Shuhei Yoshida Says Sony Sees Nintendo as a Gateway to Mature Consoles Like PlayStation
Shuhei Yoshida, former head of SIE, recently revealed that Sony views Nintendo’s success positively, as it represents greater opportunities for its players to eventually transition to “more mature” consoles like PlayStation.
This is another aspect of Sony’s view of the Kyoto-based company, which apparently is not seen in direct competition with PlayStation, unless we are talking about the Japanese market, where Nintendo now represents a major force in the industry and thus the competitor to beat.
However, Yoshida’s words, as reported by GoNintendo, reveal another interesting consideration: the success and widespread presence of Nintendo platforms could be seen as a stepping stone to PlayStation’s own success.
Nintendo as a Gateway to Gaming for Sony
“Nintendo is bringing a younger audience into gaming, and some of them when they grow up, might graduate into more mature systems like PlayStation or Xbox. Of course, they have huge respect for what Nintendo does in terms of how Nintendo should be doing in the industry. We all felt like it’s great to have Nintendo to continue to be successful so that we can continue to grow the industry,” said Yoshida.
Sony, in other words, would not see itself on the same level as Nintendo in terms of the demographic of its audience, considering its platform to be more suitable for a mature audience compared to that of the Kyoto-based company.
In this sense, it seems that the old and somewhat outdated vision of Nintendo as being “for children” still persists at Sony, which views Nintendo consoles as an introduction to gaming, with players eventually moving on to “grown-up” consoles like PlayStation.
This interpretation might not be entirely realistic today, especially considering the expansion of the Nintendo Switch catalog and, even more so, the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2, which spans an increasingly broad range of genres to cater to a diverse audience.
