Sony Interactive Entertainment has promoted Jim Ryan to the company’s new President and CEO as of April 1st, 2019. He is currently severing as SIE’s Deputy President, and will switch positions with the current CEO, John (Tsuyoshi) Kodera. Jim Ryan will also be appointed the Representative Director and President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.
This shake up in Sony leadership is driven by chief executive officer Kenichiro Yoshida wanting to grow PlayStation as a platform, with Mr. Kodera’s expertise being useful for growing the network side of the business.
“I believe that this new structure – where Jim will manage SIE’s overall organization and operations, and which will allow John to focus on the key mission to further develop PlayStation Network (PSN) that has now grown into an immensely large platform with over 90 million Monthly Active Users worldwide – will enable SIE to accelerate its innovation and evolution even further.”
Jim Ryan has been a part of PlayStation’s business when he joined Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe from its inception in 1994. Followers of Sony’s leadership may be familiar with Jim Ryan through some previous, inflammatory interviews. Most notably, he questioned the appeal of so-called “older” games in reference to a Gran Turismo exhibition with PS1, PS2, PS3, and PS4 titles, asking, “…they looked ancient, like why would anybody play this?” That line was taken as a rebuttal against backwards compatibility as a potential feature of the PlayStation 4, despite competitor Microsoft including it in the Xbox One console family.
April 1st, 2019 marks the beginning of Sony’s Fiscal Year 2020. Keep watching this space to see the future impact and forward movement led by Mr. Ryan in his new leadership role over all things PlayStation.
