New Management Structure of Sony Interactive Entertainment – Sony Interactive Entertainment

“After 30 years, I have made the decision to retire from SIE in March 2024. I’ve relished the opportunity to have a job I love in a very special company, working with great people and incredible partners. But I’ve found it increasingly difficult to reconcile living in Europe and working in North America. I will leave having been privileged to work on products that have touched millions of lives across the world; PlayStation will always be part of my life, and I feel more optimistic than ever about the future of SIE. I want to thank Yoshida-san for placing so much trust in me and being an incredibly sensitive and supportive leader.” - Jim Ryan

It'll be interesting to see who replaces him.
I'm going to have to imagine that they'll have to be more charismatic and likeable, like Herman or Yoshida, because if might be difficult to be as business savvy and results driven as Ryan was.

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Jim Ryan will be missed. He was good for Nintendo.

He doubled down on neglecting Japan, so robust third party support for Nintendo is now almost certainly safe for a long time to come. He oversaw the investment in an increased number of GaaS products which first tie a lot of development resources to games that make Sony more like Microsoft (and in turn make Nintendo even more likeable by default) and then require additional post-launch support, so development resources aren't freed up right away. He continued to invest in VR technology, money that could have been better used elsewhere. He greenlit PS Portal which Sony can only hope will be forgotten quickly, because as long as it's being talked about (won't be for long though), it's just advertisement for the way superior Switch technology.

Looking at the Microsoft side of Sony's competition, whoever has the job at Sony doesn't need to be good when Microsoft has Phil Spencer. In other words, just about anyone could have kept Sony clearly ahead of Microsoft because no major decisions were necessary. So Jim Ryan was essentially just the guy who was there during his tenure, except for his decision to port Sony's first party games to the PC, that's not a favorable development for Sony's console business in the long run.

The ideal scenario would be that Phil Harrison gets a shot, but that's completely unrealistic. What I expect is that the new guy will be similar to Ryan, because the current position of PS in the market does not necessitate a person who makes big changes. Japan is deemed to be almost irrelevant by Sony while Microsoft is inept.

Ugh, even this man's retirement announcement comes off like a bland, lifeless corporate statement no one will remember any of in five minutes. Which I guess is what is exactly what it is, but still it's the perfect capstone on what has been a remarkably soulless, technocratic tenure. Look I don't mean this as a slant against the PlayStation brand per se (which honestly remains my favorite out of the three big console brands for its first-party library), but sometimes I have suspected that Jim Ryan might actually be a new form of A.I. that Sony has secretly been working on.

What I hope this development yields above all is more resources and freedom for their studios to make the games that they actually want to make, not just the ones that theoretically stand to make the most money.

You talking shit about spencer buy someday he will be ceo of nintendo. 

Yep and Santa Claus will be his right hand man.

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He was definitely a 'numbers guy', and I think that's okay if you're good enough at what you do.
Other, more charismatic people from the company can handle the PR aspects as much as possible instead.

Not sure what I think about his tenure since it's difficult to pinpoint everything he was responsible for. Since games can take 6-7+ years to develop, we may be seeing games he greenlit up until 2030+. But some people on the internet will be quick to attribute those games to whomever replaces him.

Like all the Japanese ones, for example, needless to say. We know this. Sony's also reportedly gotten a rep with independent publishers of late for being tough to deal with, although, in all fairness, they have taken some concrete steps to repair the latter relationship recently. I don't know if that's really all Jim Ryan's personal doing by any means, but it sure seems like a logical match for his public persona and happens to overlap with his tenure. It's just the impression I get as an outsider, and apparently one that most other people get too.