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Jim Ryan is leaving Sony Interactive Entertainment and will be retiring from the industry, it's been officially announced today. Ryan shared a letter to PlayStation fans, stating that he did not take the decision lightly as he loves Sony and the community but had to step down as he found it hard to balance between having to work in the United States and living in the UK.
"I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to strike the right balance between having my home in the UK and my job in the United States," Ryan wrote.
Jim Ryan spent nearly 30 years at Sony Interactive Entertainment but will leave in March 2024, when Hiroki Totoki will be appointed interim CEO of SIE.
Ryan mentioned how humbled he is to work for Sony, a company that delivered so many games that touched millions of lives.
"From award-winning games to the incredibly immersive technical achievements delivered with PlayStation 5, I’m immensely proud of what we have achieved and very optimistic for the future of Sony Interactive Entertainment," it's written in Ryan's letter.
Ryan was undoubtedly one of the key figures in the massive growth of the PlayStation brand. While Sony always had a great console and products, the quality of their first-party games really become evident over the last decade with titles like God of War, The Last of Us and Uncharted.
On the other hand, Ryan was a big advocate of live-service games on PlayStation and greenlit the PC ports of many PlayStation exclusives, which was a major change in how the company delivers games.
We are already seeing the results of both initiatives, as Sony have already released God of War and The Last of Us on PC, while Horizon Forbidden West for PC was also announced yesterday.
Additionally, Ryan has gained a lot of popularity among PlayStation fans over the last couple of years, more precisely during the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal.
Ryan was obviously strongly against the deal, commenting in public about how such a deal could destroy PlayStation but internal emails revealed that he didn't see the merger as a big threat, stating that Microsoft "would be better off announcing a new electric car than acquiring Activision".
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