After thirty years with the company, former Sony Interactive Entertainment president Shuhei Yoshida retired last month. Since departing Sony, Yoshida has been regaling the media with anecdotes about the inner workings of the gaming giant.
In a recent interview with Games Beat, Yoshida was candid about the most difficult moments in his decades-long career at Sony.
"The second year of the original PlayStation was very hard. I was very concerned," Yoshida began. "PS3 was another hard time. At the time I was part of management, so I could see the financials. We were losing a billion dollars. I thought PlayStation was finished. But luckily, at that time Sony's flatscreen TVs were hugely popular. The TV group was making enough money to cover the losses from the PS3, and we were able to survive. But that was the most difficult time."
Yoshida describes the situation as a near-fatal catastrophe for PlayStation, which is somewhat surprising. The PlayStation 3 was a low point for the company in terms of how culturally relevant it was during its life cycle. This was the only period of the so-called "console wars" where Xbox was a legitimate competitor to PlayStation commercially and in...
