Hasta La Gadget!

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.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD, Sony

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Sony’s PlayStation 4 allows any owner to stream, record and share game footage with or without a subscription to Sony’s PlayStation Plus service. That stands in stark contrast to Microsoft’s admission yesterday that the aforementioned features (and some other functionality) won’t work on its Xbox One without a subscription to Xbox Live Gold.

SCE Worldwide Studios head and extremely active Twitter user Shuhei Yoshida answered as much when asked by fans directly if Sony’s upcoming next-gen game console would require a PS Plus membership for recording and streaming gameplay, as well as watching streaming content (such as Hulu or Netflix). He flatly stated “no” when asked about the Plus requirement, and elaborated that all users will have that functionality. That’s a reflection of the current state of PlayStation Plus on PS3 and PS Vita, neither of which require PS Plus membership for media streaming or online play. Most online multiplayer on PS4 will require a Plus membership, unlike the Vita and PS3. In any case, though Yoshida’s answers are short, we appreciate the black and white messaging — something Sony’s rival could be doing a much better job of at the moment.

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Via: DualShockers

Source: Twitter

Sony Computer Entertainment head of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida is a big Oculus Rift fan, it turns out. “We’ve got a couple of the development kits, and I tried it out and I love it,” he told us in an interview this morning at E3 2013. Whether the PlayStation 4 will support it is another question. “No, it doesn’t,” Yoshida told us. Not yet, that is.

When we asked whether the company’s planning on offering support in the future, he only offered a “No comment” with a big smile. The picture of the retail Oculus Rift is potentially a bit clearer now, especially given this week’s addition of an HD version of the headset. We’ll be sure to keep on Sony about Oculus support on the PlayStation 4 as the year goes on.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Software, HD, Sony

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The only hardware shown on-stage during Sony’s PlayStation 4 event was the retooled DualShock controller, the DualShock 4. No box. No PS4 Eye. No new version of Move. As for the console itself, its absence makes some sense in light of today’s news from SCEA prez Jack Tretton that the console’s internals are “still in development in terms of final specs and design.” So, how final is the only piece of hardware Sony was willing to trot out? “It’s near final. It’s just gonna be small tweaks being done,” Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida told us in an interview this morning.

Sadly, he also admitted we won’t be able to touch any of it anytime soon. “By E3, I think” was the best he could offer. He blamed Sony’s hardware folks for not allowing access, despite him pleading with PR to give hands-on time. “I was just asking our PR team can we just let you touch this stuff. Our hardware guys don’t want you to find out some detail that …” he said, trailing off. “Some dirty secret?” we asked. “Of course,” he responded with a smile.

Moving on to Vita and the Remote Play functionality on PS4 (which allows you to play any PS4 game on your Vita, via streaming), Yoshida said that — unlike with the PlayStation 3’s Remote Play functionality — Sony’s asking devs to try their game via Remote Play on Vita before submitting final code for publishing. He also said that, using Remote Play, developers could implement Vita-specific controls. “Some PS Vita games make use of the edge of the screen to add contextual buttons — that works really well, I think, and it’s easy to see. So that kind of thing I’d like to see developers do on PS Vita over Remote Play,” Yoshida explained.

He also apologized for not showing the final box, getting out ahead of the inevitable question from the room full of journalists. But hey, we sympathize — Sony’s gotta save something for E3, right? PlayStation Plus on PlayStation 4 may also be on that list; when we asked Yoshida about its presence on the next Sony game console, he coyly answered, “I know the answer, but we’re not talking about it. I’m a subscriber, so I’d like to see it.” Us too!

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Software, HD, Sony

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Despite the PlayStation Vita getting a recent price cut in its home country of Japan, Sony says it isn’t getting a similar price adjustment in North America. The Vita recently dropped from 30,000 yen (3G) and 25,000 yen (WiFi-only) to 19,980 yen, but Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida tells Joystiq that that same price drop won’t happen in the US. He cited exchange rates as the primary reason — Japanese Yen has dropped in value to (currently) 0.93 cents to every US dollar, meaning Sony actually loses money in exchange on products sold outside of its home territory.

The Vita launched in February 2012 and has suffered from poor sales throughout the past year — Sony’s hoping to revitalize that a bit with PlayStation 4 connectivity. Via Remote Play, all PlayStation 4 games are streamable on Vita. Whether that’ll be a feature that consumers use is another question altogether; Remote Play exists on PlayStation 3 already, and it’s not what we’d call a great experience.

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, HD, Sony

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Source: Joystiq