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Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida says he prefers indie games because you can feel the developer's vision, something he feels that isn't present in most AAA releases.
Speaking to GameSpot in a new interview, Yoshida, former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, says: "You can feel the game developer's vision in indie games because indie game developers don't have to ask for approvals." He adds, "I used to work at a large company at PlayStation, and even though we are allowed to have the developer and studio propose what games to make, there are many people involved."
When it comes to AAA releases, he says "It's really hard to tell who is the creator" aside from a few notable exceptions. "Maybe [Hideo] Kojima-san is an exception, or maybe [Hidetaka] Miyazaki-san – you can tell it's their visions [when you play] their games, but most other AAA [games] are a group vision. It's not one person's vision."
Kojima, of course, made Death Stranding and its sequel, and it's hard to see anyone else in the AAA space manage to get away with 'game where you walk and deliver parcels and barely shoot things' without the Metal Gear Solid pedigree behind him. Meanwhile, Miyazaki's games released at a time where hardcore games were becoming rare in the AAA space, and gave birth to the Soulslike genre. Even though Elden Ring is massive, its the culmination of goodwill from creating beloved games for a long time.
Yoshida – who was a big proponent of bringing indie games to PlayStation during his tenure – explains that indie devs are "very excited about this certain subject, even though no one seems to be interested in the subject at the time, but after three years, that might become the latest and the most exciting thing," and in turn, the indie developers end up leading innovation for the entire industry.
"The AAA studios are big fans of many of these game designers and look at indie games for inspiration, and so the indie games play a really important role for the whole industry to keep innovating."
The unfortunate thing is that with the way the industry is now, where a massive game like Marvel's Spider-Man 2 reportedly needs to sell 7.2 million copies just to break even, playing it safe in the AAA space is a natural side effect, unless you're a Kojima and Miyazaki – proven creators with ingrained fanbases – thus given the space to get weird with it.
Of course, there are some who handle this better than others. Capcom is using the guaranteed money it makes from the likes of Monster Hunter, Resident Evil and Street Fighter and investing it in smaller and more esoteric projects like Exoprimal, Kinitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, and Pragmata, and while not everyone is a winner, you can't innovate without trying. Exoprimal and Kunitsu-Gami may have not set the world on fire, but Pragmata sold over 1 million copies in just two days and is one of Capcom's highest-rated Steam releases ever.
