In the 20 Years of Play Q&A with Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida at EGX over the weekend, he touched on a variety of topics, including the possibilities of a new WipEout game:
Never say never. There are many game IPs that we kind of stopped iterating or releasing a new game. One of the reasons is we always love to work on new IP. I always encourage studious to look for new ideas and new IP. From a management standpoint, I try to balance the number of games in a franchise… Because our resources are limited – the number of teams we can have working on titles are limited – we have to make choices. In the future there might be a chance for us to come back to WipEout.
He added that Studio Liverpool is shut down, but many of the people are still working in the industry and some are working with Sony on The Playroom and PlayStation VR.
When Shuhei was asked by a member of the audience if PSOne Classics might come to PlayStation 4, he replied, “The PS4 doesn’t have backwards compatibility so that’s all I can say. For the future, when we announce things we do it appropriately. I’m not the announcer of things.”
After saying his favorite non-Sony console is the Wii U because he plays it with his daughters, Shuhei talked a bit about remasters. “We’re doing this remaster thing selectively. It’s not easy to do it right,” he said. Asked specifically about remastering Killzone 2, he added, “We might be able to come to Killzone in the future, but at this moment I have nothing I can say.”
If you’re hoping to see Crash Bandicoot on PlayStation, Shuhei said the IP is owned by Activision so it’s “not my business any more.” He then added that it would be up to Adam Boyes and Sony’s Third Party team to contact Activision about any new Crash Bandicoot title.
As for Sony Bend Studio, who is known for Syphon Filter and Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Shuhei said, “Sony Bend exists. They are making some awesome, cool game that we have not announced. I’m not allowed to say.”
Finally, Shuhei revealed that the “biggest selling launch title of PS2 was The Matrix the movie [on DVD].”
