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News Playstation Boss Jim Ryan retiring in March 2024; Hiroki Totoki will act as interim

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Lord Azrael said:
How on earth do you interpret that Tweet as Phil making it about himself, Christ. He's just trying to be a good sport and wish one of his peers well
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get real... he didn't call Jim up on the phone to wish him well


some personality types can't operate without an audience...
 
I don’t blame anyone wanting to retire after 30 years. If I had the kind of cash you get from working at a multinational CEO level, I’d want to retire in my 50s too.
 
PixelKnight said:
I don’t blame anyone wanting to retire after 30 years. If I had the kind of cash you get from working at a multinational CEO level, I’d want to retire in my 50s too.
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Honestly I think Jim is the canary in the coal mine too. AAA gaming is getting to be so unsustainable, I think the bubble is going to pop.

Every studio besides Insomniac has not really put out much content since the release of the PS5. We are going to be on the 4th year of the PS5, and they still only have a handful of PS5 exclusive titles.

If I could leave right before a tumultuous time, and be considered a CEO with mostly successes, I would take that in a heartbeat.
 
I'm neutral over this. I hope that Phil Spancer Xbox also retired likes Jim Ryan Playstation ❤. Give to young people to handle division
 
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Excellent news. He might be the nicest person ever if you meet him but I never have and never will probably so can only judge him from afar based on what he's done in his role and it's been baaaad. I genuinely can't keep up with how much PS things now cost, 1st party games are almost universally £70(!) which is bad enough, and no he never did justify what he specifically said about them being worth £70, not a single one I've played has been. I think the PS5 was £400 at launch but that of course went up since, don't know what it is now. And don't even get me started on the nonsense 3 tier subscription service, again starting at a certain price only to significantly increase to god knows what. All of this under a cost of living crisis which he is surely well aware of.

So yeah bye-bye!

The love-in and 'Jimbo' shtick can also do one gladly now, can't even begin to fathom the corporate worship that has manifested around this dude but it was certainly a thing and can't end soon enough...
 
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Dardan Sandiego said:
I can't tell if people are being serious thinking that the next guy in charge is going to radically change the company. They're going to stay course because they've been both successful and popular with the way they've done things.
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Why Ryan took the role, along with several other senior executives getting replaced, Playstation first party games releasing on another platform was incomprehensible, and that was in the Switch's lifetime. A couple of years after that a thread by a major reporter confirming this sea change was truly beginning with Horizon Zero Dawn quickly reached over 100 pages which included at least one 5000 word comment on a major gaming forum.

Fast-forward to today and that game's sequel is confirmed to be releasing on the same platform and it got half a dozen pages on the same forum.

Now maybe the previous leadership were always going to go in this direction but what I've read indicates that they were not so keen to do so. Just food for thought about how pretty big changes can happen in a small amount of time which coincided with a change in leadership.

Edit: dp sorry.
 
Wishing him well and a happy retirement with his family. As for Playstation, i don't think they have much of a reason to change course now, it's still a massively popular brand.
 
Good effin riddance. Only reason PS5 isn't a Xbox One level disaster is merely because Playstation is an abnormally strong brand in home consoles, because this dude has dragged it through the mud.

Years ago i thought it would be funny if PS got a figurehead that managed to weaken the brand, but once it happened i hated his guts. The sheer stupidity, the arrogance, the disrespect for its legacy, the dumb decisions for anything not US related. Each decision more infuriating than the last.

Screw him all the way to the sun.
 
Oh, did the rest of Sony finally notice that Playstations EU dominance isn't because of Jim Ryan and his decisions as the EU PS boss, but rather despite him? ^^

Anyway, curious who will be the long term replacement, as the guy in charge now is only an interim from what i understand.
They had good people for the job, like Shawn Layden or Yoshida. But one left the company and the other was "promoted out of the way".
 
Weebos said:


This is a joke, while I didn't like much of his public stances, he didn't seem to be substantially worse than his predecessors.
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Was going to post that!

Good riddance, hated his direction and also his communication style.
Bring back Uncle Jack!
 
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The same narrative that claims Nintendo games are for children.

(AKA a narrative of the truth being severely exaggerated)
 
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Wondering if they would / could promote Hermen Hulst into this position? Though he comes from a developer background.

JorgenRaft said:
The same narrative that claims Nintendo games are for children.

(AKA a narrative of the truth being exaggerated)
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comic146.png
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Awkward Zombie - The Pokemon Effect

Gags and goofs about videogames and the things that happen in them.
www.awkwardzombie.com www.awkwardzombie.com

;D
 
Ryunosuke Naruhodo said:
Why Ryan took the role, along with several other senior executives getting replaced, Playstation first party games releasing on another platform was incomprehensible, and that was in the Switch's lifetime. A couple of years after that a thread by a major reporter confirming this sea change was truly beginning with Horizon Zero Dawn quickly reached over 100 pages which included at least one 5000 word comment on a major gaming forum.

Fast-forward to today and that game's sequel is confirmed to be releasing on the same platform and it got half a dozen pages on the same forum.

Now maybe the previous leadership were always going to go in this direction but what I've read indicates that they were not so keen to do so. Just food for thought about how pretty big changes can happen in a small amount of time which coincided with a change in leadership.

Edit: dp sorry.
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I have no idea what relevance the message board comments have but Ryan became CEO in February 2019, appointed Hermen Hulst as the head of Playstation Studios in November and Horizon was officially announced in March 2020 to be released in Summer. Now it's obviously possible that Ryan fast-tracked all of this as soon as he took office because he's a huge fan of PC gaming. But I think it's much more likely that all of this was in the works for a much longer time and everything that has happened at PlayStation was just the natural consequence of their efforts to make it the de facto prestige gaming brand. Obviously the next CEO will be different from Ryan but unless he starts replacing the people below him (Hulst, Qizilbash and Yoshida for example) there's no reason to believe that PlayStation will go back to what it was before.

edit: I just found this linked on Era:

www.resetera.com

Shawn Layden - exclusive games are Sony's strategy, but some games in the future, particularly MP games, might see 'broader distribution' e.g. on PC

Tucked away in the Bloomberg article on Sony's acquisition of Insomniac: In an interview, Shawn Layden, chairman of Sony’s game studios worldwide, said exclusive titles will still be a part of the company’s strategy, but that some games -- particularly multiplayer titles designed to be played...
www.resetera.com www.resetera.com
 
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Good riddance. I used to be a passionate Sony fan and that started dying mid-PS4 gen and hit an all time low these first few years of the PS5 gen. I'd love to get back to enjoying the brand much like the later PS3 and early PS4 gen.
 
I'm a bit confused about why people dislike Jim Ryan (for his business decisions -- obviously we know about his terrible takes and that horrible abortion email)? From a PlayStation business standpoint, he's helped lead PlayStation to become a pretty profitable business. You don't stay at a company for 30 years for no reason.

I also don't really think those decisions (PSN price increases, PS5 increase etc) are a direct result from himself. All those decisions come from numerous people. That stuff will only change if people even under and above Jim Ryan also leave.
 
Haziqonfire said:
I'm a bit confused about why people dislike Jim Ryan (for his business decisions -- obviously we know about his terrible takes and that horrible abortion email)? From a PlayStation business standpoint, he's helped lead PlayStation to become a pretty profitable business. You don't stay at a company for 30 years for no reason.
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people don't actually care all that much about a company's margins
 
Raccoon said:
people don't actually care all that much about a company's margins
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I mean, it's not that but the direction PlayStation has gone has mostly been positive, at least for me. The only bad things have been the PSN increase and the PS5 price increase, but that happened last generation here in Canada too due to our dollar. Gaming isn't immune to inflation either, everything has gone up in price here.

The $89.99 game increases are tough too, but honestly I haven't noticed it too much because most of those games end up going on sale pretty quickly so I rarely buy PS5 games at full price. I have the opposite problem with the Switch because Nintendos games rarely ever go on sale lol.
 
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Haziqonfire said:
I'm a bit confused about why people dislike Jim Ryan (for his business decisions -- obviously we know about his terrible takes and that horrible abortion email)? From a PlayStation business standpoint, he's helped lead PlayStation to become a pretty profitable business. You don't stay at a company for 30 years for no reason.

I also don't really think those decisions (PSN price increases, PS5 increase etc) are a direct result from himself. All those decisions come from numerous people. That stuff will only change if people even under and above Jim Ryan also leave.
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Raccoon said:
people don't actually care all that much about a company's margins
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Yeah. We're not shareholders here (Well, except Shareholder Chad), how much money a company makes is a very secondary concern.
 
Tangerine_Cookie said:
Yeah. We're not shareholders here (Well, except Shareholder Chad), how much money a company makes is a very secondary concern.
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Yup. We care about quality games, good prices, and good hardware. Jim let almost all the Japanese studios go down and increased the price of everything PS-related, so no, I don't like what he did as a CEO.
 
Ah, I guess you guys are more upset by certain decisions related to game prices, sub prices and Japanese studio closures. That's fair.

Though, I still think that stuff would not have been different with or without him. A lot of those decisions come from different folks within an organization.
 
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AerialAir said:
Yup. We care about quality games, good prices, and good hardware. Jim let almost all the Japanese studios go down and increased the price of everything PS-related, so no, I don't like what he did as a CEO.
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Y’all really truly believe it was one single person who made these changes and not an entire group of people who came to the decision together.
 
AerialAir said:
No, I don't, but you can't disregard the power that a CEO has within a board of directors.
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What did you expect them to do with Japan Studio, for example? Everyone in enthusiast circles want to scream and bemoan their death but…They weren’t making money. You can argue “but money isn’t everything!” but, like, it kind of is in these businesses? You can’t expect studios to stay open when they’re not bringing in profit to KEEP them open and no one was buying the games It’s the same shit with Square and their Western studios and how Western studios were apparently just a scapegoat and not, you know, not making money.

I promise you, Jim didn’t walk into Japan Studio himself and shut them down with a wave of his hand, they had to look at how the studio was doing and guess what? It wasn’t doing well. That’s it, end of story.
 
Hopefully It'll be someone less obsessed with chasing Western GaaS audiences and more appreciative of single-player (especially Japanese ) games.
 
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Do not use this thread as an excuse for console warring
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