Kaz Hirai is retiring, but it’s not the Sony President and CEO. Twitter user @KazHiraiCEO, a parody account that has gained over 113,000 followers announced that they’ll be ending the account in 2018. This isn’t due to any legal threats, but because they’ve been spending “a lot less time following video game news,” and have been “repeating jokes more and more often.”
Check out the official announcement and letter explaining his departure:
An announcement about this Twitter account: pic.twitter.com/xbJtw3HIks
— Ex-CEO Kaz Hirai (@KazHiraiCEO) September 12, 2017
If you can’t view the tweet embedded above, we’ve got the complete message below:
Hello,
For over 6 years now I have been running this Twitter account. I originally started it because I wanted to make jokes about video game news, rumours and press conferences, but I knew nobody in real life that would have go them. Between then and now I have somehow inexplicably managed to gain over 100,000 followers. This has included people in the games media that I read on a daily basis, people who have worked on some of my favourite games, and most importantly of all, Shuhei Yoshida.
It has been, from the very start, a ton of fun. It has been great interacting with people, whether they were well known names in the industry or random schmucks just like me. It has been cool seeing tweets show up on Reddit, Tumblr, Neogaf, and even in Sony Press Conferences. I enjoy seeing everybody’s reactions, whether they are positive or negative (or just plain confused because they haven’t worked out I’m fake yet). I’m still kind of shocked with how well this has gone, and how long it has lasted.
Recently though I have been tweeting a lot less often. While I still spend plenty of time playing video games, I spend a lot less time following video game news. I don’t watch every press conference like I used to, and I am now not normally online when a big story breaks. I also find myself repeating jokes more and more often. It turns out there are a finite number of ways you can say “nobody wants a Vita” or “The Last Guardian/Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts has been delayed!”
I have therefore decided that 2018 will be the last year of this Twitter account.
I realise announcing the end this far in advance makes me sound incredibly self-important, but I chose to do it this way for a few reasons:
- I want to do the account for one more E3.
- I also want to give myself time to do a proper ending for this account. I don’t know what it is yet, but I don’t want it to just peter out.
- I am rubbish at giving up things, and this announcement will force me to end it.
I don’t know exactly when I will end it, but it will definitely be after E3 2018. Between now and then I will try to tweet more often and make my tweets a bit better, too!
I want to thank anybody who has followed, replied, liked or retweeted. I hope that you have enjoyed one or two of my tweets as much as I have enjoyed writing all of them.
Many Thanks,
Fake Kaz Hirai
While it might be a fake Kaz Hirai writing those hilarious tweets, one thing is for sure: the joy that they’ve brought is more than real. We appreciate the laughs. Thank you, fake Kaz Hirai.
