Shuhei Yoshida, the former head of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios who later helmed the company’s indie efforts, has said he was able to partly save Gran Turismo from potential failure by convincing its creator to tone down the game’s handling.
Speaking during an interview with PlayStation Inside, Yoshida-san, who enjoyed a 30-year career at Sony before departing in January 2025, was asked about any particular achievement that he’s proud of that he had yet to discuss in detail. After mentioning being “really proud to have played a part” in the creation of Journey, he mentioned his involved in the first Gran Turismo.
It was the early days of the first PlayStation, and Kazunori Yamauchi was working on the very first Gran Turismo. You’ll remember that on the cover it said that the game was the ‘real driving simulator’. And you know, I’m not a game designer, I’m a producer first and foremost.
During development, Kazunori Yamauchi showed me a prototype of Gran Turismo, and I was among the first to play it. And to tell you the truth, he was really serious when he talked about simulation! It was extremely advanced, perhaps too much so.
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But at first Kazunori Yamauchi didn’t take my feedback at face value, so he gathered around thirty consumers to test the game. And just as I expected, they all crashed without exception at the first turn, because the gameplay was so difficult. I was at the back of the room with Kazunori Yamauchi, at which point he turned to me and told me I was right, and that’s when he rounded things off and toned down the pure simulation aspect a little to put out the Gran Turismo you know today on PS1. In a way, I like to think that I partly saved Gran Turismo’s fate, and that I played a small part in its success.
The original Gran Turismo arrived for the PSOne in Japan in December 1997, and launched in the US and Europe the following year. The series spawned numerous sequels across all major Sony platforms including the PlayStation Portable, and is currently Sony’s best-selling first-party franchise with over 90 million units sold worldwide.
Yoshida has given many interviews since leaving Sony, and recently revealed that he was able to try various builds of Ghost of Yotei during its production, noting it ‘always felt great’ when going hands-on with the title. Elsewhere, he also admitted he was passed over for a CEO role within Sony as company bigwigs didn’t trust him to make ‘the best business decisions.’
[Source – PlayStation Inside via VGC]