Sony Acting CEO Hiroki Totoki has announced the company’s new leadership structure.
Hiroki Totoki, Senior Executive Vice President, CFO, and Representative Corporate Executive Officer of PlayStation’s parent company Sony Corp, will now move away from the PlayStation CEO role, to become their chairman instead.
In a press release on Sony’s website, Hiroki then explains that PlayStation, AKA Sony Interactive Entertainment, will now have two CEOs running different divisions. Hermen Hulst will be CEO of Studio Business Group, and Hideaki Nishino will be CEO of Platform Business Group. Both Hermen and Hideaki will answer directly to Hiroki, in his role as PlayStation’s chairman.
While it’s popular to think of the CEO as the most powerful person in the company or a division, a company’s CEO is also accountable to people above them. In specific, while the CEO makes decisions on running a company on a day to day basis, their decisions are accountable to that company’s board of directors. The chairman of the company, which is really the chairman of the board of directors, oversees the CEO’s performance, and in turn their decisions are accountable to their shareholders.
When things go bad, the chairman has the power to fire or demote the CEO, but in practical terms, the chairman and CEO/s make decisions together.
Gematsu helps shed some light on where Hideaki and Hermen were before these promotions. Hideaki was senior vice president of Platform Experience Group. He was working on the PlayStation 5 hardware, PSVR 2, and PSN. In his new job, Hideaki will also work with 3rd parties, and work on the sales and marketing for hardware, service, and peripherals.
Hermen was senior vice president and head of PlayStation Studios, In this capacity, he was helping bring games and other apps to PlayStation, and he was also in charge of PlayStation Studios publishing games on PC. He also works on PlayStation Productions, which helps bring their games to film and TV.
We also feel the need to bring up that Hermen was named in rumors last year about behind the scenes turmoil over at SIE. David Scott Jaffe claimed back then that Hermen was in favor of shutting down Sony’s long running Japan Studio. Now, Jaffe did not say that Hermen made that decision. He brought it up as an example of the kind of unsavory decision making that was going on in the company that led to Sony firing their veteran staff. Jaffe also revealed that Sony had fired Connie Booth, news that Sony confirmed a few days later.
This news also comes at same time when Hiroki himself held Sony Corp’s latest financial report with investors. Hiroki reported failing to meet PlayStation 5 sales targets over the holidays, and revising their forecast from 25 million down to 21 million units.
But Hiroki projected in advance expectations for lower console sales before he went in, and that that would continue because the company had no first party AAAs for the fiscal year. While investors are likely disappointed, Hiroki set expectations as realistically as he could.
The new leadership change hopefully means PlayStation can make preparations to do better in the coming months and years. Even if you’re not a fan of PlayStation, you do want the industry to be healthy and for good games to keep coming out. So let’s all wish the best for their new leadership.
