If you’ve been keeping up with the latest financial reports, then you’re likely aware of the fact that Sony Corp. isn’t doing all that well. With four profitless years in a row, something has to change if they want to turn things around. The upcoming new president at Sony, Kaz Hirai hopes to turn things around in a big way by focusing on the profitable areas of the company, namely the gaming and digital imaging divisions.
Sony Corp. is anticipating a $2.9 billion loss for the year, so it goes without saying that the PlayStation branch has quite a weight on its shoulders as the company struggles to climb out of its hole.
PlayStation Worldwide Studios’ Shuhei Yoshida discussed this added level of pressure to perform, telling GameIndustry.biz:
When you listen carefully to the announcements by Kaz Hirai, he clearly said that Sony going forward has a two pillar business. We have a really strong vertical integration, one is the digital imaging, with digital and video cameras and the other is games.
Coming from Kaz, saying these two businesses are the pillars of the company, it’s a huge expectation for us to kind of lead the business and so I would expect Sony would allow us to invest for the future. It’s clear messaging, the appointment of Kaz himself is a clear message. The way he has developed software, hardware and services together, I’m sure that’s how he’s going to develop the business.
Yoshida went on to express his delight in having Hirai at the head of Sony, praising the man for his talents and commitment to the PlayStation brand.
So it’s a big relief and a very energising thing that we see Kaz promoted. He’s a very business orientated person but he also understands what is most important for our business and what our strategy is. Even when he says ‘no’ he understands our business, which is better than hearing ‘no’ from other executives who do not understand the video games business.
Hopefully the launch of the PlayStation Vita will start to turn things around for the company when it fully launches on the 22nd.
