Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced Jim Ryan will be taking over as president and CEO. Jim Ryan will be replacing John Kodera. John Kodera has been president of Sony Interactive Entertainment since 2017 when Andrew House left the company after 27 years of service.
According to Game Informer, the move will see Jim Ryan and John Kodera swap roles. Kodera will act as deputy president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, a role which Ryan has served in since House’s departure. Similar to Andrew House and John Kodera, Jim Ryan has been a mainstay of SIE for many years. Ryan started at the company in 1994.
The move comes at a pivotal time for SIE as the company gears up to fight a next-gen console battle with Microsoft. Sony already appears to be thinking of ideas to attract gamers to the PlayStation 5, with rumors of backwards compatibility. However, Jim Ryan himself weighed in on this in 2017:
“When we’ve dabbled with backwards compatibility, I can say it is one of those features that is much requested, but not actually used much. That, and I was at a Gran Turismo event recently where they had PS1, PS2, PS3, and PS4 games, and the PS1 and the PS2 games, they looked ancient, like why would anybody play this?”
The news followed comments made by current Chairman of SIE, Shawn Layden, regarding Sony’s upcoming absence at E3 as well as its future plans for games releases. Sony’s has stated its current strategy is to focus on creating a small range of very strong first-party titles. Whether Jim Ryan may adjust this strategy at all remains to be seen. However, Microsoft appears to be going in the opposite direction. Microsoft announced the acquisition of several game studios at E3 2018 and is looking to expand Xbox Live across platforms like the Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.
