Original (potentially pay-walled): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-09-29/why-playstation-fans-are-cheering-ceo-jim-ryan-s-departure
Whatever the article says, I comprehend why someone would cheer at his departure.
The guy is a good by-the-numbers business person. That will cut on production companies, but not on an entertainment industry so close to the consumer as any other. Just remember who cheered on the PS4 presentation.
You expect decisions to bring more gamers to your platform (Game pass did, success), or transform people into gamers (Wii did, huge success). Not nickel and dime your consumers. Plus, he is the one signs off all decisions.
PS Portal it’s the epitome of this guy. Something no one asked for, that does less than anything on the market, and is closed to its shallow ecosystem, priced way beyond its capabilities, but on paper it looks like selling like hotcakes.
What Sony needs as PS CEO is someone who understand that is a business, but also that all these platinum trophies are not real… but they are.
Michael Eisner once called himself “the last of the creative types in Hollywood” after he left Disney, and I can’t help but see what he meant when he said that when I look at the current American film and TV landscape. It’s like today’s Hollywood bigwigs don’t even understand why people watch TV and movies.
I kinda think this happened to Western video games too (yeah Sony is a Japanese company…but PlayStation has shown a pretty square focus on the Western market in the past 10 years.) From a consumer perspective I don’t think a new CEO is the answer. It wasn’t for Disney’s fans with Bob Chapek.
I dont like Sony and its still good that he’s going.
Shifting Sony to GaaS, way overpaying to acquire Bungie, and his comments on classic games are exactly the people that need to not be in leading positions at companies.
Bloomberg writes the weirdest articles these days, very clickbaity.