Ding dong, the witch is gone.
Jim Ryan, the president and CEO of Sony’s PlayStation division (Sony Interactive Entertainment) has finally announced that he is resigning from his post effective from March 2024.
Jim Ryan assumed his role as the president and CEO of Sony’s SIE from April 1st 2019 and has since spent the last four years dragging the PlayStation brand through the mud and effectively destroying the reputation of the company’s console throughout its home country of Japan.
Since Jim Ryan took his position, Sony has since clamped down on games featured on its console, specifically those developed by Japanese studios of which Sony’s own Japanese development studios have been shut down and reorganized.
The introduction of mandatory PlayStation Plus service subscriptions to play games online, which recently got a massive bump in monthly prices, PlayStation Plus offers very little incentive regardless of buying into a Essential, Extra or Deluxe subscription, Microsoft utterly dominates Sony in comparison with their Game Pass.
Sony had been absolutely gung-ho enforcing ridiculous censorship practices to Japanese game developers, alongside with Sony Interactive Entertainment’s headquarters being relocated to California under Ryan’s leadership, from there onwards Sony had been mercilessly clamping down on Japanese developers and their games that contain revealing outfits and or “fan service” inside of their games, while of course allowing big budget western studios such as Naughty Dog to feature obscene and grotesque motion captured sex scenes featuring a roided up woman.
But quite frankly there had been no greater tragedy than the series of Senran Kagura of which its then upcoming release, 7EVEN was announced in March 2017 with a release in 2018.
Senran Kagura 7EVEN was forcefully censored by orders of Sony so hard that the game effectively was effectively unshippable, and even till this day the game’s development remains in limbo. The entire ordeal didn’t just destroy just one simple game but the entire franchise as well, following Sony’s interjection, the creator of Senran Kagura, Kenichiro Takaki left Marvelous in March 2019.
Sony’s PlayStation seemingly hates Japan, they’ve imposed barbaric censorship standards upon them for countless years to this point which is among one of the many reasons why Japanese consumers instead opt into buying Nintendo’s Switch console over the PlayStation 5, which initially struggled to gain momentum for both physical hardware sales and game software sales in Japan since release.
Perhaps the fact that Sony forcefully altered the PlayStation 5’s button layout in the Japanese region to match that of the button layout in western provinces, mighty progressive if you ask me.
While Jim Ryan may have ruined the reputation of the PlayStation in Sony’s home country, he has instead grew the brand extensively in both American and European regions in terms of record breaking system sales, however Sony seemingly finds it challenging to actually procure themselves any actual exclusive game titles for the PlayStation 5 outside of “timed exclusive” dealings with the likes of Square Enix followed up by subsequent PC releases, sometimes even “exclusive” titles have day one ports to PC.
The same ordeal can be said regarding Microsoft, considering how they dominate the entire PC landscape I couldn’t really care less if these consoles have no exclusives, watching Sony and Microsoft duke it out by outright purchasing large development studios and publishers and going to court over the exclusivity of Call of Duty has been immense fun to witness, especially how Microsoft aren’t obliged to release Bethesda’s upcoming Elder Scrolls game on the Sony PlayStation 5.
Jim Ryan steps down in March 2024, his replacement is Hiroki Totoki, which as you’d probably expect sounds like a very Japanese name, once again SIE will be led by Japan once again.
Starting from October 2023, Hiroki Totoki will take on the position of chairman until the official handover, during which he will serve as the interim CEO, but I for one aren’t getting my hopes up that Totoki turns the ship around and makes Sony’s PlayStation a Japanese brand once again, for everything that SIE has done to their once home country they’ve forever tarnished themselves in my eyes.
The only way for me to even consider favoring Sony would be for them to abolish their “American Dream” and returns Sony Interactive Entertainment to Japan, but even then that probably wont be enough to sway my mind. I want to see an entire course correction, the abolishment of ESG riddled censorship (of Japanese developers) and a firmware update to alter the PS5’s button layout specifically for the Japanese market first thing.
I want Sony to beg for forgiveness as to how they’ve disrespected not only their own nation but all of the Japanese consumers and developers who’ve been affected by Sony’s cancerous pro-western policies, while Hiroki Totoki might be Japanese the effect of Jim Ryan on Sony has already cultivated into refined cancer, the poisonous claws of ESG have gotten ahold of PlayStation and it will take nothing short of a miracle for them to redeem themselves and their company image.
