Jim Ryan’s tenure at Playstation will officially come to an end next March, meanwhile his replacement is still being decided on.
Hot off the presses, CEO and President at Sony Interactive Entertainment (also known as PlayStation) will retire after 30 years with the company next March. Stepping in to fill his shoes (at least temporarily) will be current COO Hiroki Totoki, who will be acting CEO in the interim while Sony hunts for Ryan’s replacement. Totoki will also be promoted to the new Chairman of the SIE board, which seems to be permanent.
Ryan was originally promoted to president and CEO of SIE in 2019, before that he was the chief of SIE Europe where he had an outsized presence and appeared many times in the press and at conventions representing the PlayStation brand as a whole. Many people therefore saw it as only fitting he take on the big job when it was announced he’d take over the CEO role from his predecessor John Kodera, who himself only occupied the role for 2 years between October 2017 and February 2019 when Jim Ryan took over. Before John Kodera’s short tenure, Andrew House was CEO for 6-ish years beginning in 2011.
Jim Ryan is of course known perhaps most infamously for making controversial statements from time to time, such as when he is 2017 commented on gamers desire for backwards compatibility by saying:
“I was at a Gran Turismo event recently where they had PS1, PS2, PS3, and PS4 games, and the PS1 and PS2 games, they looked ancient. Like, why would anybody play this?”
Which hindsight being 20 20 is a pretty tone-deaf statement to make coming from a man ahead of a company that just one year later in 2018 released the Playstation Classic micro-console for 100$, allowing players to play the first Gran Turismo in its original state. By most accounts, it was a successful product as well, which while not in the zeitgeist anymore was a popular Christmas gift for nostalgic older gamers and found its way under many trees.
After Ryan’s statement, many industry commentators made comments to the same effect, accusing Ryan of discounting gamer nostalgia, and perhaps most importantly not sufficiently fighting for game preservation.
As mentioned above we have no word yet on who will be Ryan’s permanent replacement, but given past trends within Playstation and Sony at large, I am 99% certain it will be someone promoted from within, but only time will tell and the interim CEO Hiroki Totoki has been with Sony since 1987 so no doubt the role is left in experienced hands in the mean time.
