PlayStation Boss Jim Ryan is retiring, will step down from CEO position in March 2024

PlayStation boss Jim Ryan will retire from his position as Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO on March 2024, as was announced by Sony themselves on Wednesday.

Originally reported by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier moments before Sony made the announcement public, Ryan will step down from office next year after 30 years with the company and the PlayStation brand. His place will be taken by current Sony Group Corporation president and Chief Operating Officer Hiroki Totoki, acting as interim CEO at the start from April 1, 2024 onwards.

While there are no details about the reasons behind his retirement other than looking for the “right balance” between his work and personal life, the current boss at PlayStation shared a message on the company’s website.

“I did not take this decision lightly and I absolutely love SIE and our community, but of late 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”

“I feel humbled at having the opportunity to lead a company delivering products that touch 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.”

PlayStation is currently breaking records

While the gaming industry in general has been in an uptick as of the past few years, PlayStation has been finding itself breaking their own records and having success with their current generation of consoles with the PlayStation 5. Just this summer, the company revealed that the system had surpassed 40 million units sold worldwide, even with a component crisis and a pandemic leading to an initial hardware shortage.

Ryan himself said that “Despite the unprecedented challenges of COVID, our teams and our partners worked diligently to deliver PS5 on time. We continued to face headwinds with the pandemic, and it took months for supply chains to normalize so we could have the inventory to keep up with demand. For more months than I care to remember, we kept thanking our community for their patience while working through these issues. But now PS5 supply is well-stocked and we are seeing that pent up demand finally being met.”

Still a ways off from reaching the top of the “best-selling consoles in history”, this is still a great moment for the current CEO to retire. At the very least, he leaves his position with wind behind the company’s sails, and with the current generation still having many years of life ahead of itself.