didn't, in a similar way, have the core game anyway. These are the two large cancellations. But these days, a $25 million cancellation is nothing special."
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