Yoshida spoke about this on the Sacred Symbols podcast. According to him, when he was head of PlayStation Studios, he supported the deal with Probably Monsters, the parent company of Firewalk Studios.
“I signed the contract to make a prototype,” Yoshida stated.
“When I visited the studio and met the people at Firewalk, a very small team, the core struck me as very experienced and talented people to work on an online game. So Concord was being made under me.”
Concord became one of PlayStation’s biggest failures. Its collapse led to the shutdown of Firewalk Studios and sparked criticism directed at PlayStation Studios, especially Jim Ryan and Hermen Hulst, who were running the company at the time. Now it turns out that the key decision was actually made by Yoshida.
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Cover author: Firewalk Studios. Cover source: Gamerfocus