Gamereactor fick möjligheten att prata med Playstation-veteranen Shuhei Yoshida i samband med BIG Conference, då han mottog sin Honorary Award. Bland annat pratade han om hur avtalet med SquareSoft och Enix förändrade framtiden för Playstation på 90-talet och berättade hur mycket han ser fram emot PS VR2. Han delade dock även med sig av minnen från sina tidiga dagar hos Sony då Playstation föddes:
"I joined Sony Corporation in 1986 straight out from college in Japan. And at that time Sony was not making video games; Sony was making personal computers that played games and I was a huge video game fan and I was thinking maybe in the future Sony will make video games.
It just so happened that in [February] 1993, seven years after I joined Sony, I was called in by my former boss at Sony, that I should meet with this person named Ken Kutaragi. At that time I was working in the PC department, business group, helping the Apple Computer. I don't know if you knew that, Sony made the first portable Macintosh called PowerBook 100, the smallest one, Sony designed and manufactured on behalf of Apple Computer. So I was in that group interfacing with Apple people, but because my former boss knew that I was a big video game fan, he wanted me to meet with Ken Kutaragi"
"At that time [Kutaragi-san] said 'I'm making a video game system as powerful as a Silicon Graphics workstation and I'm going to sell it under 500 dollars'. And I was like, 'wow, this person is lying (laughs). It's impossible!' But being proud I was like 'oh, Kutaragi-san, that's amazing!' So I went back fo my former boss and said, 'wow, Ken is a liar, isn't he?' And my former boss said 'no, I trust what Ken is saying'. And I said 'really? Can I join that group?' So it turned out it was an interview. And luckily I was able to join Ken's group. At that time Ken had only the engineers making the first PlayStation and I was the first non-technical person to join the team because at that time I didn't know that the company was trying to move Ken's project from the R&D stage to the actual business stage".
Naturligtvis var Sonys ingenjörer tvungna att optimera resurserna, ta lite genvägar här och där, minska upplösningen och göra konsolen inriktad på spel - så det blev kanske inte riktigt den Silicon Graphics-arbetsstation Kutaragi talade om, men det blev företagets första stora framgång inom TV-spel och starten på en ny era (där Ken Kutaragi fortsatte med liknande uttalande även inför Playstation 2 och 3).
Vilka är dina bästa minnen från Playstation-, Saturn- och Nintendo 64-eran?
