On December 1st 2015, I will be celebrating 10 years at PlayStation. This has been the most rewarding period of my professional life. I have had personal highs and lows and the company has supported me throughout. The last few years in particular have brought so many professional highs, that it’s been hard to take it all in.
So it might surprise you to learn that I’m planning on leaving this wonderful company. Some will want to know why, and some will want to know what it means to developers and to the amazing Strategic Content team that I will be leaving behind. Let’s start with the latter.
Strategic Content will continue. There are no plans to change anything. Our approach to developers will also be unchanged. We have many talented people across the board who work tirelessly to support developers in bringing their videogames to PlayStation. Leaving this company has been the hardest decision of my career, because I get to work with the most dedicated, friendly and inspiring people in the business. So why am I doing this? Why leave when things are going so well?
I want to make games again. I stopped being a developer around a quarter of a century ago and have seen so many changes since then, with most of the exciting ones happening in the last few years. I want to be part of that. It’s that simple. The team at PlayStation, while sad to see me go, completely understands my desire. I am privileged to enjoy their support.
I’d love to keep in touch with you as I start my new life in December and as always, you can reach me on Twitter (@shahidkamal), where I will continue to be a friend of PlayStation, its partners and its fans.
Hey Shahid,
Good luck on this new and exciting stage in your journey.
You’re making the right decision. The worst possible thing would be to want to return to game making… but *not* do it. You’d never know.
If you need anything my friend, you know where I am.
Exciting times!
Sounds like a good reason to make a change. Look forward to seeing what you release 🙂
An exciting time ahead. New challenges, new adventures.
Best of luck!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the amazing games you & your team brought to vita and other playstation platforms. I trust that your legacy will live on in the team and the policies you changed and this will bring great things to vita, vr and ps4. As a coder that does not code much but instead talks about it more than doing, I can totally understand the decision and wish you all the best luck. You sir are a true legend and genlteman keep up the great work and hopefully i will be playing a game you made on vita not just the 100s you (& team) brought to it. Thanks and good luck
Unfortunately you still have me blocked on twitter (and rightfully so, I wrote something over a year ago that I today feel very ashamed of) so I can’t reach you there.
What I want to do is to thank you for being one of the people (together with your team) that kept the Vita alive. The people that finish the great smaller games on the Vita will understand how much you have meant to the survival of the Vita (end credits).
So thank you Shahid and good luck with your future projects 🙂
Wow! Cool.
Sounds like you *NEED* to do this, so i wish you the absolute best of luck 🙂
Cheers
Charlie
I sorta knew this was coming when you started the countdown and to be honest, I’m surprised it took you so long to get round to it!
Really happy for you and I hope it works out. Genuinely excited to see what you come up with and if you ever do manage to get the rights to that there Willy game, let me know eh.
And thanks for all you’ve done biz-side these recent years. You know how much that means.
Best Wishes in your new venture, how exciting !!
That’s when we first met developing games, all that time ago – be good to catch up before you go am down the road literally.
Cheers
Steve