Sony's Shuhei Yoshida reacts to the 'Nintendo PlayStation'
'Actually, I played some games [on it] as well.'
Not long after our last intimate chat with Shuhei Yoshida, the President of Sony Computer Entertainment's Worldwide Studios at E3, a Redditor managed to dig up a prototype of the never-released "Nintendo PlayStation" that eventually led to the birth of Sony's very own gaming console. Naturally, when we caught up with Shuhei-san again at a Project Morpheus event in Hong Kong, we showed him our article on the priceless gem and asked for his thoughts. After some reminiscent giggles, the exec gave a brief account on the time he spent with a device with matching description, as you can see in our interview video below.
"When I joined Ken Kutaragi's team [in 1993], there was a system called 'Play Station' that had both Super Nintendo cartridge support and some disc game support. Actually, I played some games [on it] as well."
It's worth pointing out that Shuhei joined Sony back in 1986, which was five years before Kutaragi's division unveiled — and pretty much instantly canned — the SNES-CD add-on.
Alas, the exec made it very clear that he couldn't confirm whether the recently surfaced "Nintendo PlayStation" device was legit, but he did give a cute reason.
"Somehow, I think it's more fun to keep it kind of a mystery."
Fair play, Shuhei-san, fair play.
