Sony Has A Crucial Decision To Make After Jim Ryan's Retirement.

flaccidsnake

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Jim Ryan

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Through various interviews in recent years, he's spoken about the challenges of living in the UK and working in the US. He's also coming up to five years in the role of CEO, which is around the point Sony likes to start moving its leadership on.

Choosing his successor, however, is going to be quite the challenge.

PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan to retire image

PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan to retire
Read more on GamesIndustry.biz
Ryan may not quite have the PR sparkle of Andrew House, or the gamer credentials of Phil Spencer, but he is a PlayStation man through and through. He was there at the beginning, setting up PlayStation's European offices – going as far as popping to IKEA to buy office furniture. And talk to him about games, and he'll reminisce about obscure PS1 titles (Jumping Flash, anyone?) and his love for Ratchet & Clank. He has also been there at the launch of every major PlayStation release from the last 30 years. He knows the brand better than just about anyone.

People internally, at least the ones I have spoken to, were clearly very fond of him. He was 'uncle Jim' to some in the UK office. Andrew House once described him as PlayStation's secret weapon, and he was called a 'hero' by former PlayStation exec Shahid Ahmed in a keynote talk back in April.


So the question for Sony's leadership is do you find someone new to take the PlayStation business forward? Or continue that legacy of promoting internally, and ensuring you have someone in place who instinctively understands the brand and what makes it popular?

It's not an especially easy thing to answer. The industry is changing rapidly in terms of how games are monetised and distributed. Ryan leaves PlayStation as the business is looking to react to this change. The division is pushing hard into live service games, while developing its PC and mobile games business. These are things somewhat out of the company's comfort zone, which is why it's been making strategic acquisitions, such as Bungie, to help it achieve its goals

So when you look for a new leader, would it perhaps make sense to bring in someone with a track record in live service and mobile, rather than an established PlayStation person whose primary experience has been launching major single-player AAA games and dedicated hardware? I am not sure what the right answer to that is.

On top of that, whoever takes charge of PlayStation is going to have to navigate an extremely competitive landscape, with major corporations spending huge sums of money to get a foothold in games. And not just from Xbox and its acquisitions, but also from non-endemics likes of Amazon and Netflix. None of these businesses pose an immediate problem for Sony, but if they maintain their level of investment in video games, they may well become one.

The other decision for Sony to make is what sort of CEO do they want to run PlayStation. Ryan came from a sales and marketing background, and that clearly worked. But there is something to be said for a leader with strong development credentials, too.

Ryan ultimately leaves PlayStation in a strong position. It's the console market leader and growing its share with each passing month. Its global reach its expanding, and its games are continuing to win awards and break sales records. Whoever takes charge from here will be inheriting a company in an enviable position.

But there is change on the horizon. And Sony's senior leadership team will want to have that in mind when it comes to deciding who and what comes next.
Some fantastic pictures of my beautiful head of hair in there.
 
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Cool hand luke

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Thunderstorm__

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Benefit? As in removing total game catalogs away from single console owning ppl who only own ps? Nahhh they are not adding shit to the dynamics but negativity. They aren't even competing but getting stomped which has caused their consolidation moves out of desperation that have not benefited gamers in general or brought positive results from "competition". Competition also did not cause Nintendo to do shit except get in their own bubble and also add a pay wall behind mp, also they don't gaf and keep their games at a high price.
Those consolidation moves pressure Sony to do better.
 
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Zzero

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Benefit? As in removing total game catalogs away from single console owning ppl who only own ps? Nahhh they are not adding shit to the dynamics but negativity. They aren't even competing but getting stomped which has caused their consolidation moves out of desperation that have not benefited gamers in general or brought positive results from "competition". Competition also did not cause Nintendo to do shit except get in their own bubble and also add a pay wall behind mp, also they don't gaf and keep their games at a high price.
Competition has been driving Nintendo's console decisions since the end of the N64 era. Its defining blue ocean strategy, in use for the past 20 years has been about finding ways to compete.
 
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Thunderstorm__

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No, they push Sony to try to consolidate as well.
Just buying will not move the needle, we need games, not fancy big money acquisitions ( All just spectacle). If Sony buys these big publishers and pumps out even more single player games for the PS platform. I have no problems with it. I hope Sony wouldn’t do it though. These acquisitions tend to work against the parent company, Microsoft will probably not see the desired results it hoped to ripe by buying all these big publishers.
 

Johnic

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Live service game troubled development are Jimbo fault 100%
Kindly fuck off, Hulst as well. Let's get this shitshow back on track. Keep the few shit GaaS studios you bought but start acquiring known IPs. 90% of GaaS crap fails.
 
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Kokoloko

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Kindly fuck off, Hulst as well. Let's get this shitshow back on track. Keep the few shit GaaS studios you bought but start acquiring known IPs. 90% of GaaS crap fails.

Hulst should go, especially his obsession with day and day PC release which was blocked by Jim Supposedly.
Agree with acquiring known IPs for sure, they needed to do that after MS bought Bethesda and studios like Ninja Theory and Obsedian etc.

Gaas Im not really worried about as long as they keep the single player games coming and expand on those studios, but not sure if thats happening… We will have to see
 

ksdixon

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I want these two back as adults who've fallen on hard times and they somehow get their old jobs back. Kevin asking where his previously advertized PS3 era titles have gone, like Motorstorm, he only sees Demons Souls on PS5, have him say he's got some work to do. Marcus holding a PS Portal asking what the heck they did to his PSP and Kevin doing his hype central sell job, perhaps allude to a possible PSP down the line if Portal sells etc. Without a PSP make him into Marcus DLC and have similar little clip ads where Marcus announces/advertises DLC for a game "you thought it was over? Step your game up". At very least they'd play better than disembodied State Of Play announcer lady.
 

Banana

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Yeah, and those games were also exclusive to PS1, more or less. RE got an inferior port to Saturn after the PS1 version dropped, and RE2 didn't come to N64 until 2000.

The games may've had PC versions maybe 6 months or something after PS1 (FF7 got a PC port less than a year after PS1 ver released), but gaming space/audience on PC and console was WAY different back then, and there was very, very little customer & audience crossover.

Again, Jim Ryan said it himself: PC is a competitor to PS (modern day). PC was not a competitor to PS1, or PS2. As PC gains more users (well, as Steam gains more users), that increases competition for traditional consoles like PS, Nintendo and even Xbox (in spite of Xbox's downwards spiral) from Valve and Microsoft (since PC gaming is synonymous with Windows, which Microsoft owns).
Microsoft makes no money on games sold on Steam.

Valve is doing a lot of gaming on Linux. Other than VR and console multiplayer games (COD, etc), linux is a perfect alternative to windows.

If the rumors about 12 are true, we may see PC transition away from microsoft. Hopefully.
 

Yurinka

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Live service game troubled development are Jimbo fault 100%
These are bullshit fake news from Bloomberg, who as always lies when throwing shit to Sony.

Most of the Sony GaaS under development were greenlighted before Jim Ryan, and most of the greenlighted games under his command aren't GaaS.

Regarding GaaS, the main thing Jim Ryan did was to acquire the ones who did one of the top GaaS, the best selling AAA new IP ever (Destiny): Bungie and Firewalk, in addition to grow the headcount of all the internal studios they had also acquired support teams to further help them.

In the same way he also grew the headcount of the non-GaaS titles and helped them with the new support teams, and acquired non-GaaS gamedev studios such as Insomniac, Housemarque or Bluepoint, and 'resurrected' Liverpool Studio and Evolution by acquiring Firesprite.

The GaaS released so far under his command were Dreams, Destruction All Stars, MLB 21/22/23, GT7 and Destiny 2 expansions. I'd only count Destruction as failure, and maybe Dreams in sales (not in reviews and awards) too.

Some of their GaaS under development may had or will have some delays and big changes, but it's because they are games and it's a very common thing in game development since forever, also for non-GaaS. And not at Sony, but everywhere.
 

Airbus

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These are bullshit fake news from Bloomberg, who as always lies when throwing shit to Sony.

Most of the Sony GaaS under development were greenlighted before Jim Ryan, and most of the greenlighted games under his command aren't GaaS.

Regarding GaaS, the main thing Jim Ryan did was to acquire the ones who did one of the top GaaS, the best selling AAA new IP ever (Destiny): Bungie and Firewalk, in addition to grow the headcount of all the internal studios they had also acquired support teams to further help them.

In the same way he also grew the headcount of the non-GaaS titles and helped them with the new support teams, and acquired non-GaaS gamedev studios such as Insomniac, Housemarque or Bluepoint, and 'resurrected' Liverpool Studio and Evolution by acquiring Firesprite.

The GaaS released so far under his command were Dreams, Destruction All Stars, MLB 21/22/23, GT7 and Destiny 2 expansions. I'd only count Destruction as failure, and maybe Dreams in sales (not in reviews and awards) too.

Some of their GaaS under development may had or will have some delays and big changes, but it's because they are games and it's a very common thing in game development since forever, also for non-GaaS. And not at Sony, but everywhere.
Isnt this the same jim ryan who said we believe in generations and said horizon forbiden west and gow ragnarok are true nextgen game but then change their tunes and port it to ps4?
 
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Yurinka

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Isnt this the same jim ryan who said we believe in generations
and said horizon forbiden west and gow ragnarok are true nextgen game but then change their tunes and port it to ps4?
What he really said in that 'we believe in generations' interview (you can google it) was that they were going to continue supporting PS4 during several years after PS5 release because most players were going to continue in PS4 during several years, and that he would like to see all their PS5 games using the next gen features such as haptic feedback, adaptative triggers, faster loadings, 3d audio etc. in PS5. What he said is what they did.

GoWR started its development in 2018, and HFW in 2017. Back then they didn't have PS5 devkits and they couldn't even know the PS5 specs because important parts of its hardware didn't exist back then.

So both games started as PS4 games. And after years of development later were adapted for PS5 too. It's literally impossible that both games could have started as PS5 only games and later they decided to make them crossgen. Timing of dates say that this conspiracy theory is wrong.
 
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