Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, is in charge of the release of PlayStation 5. Photo / Sony
Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, is in charge of the release of PlayStation 5. Photo / Sony
When Jim Ryan zooms into our interview he's in good spirits and looking relaxed. Which is surprising because he has every reason not to be.
As president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, he's the head honcho in charge of rolling out their long-awaited and much anticipated new gaming console,the PlayStation 5 (PS5), which goes on sale today.
"I've still got quite a lot of hair," he laughs, "but the colour's changed."
"But I'm feeling really good. We've been working for so many years on this thing. It's always like that but this year has been so different. It was always going to be a challenging, tough, interesting year but with Covid it took a very different turn to what anybody could have imagined. But I'm so proud of how everybody stepped up and we're in good shape."
It could have been very different. He cites just a few of the Covid-related challenges that they needed to overcome to be ready for their announced launch date; from hardware engineers and software developers working from home right through to the logistics of the supply chain and actually getting the console into the country. It's been tough, he says.
He's not the only happy one. For gamers the launch of a new console is rarer than a leap year and feels like New Year, your birthday and Christmas all rolled into one. Excitement levels are in overdrive as evidenced by pre-orders for Sony's successor to their wildly successful PS4 selling out within minutes.
That console sold over 114 million units worldwide and is still going strong. But it's been sitting under people's tellies for seven years now; it launched in 2013, which practically makes it an antique in technological terms.
The futuristic design of the new PlayStation 5 and it's advanced DualSense controller. Photo / Sony
Ryan says work began on the PS5, which retails for $819 with a 4K blu-ray drive and $649 for an all digital machine, around five years ago and that he still remembers the first time he was shown its futuristic and eye-catching design.
"I remember going 'wow. This is different'. The design purity of the whole thing was, in my mind, most striking."
"The version that I saw wasn't quite the version that we brought to market but it wasn't far off," he continues. "I formally approved the design and made a couple of suggestions but they were very small. Sony is a company that has a rich heritage and rich DNA in the design of electronic devices and we have some of the best people in the world doing this. There's no way that a now-61-year-old accountant is going to add too much to the work that these guys do."
Perhaps part of the reason Ryan's relaxed is that this isn't his first rodeo. He's been with PlayStation since the beginning, working on the release of the PS1 in Europe, Australia and New Zealand back in 1994 and navigating through the early Wild West days of gaming as the niche hobby pushed into the mainstream.
"It was some of the most fun and enjoyable work I've ever done because in many ways we were making it up as we went along," he says. "Trying to establish a brand and a brand presence from scratch is a very difficult thing to do. The team in New Zealand did a really outstanding job. The brand identity there is one of the most unique and strongest that we have in the world.
"I've visited on many occasions over the years and developed a reasonable understanding of the gaming market down there and just how important PlayStation is. It's a big market for us and I've tried to keep in touch as I've progressed up the corporate ladder."
Screenshot of Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, one of the PS5's launch games. Photo / Sony
Sony may be riding high off the back of the PS4 but Ryan says that, mentally, the company is going in as challengers rather than victors so as to avoid the "corporate hubris" which marred the PS3 era which saw their rivals catch them.
"We were carried away by the massive success of PS2 and we lost focus and got complacent," he says. "Ever since then, and certainly this year on the back of the success of PS4 I've been telling anybody at work who will listen, 'hey, we succeeded with PS2 and we felt complacent when we failed with PS3. We've been successful with PS4 but let's stay humble. Let's stay focused. Make sure we don't make any mistakes. And at all times keep a challenger mentality'."
That said he's excited and confident that all the technologically advanced new features of the PS5, like its superior graphics, ultra-fast SSD drive, haptic feedback DualSense controller and 3D audio, will entice and attract both new gamers and faithful loyalists.
"The people who bought into the whole thing in the late 90s are in many, many cases still with us," he smiles. "They're in their 50s now looking forward to PS5. It's very humbling. It's very nice."
