With Sony announcing that PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan will be retiring in April of next year, this kind of message from Phil Spencer was inevitable. The Xbox boss has taken to Twitter in order to praise 63-year-old Ryan's impact on the industry, as you'd expect.
"Jim Ryan has been a great contributor to our industry and a fierce leader for PlayStation," writes Spencer. "I wish him the best in what he does next. Thank you for all you’ve done for the community over the last 30 years, Jim."
Of course, it's worth noting that Ryan and Spencer have been on opposite sides of a (still ongoing) courtroom battle over the last couple of years. Ryan was quick to oppose Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and went on to play a significant role in establishing PlayStation's stance on the matter.
But it's sometimes easy to forget that, at the end of the day, Ryan and Spencer are businessmen, and no doubt share a mutual respect for one another. It'll certainly be interesting to see whether Sony and Microsoft's relationship is altered — even slightly — by Ryan's retirement. We suppose it'll all depend on who gets the nod as PlayStation's next CEO.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 38
Ah, the old pseudo-visionary-"it's all about the industry"-spiel again.
I think he’s inadvertently calling him weak for tapping out the game. “Good luck old man, watch what ima do now”
Whatever negative that can be said about Jim Ryan, he presided over an absolute giant growth of the PlayStation Brand after a pandemic and then the fallout caused by that with global shortages of components to make PS5 consoles, so on that side he did an awesome job. And contrary to public opinion, I definitely prefer him to Phil Spencer’s lies.
@dschons what's wrong with paying tribute to a colleague?
@WolfyTn I don't know how you got that conclusion 😆
Professional formality
Oh gawd Phil is tweeting fake comradery again 🙄 Next he'll be congratulating Insomniac for Spiderman 2 all while complaining about PS5 being bundled with the game.
Why would their relationship be altered? In the end the only thing MS cares for is own the complete industry how naive can people be. They try to buy up every competitor with a basic response.
@Bionic-Spencer Totally agree the only thing he should have done better is think a little bit extra with some of his responses. But the best thing are his real answers.
One ridiculously rich guy praises another. It's so heartwarming.
Doublespeakin' Phil loves to hear himself talk.
Phil is just being grateful to his old pal Jim for making it easy for them to acquire ActiBlizz and Bethesda lol
@Ashina nah. That would happen anyway. Too many people were bought. US senators clearly showed that.
Thing is, if Spencer said nothing, people would be all over him for that. He says something, and people are all over him anyway. There are a certain section of the gaming community fore which words simply fail me...
Since Jim Ryan has taken over playstation, lets list all the amazing things he has done since becoming CEO
What a guy XD
@WolfyTn or maybe rather "... watch what ima do next year ” ...
It is still very possible that the most beloved ceo of gaming companies will steer the ship to success maybe by buying even more publishers? So, far one cannot say that it was very successful. But, yes maybe next year ...
@Fiendish-Beaver With this guy I would find that better I know his words don't mean a thing.
Meanwhile his internal email will read something like, "Ha! They are now weak" blah blah blah, "time to strike", something about Xbox being superior, blah blah blah, "Let's buy PS while we can"
@ArcadeHeroes "Big Push for Games as a service": Playstation is late to the game I would say. Everybody was already quite successful in this domain but playsation. This narrative "thanks to jim ryan playstation will give up on single player narrative games in favour of GaaS" is presumably everything but correct.
"Closure of Japan Studio": Wasn't the studio reorganized and rebranded as asobi studio ? Were there great, novel or interesting games in development that got cancelled ?
"Increased the price of ps5": true. But show me a price that did not increase during the last two years. In the console space ps started, but didn't pretty much every other manufacturer followed suite ?
It is hard to tell what is Jim Ryan's doing what was demanded by share holders, what are requests from Sony. He likely has his hands in the items You are listing, but I am pretty sure that some of the actions had been inevitable. And then ps5 sells really well. So it was seemingly well marketed, which on the long run means many games for ps5, because why would a developer want to miss out on a big chunk of the market ?
Good luck to Jim. He was never my cup of tea but he's done well from a business perspective rather than a gamer's perspective.
Also, Phil can't win. If he says something nice he's branded a fake and a liar. If he says nothing then he's rude and an a*se.
The amount of salt in these comments, from presumably grown "adults", is laughable.🤓
Public Phil: "What a fierce leader you have been Jimmy, thank you for all the memories, xoxo."
Internal Email Phil: "Hee hee heeh, finally that blasted hindrance is out of the way, now our Industry Consolidation Plan™ shall move forward all the more smoothly. Also let's try and purchase Nintendo again next month or so."
@Tomato_Goose Nothing if it were earnest. If the leaked e-mails have shown anything, then that corporate representatives should not be trusted with their public narratives. That goes for both sides. Spencer can claim all he wants that he's the shining knight that cares about nothing but the games industry when all he really wants is what his corporate overlords dictate. That said, I do not doubt that he wishes him well but that "gaming industry" as focal point is part of his spiel, just like the "crying" is for Jim.
Have no love for Phil, but that was nice of him.
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Wouldn’t it be crazy if Reggie Fils-Aime was hired as SIE CEO?
That would be nuts. A guy that ran NOA for more than a decade gets a new job as the president of PlayStation.
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@BeerIsAwesome I understood that they mostly worked as a support studio, and less as a development studio at the end. In that sense it made sense to put the part which was still developing games into one group (asobi) and the rest into xdev. At least that is my understand what happened. If I am not mistaken Fumito Ueda left before the reorganisation.
Yes, it is the "gamers" which are to blame for the closure. They played too much cod and fifa, and not enough of the more interesting stuff.
@ArcadeHeroes Very true. But pa5 is selling way more consoles than xbox are.
So reality is non of that even matters people are still buying.
Microsoft are literally having to spend billions to even keep the xbox division open.
@Bionic-Spencer all of that would have happened without him,you’re literally praising him for nothing. PS was already trending upwards for years.
Lies of p at it again.phil spencer nose is growing a lot.haha.and wheres the Bethesda games.huh phil.word up son
Heartwarming stuff, really.😅 Now Phil you could retire too and you could play golf together. Think about it. Let it simmer.
Some of you guys need to lay off the energy drinks & chill out.
I wish Jim & his cats all the best!
@gaston They were late indeed, I agree with many of your points (hearted comment), while they are focusing on their cinematic games trend they were late to other ideas unlike PS3 where Insomniac took a while to make a co-op game (made 2) but weren't to make a PSN title (Quest for Booty) which as that was a focus is to have PSN support or Move or PSP/PS3 connectivity in some way or co-op games, then later online passes they were late to GAAS.
Then again how much has changed or will continue to with the movies/tv shows probably a fair amount. Many companies branch out to other mediums/industries and it benefits new audiences/awareness, more the existing audience can enjoy like a theme park or other merch or whatever too. It was likely in place regardless as the Ratchet movie was 2016 so any changes then to now of PS Productions were happening prior to 2020.
(Destruction Allstars I take as part Lucid part Sony, Lucid had Bizarre Creations staff, some not others at Playground and elsewhere, if many worked on Blur why did they not learn from that, it has a cult following but what made them think oh a vehicular combat game to advertise to casuals, when their mario kart advertising and neon real cars kart racer has a cult following but didn't sell well I think, the sequel looked awesome but cancelled but still) for other GAAS we will see how they turn out at least. Not interested but at the same time they may have better ideas/execution who knows.
Foam stars from Square leaves me less confidence if it's ideas are weak when I already know they can give foam more interesting use cases for modes/ammo then trailers show (I didn't watch the gameplay previews so that's on me).
While Japan Studios umbrella downsizing so we no have Claphands do golf elsewhere, Bokeh exists now the ones that did Siren/Gravity Rush, others went their ways or to Asobi (as well as the management/localisation side for Japan of course). They were supporting others in many cases like From Software with the PSVR title (and as usual others in Japan just like XDev does pretty sure in a similar way). Because their an umbrella of studios it does get confusing. I won't deny they did have way too many studios there so scaling it to one probably made more sense from a financial perspective. Some made a new studio, went to Asobi, went to other studios/continued what they were likely planning (assuming Claphands had and Everybody's Golf for PS5 planned who knows but released their current golf game for Switch) and didn't renew their contracts.
While I like their games they don't sell well (sadness) and lets not forgot they did waste a lot of money with Gran Turismo 5 (Polyphony while not under the umbrella kind of counts I guess for this point) (GT5 Prologue did come out but as usual the license can't be cheap) and The Last Guardian taking too long to make. While they don't have the EU/US studios game design costs of the mo cap and other stuff (besides Siren as it had actors and their faces on the characters which looks weird but was what it was for the time, I guess most others are very small scale or in-engine cutscenes anyway pretty sure so they can't have cost that much to make and as smaller scale games like the ones on PSP like EchoChrome/Shift, LocoRoco, maybe some PSN games for PSP/PS3 or the odd more higher budget PS3 ones of Puppeteer, Gravity Rush would even if different then Siren by Team Siren, whatever other examples).
Which if Team Ico or others were working on something then they likely were cancelled. Whatever the case I can understand why they were cancelled and many times it seemed they were just a support for some studios or making hardware specific stuff anyway like Astro/Playroom the tech teams like London do then it made sense I guess to scale down to Asobi as the tech demo studio and the localisation and other stuff then 5+ studios under an umbrella making whatever and not turning much a profit (besides what many people don't care about niche games even if yes a big group of studios you'd think make more but when you see a Song of the Deep go under the radar besides the Gamestop publishing or better chances now like with Obsidian's Pentiment times have changed and some studios have platforms and certain marketing to make AAA smaller projects have a place and others not or leaders just not caring which we all know about with the Laydon to Ryan period).
PS5 price I agree, Switch game prices increased mid gen, other third parties did, Xbox did. 3DS had a price cut, I forgot what others have besides slim models like the PS3 I think had the It Does Everything marketing campaign period of price change.
The PS3 was $1000 or whatever higher than the $599 in the US in my country, games were the same $100 (I guess $99 then the $110 or $120 they are standard or deluxe I forget what they are now) while I only see the odd $50 game these days from AAs I think Ratchet 2016 was a $50 game so that's something of not happening often if I remember correctly.
They were now I think back then I only remember the PS4 era prices at least not PS3 prices (my Ratchet Crack in Time price sticker is still there so that's some evidence but not enough to be definitive of course XD) (as far as been told/price stickers I see still on old games we own I'd have to check the wayback machine for websites/catalogues and find out more but still) so sometimes things have or haven't changed for sure and others are following through on price changes and many people just seem to forget or certain areas have price changes.
It's why I was skeptical how much is 'Jim' and how much as shareholders/past plans he just had to continue with that were already in place, not much happens in 2-3 years and he had a minor impact on certain things. He may be a businessman and may be good in some ways and the Gran Turismo 1 graphics quote does get thrown around but at the same time he was probably great in past roles in the company we don't know about but in his current role we only see so much.
@SuntannedDuck2 concerning the studio reshuffling, maybe in order to keep the output interesting one has to constantly bubble up and burst studios once their creative life time is reached ?
concerning Jim Ryan, maybe his biggest achievements are on logistic, and marketing side and on nothing else who knows. Certainly playstation is doing good business-wise. Whether playstation is also doing good on the creative side we may see some years in the future, I guess.
@BeerIsAwesome Certainly for the staff it is awful if the studio gets close, even if they do not loose their jobs. It still means being moved out of the comfort zone, I suppose. From a business perspective, it presumably makes a lot of sense to occasionally reshuffle things, to keep things fresh.
@BeerIsAwesome Some of the files may no be available on the dark net
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