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PlayStation's Dual CEO Setup Has 'Opportunities and Risks'

"It's a balance"

by · Push Square

Sony took the bold decision of replacing ex-CEO Jim Ryan with two executives. Hermen Hulst is in charge of PS Studios and first-party software, while Hideaki Nishino runs the hardware business. It’s an ambitious structure, and one that could easily lead to conflict: after all, you could argue a way to grow PS Studios is to release software on non-PlayStation platforms – but that would come at the expense of console sales.

How does it all work, then?

“This is not co-CEOs; it’s two CEOs for the company,” Nishino confusingly told Variety as part of an exclusive interview. “Hermen runs his thing, I run my thing, and then we get together to talk about how to grow the business. Growing the business for success has a conflict as well: how we impact each other or how we want to sacrifice or not. It’s a balance. It’s an opportunity and a risk.”

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According to Hulst, the two suits spend “80 per cent” of their time focused on their own respective departments. “It’s really nice to have two devs at the helm. We both have engineering degrees; we’re both pretty hands-on,” he said. “There needs to be huge trust, and we’ve worked together for a very long time.”

We suppose splitting the responsibilities does make sense; while hardware and software needs to coalesce in order to create the overall PlayStation ecosystem, they’re two disparate pieces of the same puzzle at the end of the day. As long as they both agree on the general direction of travel, then we suppose no harm can come from this approach – especially as Netflix has utilised it to great effect recently.

[source variety.com]

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About Sammy Barker

As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.

Comments 39

That was the most nothingburger, word salad, question-dodging interview I think I've seen modern PlayStation do yet. They flat-out ignored some of the more interesting questions and waxed poetics about corpo nonsense. Awful look for them.

"How does it all work, then?"

I have visions of Harry Hill yelling something..... Theres only one way to find out.....

@RBMango It's Variety, do we expect a good incisive interview about games?

Yeah...this dual CEO setup sounds stupid. How can you have a unified vision when both CEOs seem to be working towards different things

Look, it doesn't take a genius to know that any organization thrives when it has two leaders.

Go ahead, name a country that doesn't have two presidents. A boat that sets sail without two captains. Where would Catholicism be without the popes

Get rid of Hulst and see how the other guy works out on his own

If it's true Hust was the one behind Concord I wouldn't trust him to run anything

@LowDefAl Even by low ass-kissing Variety standards, this interview sucked. They blatantly ignored simple questions like "what do you think of the inevitable Switch 2 launching?" or "what other games besides Ghost of Yotei are you using to convince people to buy a Pro?"

I think Variety did okay in this interview to their minimal credit. These CEOs dodged the softest questions like Neo from The Matrix and it makes them look cowardly and stupid.

Why Hulst is still at the position is a mystery after the catastrophe of Concord?

It's like in The Office, when Jim and Michael Scott were co-managers. I'm sure it will work out swimmingly!

Ever since Jim Ryan I see they can't trust one person with decisions in that company.

TL;DR "We looked over our shoulder as we always do and decided to just copy what Xbox was doing. It doesn't work for them but we're sure it'll work for us."

The main risk with this setup is that one of the CEOs is Herman Hulst.

Make Sony Japanese again. Herman doesnt know what hes doing

I just fired up HZD Remastered and immediately got Hermen Hulst name in the opening credits as 'Managing Director'. Kind of caught me off guard. I don't ever recall seeing a CEO in the credits like this.

As long as Hulst has any say in anything whatsoever, I have no trust in the company.

@Xbox_Dashboard That credit is from the original release too. he was MD at Guerrilla at the time and in fact all of guerilla's games upto that point.

@LowDefAl that makes way more sense. Didn't know that.

Yeah, we don't need Hulst, especially after that 200 million crater he steered into. I'm fine with a Japan controlled PlayStation with international partnerships.

Wait, they promoted Hurst to ceo? Wasnt he responsible for the biggest flop in the history of video games (Concord)?

“Look, it doesn't take a genius to know that any organization thrives when it has two leaders. Go ahead, name a country that doesn't have two presidents. A boat that sets sail without two captains. Where would Catholicism be without the popes.”

You guys act like concord flopping wash away all the success hurst has had throughout the years some of you people here are very foolish.

You can't mix piss and wine and call it "balance".

Get rid of Hulst, please

@Jay767 Draining $400M on a flop is a great counter weight to all the “good things” the guy has done.

@Savage_Joe you think concord cost 400 million dollars to make come on. I don’t really believe concord cost 200 million dollars to make.

@Jay767 No matter the amount, thought there is evidence that indicates the 400M including the purchase of the studio, spending 8 years, top money and advertisement on a game that sold 20k units is more than enough reason to hellfire the so called CEO

Just bring back Shawn Layden and Jack Tretton.

Layden + Tretton = (Professor) Layton

So I was waiting for there to be something interesting in the article... got to the end.. and was still scratching my head. I get that Sony feels the need to put something in the news cycle to distract or diffuse investors; but this was a nothingburger without even the buns.

I am not sure if PS feels the need to report on all the news beats (including non-existant ones) that Sony put out, but some news stories are best let go through to the keeper.

@Jay767 you raise a good point. What were those successes? I'm just curious.

Hulst has to go, we were too focused on Jim Ryan but maybe it was Hermen pushing for the live services all along, I’m baffled how no one at Firewalk or SIE could see Concord’s issues during more than 2 years of development directly under Sony.

@Jay767 It’s already confirmed that the game costed at least 200 million, if you add the acquisition and marketing (going all the way to pay for a TV episode based on the IP) the 400 million mark is likely to be true.

I don't think this two CEO is a good idea. It's like a ship has two Captain and they have different directions of where they want the ship to go.

Right now, Captain Hermen wants the ship to sail towards the heavenly live service island. But he's crashing the ship left and right while killing the crew one by one without any regrets or punishment. What a good Captain he is lmao.

On the other hand, Captain Nishino's just brushing the deck all day to look shiny while the ship got destroyed by Captain Hermen lol.

The only reason why the ship is still sailing is the talented crews of Insomniac, ND, Sucker Punch, Guerilla, PD, Housemarque, Bluepoint, Santa Monica, and Asobi. But for how long they can keep the ship working with these two Captain? 🤔

@IOI Hulst is where he is because Jim Ryan put him there as a fellow traveler though. Without Jim, they'd be no Herman to deal with. He's a waste product of Jim's.

So far I'd say the problems with playstation leadership/decision making extend far beyond just whoever is CEO.

However, Hulst is proving to be quite costly for their revenue streams and fans alike. Pretty interesting that everyone blamed Ryan for these bad decisions when we come to find out much of them were Herman's babies.....

Herman could maybe be the death knell. Pay Shawn whatever he wants.

@KundaliniRising333 Herman must think he has Phil money to blow

@Dalamar best comment in the thread lol

Why not, it worked out great for Kendall and Roman...

If memory serves part of the reasoning for splitting the CEO roles was supposedly feedback from Jim Ryan in part.

The other part not mentioned here is also 2IC of Sony group Totoki,whom seemingly is keeping a tighter financial leash on the Playstation division especially in light of the multi billion outlay for the likes of Bungie & probably has questioned the value on return thus far...🤔

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