PlayStation Boss Jim Ryan to Retire in March 2024
- Laurent Giret
- Sep 28, 2023
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In a quite surprising announcement yesterday, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan announced that he will retire in March 2024. Ryan has been working at Sony for 28 years, and he became President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment back in 2019.
In a comment published in Sony’s press release, Ryan cited living in Europe while having to work in America as one of the reasons for his retirement. ”I will leave having been privileged to work on products that have touched millions of lives across the world; PlayStation will always be part of my life, and I feel more optimistic than ever about the future of SIE,” Ryan said.
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A transition period will open in October and Sony President, COO, and CFO Hiroki Totoki become the interim Chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment. When Ryan retires in March 2024, Totoki will become Interim CEO of SIE.
Under Ryan’s leadership, Sony’s PlayStation business really thrived, and the PlayStation 5 has already sold over 40 million units despite production being affected at the beginning of this generation. In a tribute message posted on X, Xbox head Phil Spencer described Ryan as “a great contributor to our industry and a fierce leader for PlayStation.”
Despite Ryan’s accomplishments at Sony Interactive Entertainment, the Ryan era has also been marked by some not-so-gamer-friendly moves. Phil Spencer previously accused Sony of blocking cross-platform play on Minecraft, and it took years for PlayStation to really embrace cross-play. More recently Ryan also did try his best to block Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard before signing a 10-year deal with the company.
Ryan also led Sony to acquire several gaming studios such as Bungie (Destiny 2), Insomniac Games (Marvel’s Spiderman), and Nixxes Software, a company specialized in PC ports. Sony also started releasing more of its PlayStation-exclusive games on PC in recent years, and Ryan also pushed the development of mobile, live-service games, and cloud gaming. It will be interesting to see if the leadership change at Sony will result in a new gaming strategy for the Japanese company.