Sony was internally nervous about Horizon: Zero Dawn's female protagonist, SCE studio head Shuhei Yoshida says.

The game underwent considerable focus testing in advance of its E3 2015 reveal last week; one of the areas of interest was its female protagonist Aloy.

Speaking to Polygon, Yoshida said the team had always intended Aloy to be female, but that there were discussions over whether it was "risky".

He added: "As an industry, I think we should continue to make efforts to have more females in studios on the development side and to get different perspectives. Games have become more and more popular in terms of who plays."

Guerilla Games is only the latest major studio to realise that women play games and need representation too.

E3 2015 featured many more games with female protagonists, or with at least the option of playing as a woman.

Horizon: Zero Dawn is set for launch sometime next year on the PS4.