
Microsoft and Sony might be embroiled in a war of words over the Activision Blizzard takeover right now, but that doesn't mean they can't be nice to each other from to time! Case in point, the new BAFTA award for Shuhei Yoshida.
Yoshida, who is the former president of Sony Worldwide Studios, has been awarded a BAFTA Fellowship for the 2023 version of the BAFTA Games Awards, described as "the highest accolade bestowed by BAFTA to those who have driven positive change in the screen arts".
Following the announcement, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer and VP of Xbox Games Marketing Aaron Greenberg both took to Twitter to congratulate the Sony exec, as did many other members of the industry.
Phil Spencer: "Congrats on well-deserved recognition of your many contributions to the games industry."
Aaron Greenberg: "Huge congratulations Shu, your impact on this industry and game development has been profound. A lot of respect for you and the times we have got to connect at events over the years. Love to see you being recognized like this."
Xbox and Shuhei Yoshida have had a very friendly relationship over the years, including in recent times where Yoshida has openly praised Xbox events and launches - he even sent a bottle of wine to the Xbox team to celebrate Halo Infinite's launch at The Game Awards in 2021!
With that in mind, it's great to see various Xbox employees taking the time to congratulate Yoshida on his prestigious award, which he'll be receiving in London later this month. You can find out more details about the event below:
"The award will be presented to Yoshida at the 19th annual BAFTA Games Awards on 30 March, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London’s South Bank, and livestreamed exclusively on Twitch.tv/BAFTA from 18.50 BST. The ceremony will be hosted by esports and gaming presenter Frankie Ward, and will feature a star-studded line-up of talent from the world of gaming and digital entertainment."
"Fellows previously honoured for their work include Hideo Kojima, Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Martin Scorsese, Gabe Newell, Siobhan Reddy, Helen Mirren, Shigeru Miyamoto, John Carmack, Peter Molyneux, and Thelma Schoonmaker."
What do you make of this? Let us know down in the comments section below.
[source bafta.org]
Comments 16
This man is Legendary and fully deserves the award.
Well deserved award for a man who’s done a lot for Playstation.
Hopefully Jim Ryan never gets it because that man has trashed everything I loved about the brand.
Shu has done a lot for gaming. Very well deserved. But outside of that he's is reported by everyone just to be a good guy all round.
@Sakisa I wish he was still a larger part of the Sony leadership.
Well deserved indeed.
As for the battle with Sony, that's not Shu's Sony, that is Jim Ryan's Sony. I doubt Shu would be BS'ing the industry, going out of his way as a personal vendetta to block a deal that clearly benefits the Gamers/Consumers - and would sign a Deal guaranteeing CoD releases on their Platform to ensure that they can still 'Sell' CoD, still 'profit' from a 3rd Party Game on 'their' system and certainly wouldn't put Sony in a 'vulnerable' position where a single Game could 'break' their entire Gaming division - a Dominant position with 'Loyal' fans, with Award Winning Studios, With Award Winning IP's and 'exclusives' that EVERY Playstation gamer cites as their 'main' reason for buying into Sony's ecosystem. Its 'never' been CoD because they can play on Xbox/PC, its ALWAYS Uncharted, God of War, Last of Us, Spider-Man, Horizon, Infamous, Killzone, Resistance etc - games that helped the PS3 'beat' the 360 despite not getting CoD DLC until 4weeks after Xbox and Xbox having all the marketing too.
There was Always respect between Shu and Phil. I don't think Jim Ryan has ANY respect for Gamers (they are there to feed his bank balance) and to 'force' them into their ecosystem to 'fuel' that. I have completely lost ANY respect for Sony in recent years and feel they are 'pushing' me away from their Platform more than encouraging me to play. The 'deal' with Hogwarts for example put me off buying the Game rather than feel 'forced' to play on PS5 or 'miss out' on Content. Its having an Adverse effect.
MS's business strategy on the other hand is 'refreshing' and much more 'Consumer' friendly - never 'forced' to play on Xbox or 'Miss out' (I can play 'anywhere' via Cloud, Play on PC at 'higher' PQ/Frame Rates or on two tiers of Console to suit my 'Budget' or display - no point buying a 'Series X' for my 1080/60p Bedroom TV - not going to 'benefit' from 4k or 120fps so don't 'need' to spend $500.
The man who sank Matrick's vision in 40 seconds! There should be a second award just for that.
Congratulations Shu, fully deserved. A true great
Amazing. A recognition to a great and beloved man.
@NEStalgia Matrick sank Matrick's vision. Shuhei simply wrote the eulogy, and it was an epic eulogy.
I LOLed at that, it's true enough!
@Tharsman @NEStalgia Sony doing the opposite of Microsoft was an important part of Mattrick's vision flopping. I think a lot of people would've reluctantly accepted Mattrick's vision if Sony were doing the same thing just so they could play the full CoD experience (2013 was the end of Nintendo getting CoD and Nintendo platforms never got all the DLC so Wii U wasn't a suitable alternative for CoD players).
@Grumblevolcano Very true as well! And rumor says Sony was going to do the exact same and that was a last minute change in response to Matricks flop largely from Shu (and probably Kaz.)
@NEStalgia I honestly don’t believe that rumor. If it was true, launch day PlayStation 4 would had been on the same boat as Xbox One needing a day one patch to work offline at all, because tons of units were ready manufactured, formatted with their firmware and boxed in a warehouse.
I would believe someone leaked bad info to Microsoft about Sony pursuing the same tactic. If I recall, Xbox internally also thought they had the upper hand in RAM capacity, something Sony had already bumped up by the time they started manufacturing.
IF Sony ever had a plan to do a digital online always on disk DRM garbage, they scrapped it before they started manufacturing, not as reaction of XBox’s plan being poorly reserved.
@Tharsman It's very believable because none of these polices are determined alone, publishing partners are included, and we're very likely the ones pushing for it to begin with as they were at war with used games for years.
You raise a good point about already made machines, but were they already made? Just because ms had a particular supply chain doesn't mean Sony did it the same way. Either in terms of having already started production or in terms of production having already been flashed and boxed. They may fab hardware, ship it, then flash firmware at a regional packaging facility from bulk containers for example.
They had 5 months from that day to launch day. 4 month before they shipped. It's very unlikely they'd started mass production yet at e3. Microsoft otoh had a LOT of changes to make beyond drm itself in the os by launch (kinekt) and likely didn't have the software changes available to flash until last minute.
@NEStalgia everyone manufactures stuff way way ahead of launch. It’s not realistic to do at the last minute, you can’t even get a decent failure rate until you start mass-manufacturing, and you need to know that way in advance in case something needs changing.
I am not saying they might had not considered or discussed it, but I highly doubt they had it on the table at the time of the Xbox reveal fiasco.
Also, PS4 still needed a day one patch, without it you could not play online, remote play, broadcasting and other online features. All online functionality was basically locked until patched, but you still could play games offline.
Edit: also, developer partners sign NDAs over these kind of things. They could be in deep legal trouble if they shared that info with Sony competitors.
As it stands it sounds like guessing, and without any evidence I opt to believe it just wasn’t the plan. We do have evidence that PS4 dev kits had less ram than the mod revealed at E3, because we heard from developers after the fact how much many of them lobbied for the ram to be increased.
@Tharsman IIRC the PS5/XSXS manufacturing for launch was only started a few months before launch. IDK when PS4/X1 was, and PS5/XSX was a strange launch, but they really did wait until last minute and still had a normal "launch" (that then rapidly deteriorated after that.)
The irony of course is that if there was any entity that knew for certain the early plan, it would be Activision.......
Don't really care who congratulated who, also don't care about awards either, but it was interesting to read about him getting an award. I don't really know anything about him other than that he was president of Sony studios. Anyone who was in charge from PS3 and PS4 times, I think did a good job, except the person who introduced us to pay for online multiplayer. Only thing I didn't like at the time.
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