Boss Level
Departing Playstation chief Jim Ryan reveals the biggest challenge of his 30-year career
After three decades at Playstation, Jim Ryan, who’s stepping down next month as Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO, has seen the industry he loves undergo dramatic shifts. Amid the upheaval, Ryan says he wouldn’t change a moment of it.
“I’m just so grateful that I didn’t work in a boring industry,” he says.
Ryan believes the pandemic-era launch of the Playstation 5 was the greatest challenge — yet the most rewarding achievement — of his 30-year tenure at Sony. “It was my job to exude a sense of calm and serenity,” he says, then adds, “Actually, I was there at my dining-room table, head in my hands, wondering how we were going to do this.”
A mountain of obstacles stood in Sony’s way. “We assemble the great majority of the Playstations in China, and nobody could get in. Finishing games when developers couldn’t get together and eat pizza and brainstorm about their craft was another thing,” he says. “And then, the not-unimportant task of selling our product to our consumers when retail was entirely closed.”
In the three years since the PS5 launch, Sony has sold more than 50 million units. “I’m so proud of what the team achieved back in 2020,” Ryan says.
Ryan announced his decision to step down last September. In the months since, layoffs have swept across the gaming industry, with cuts made at Microsoft Gaming, Riot Games and Epic Games. “It obviously is a difficult time for many,” Ryan says, offering Playstation staffers encouragement to stay the course. “I would just say that nobody can ever be complacent, and nobody can ever feel that anything’s forever.”
After Ryan departs, Hiroki Totoki, Sony’s president and chief operating officer, will step in as interim CEO of SIE effective April 1. Ryan says he has full confidence in Totoki’s leadership and won’t second-guess Totoki and Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida’s choice as his ultimate successor. He shares one piece of advice for the new Playstation boss, which he contends must remain the “cornerstone” for SIE: “Never forget that we’re an entertainment business . ... If we continue to entertain, delight and surprise our community of gamers, I think Totoki-san and whoever follows him will be just fine.”
On the eve of his exit, Ryan says he won’t miss the chronic jetlag amid years of regular flights between Sony headquarters in Tokyo, his home in London and Playstation ops in San Mateo, Calif.
But he’s got a new quest in mind, which he’ll only tease for now.
“I still have huge resources of energy and passion that I’m looking forward to deploying in some slightly different ways,” Ryan says. “I’ve got a few things bubbling. I can’t say what they are — but I am going to take my life in a little different direction.”