Shuhei Yoshida says he saved Gran Turismo and helped it become a global phenomenon –

After 31 years, PlayStation veteran Shuhei Yoshida announced he was leaving Sony. On January 15, he did his last day of work and since then he has appeared on numerous podcasts, giving us his views on his time at Sony and the gaming industry in general.

Recently, he appeared on PlayStation Inside, where he was asked if there was anything he was particularly proud of from his long career, but hadn’t told us about. And he did, leading to a rather unexpected story about how he helped make Gran Turismo successful.

The original game was marketed, as you may recall, as a “real driving simulator”, and apparently it was meant to be just that. The problem is that it was really hard to play, as Yoshida told series creator Kazunori Yamauchi:

“During development, Kazunori Yamauchi showed me a prototype of Gran Turismo, and I was among the first to play it. And to tell you the truth, he was really serious when he talked about simulation! It was extremely advanced, perhaps too much so.

But at first Kazunori Yamauchi didn’t take my feedback at face value, so he gathered around thirty consumers to test the game. And just as I expected, they all crashed without exception at the first turn, because the gameplay was so difficult.”

This made Yamauchi admit that Yoshida was right. Gran Turismo became more playable and an unprecedented success that lives on to this day:

“I was at the back of the room with Kazunori Yamauchi, at which point he turned to me and told me I was right, and that’s when he rounded things off and toned down the pure simulation aspect a little to put out the Gran Turismo you know today on PS1. In a way, I like to think that I partly saved Gran Turismo’s fate, and that I played a small part in its success.”

Quite an anecdote, don’t you think?