Being part of a corporate structure can be frustrating, because there’s always someone else to answer to. When it came to leading PlayStation, one of the former CEOs of the console juggernaut took to just shrugging off orders from Sony brass if necessary.
Kaz Hirai, who oversaw Sony Computer Entertainment from 2007 to 2012, discussed his tenure in that position with Takaya Awata, CEO of Toridoll Holdings, in a conversation published by Nikkei Xtrend. “When I was president of Sony Computer Entertainment handling the PlayStation home console business,” he starts, as translated by Game Observer.
“Whenever Howard [Stringer] and the other executives told me this or that, I went my own way, saying, ‘What the headquarters says is irrelevant. We are PlayStation,'” he says, laughing.
That’s definitely one way of navigating bureaucracy or managerial oversight. To be fair, though, the results speak for themselves during this period.
Despite the struggles, PlayStation 3 itself shifted plenty of consoles, accruing over 87 million in lifetime sales. You had games like the original Uncharted trilogy, LittleBigPlanet, Metal Gear Solid 4, and the Ratchet and Clank series that were platform-exclusive, along with a huge library of indies on the nascent PS Store.
Considering the competition from the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, PlayStation not only held its own but ultimately won the war, as the PS3 outsold Microsoft’s console overall.
Funnily enough, there’s form for this within the brand, since a lot of Sony brass were resistant to entering the games business in the ’90s. Ken Kutaragi was PlayStation’s main cheerleader at the time, going against the tide to get the first system out the door.
For his tenure, Hirari mentions part of his strategy as boss was to regularly visit offices in other cities to maintain a sense of personal presence. “During the six years I served as president, I visited over 20 countries and close to 50 cities, perhaps? Going just once isn’t enough,” he states.
He found there was initial cynicism the first time, but doing it over and over demonstrated that he cared about the teams and what they were up to. “It was like, ‘He really came back, this old guy!'” Hirai finishes.
He then moved higher up the food chain at Sony, before fully retiring from the company in 2024, ending a 40-year run.