The PlayStation Boss Fans Loved To Hate Says Goodbye
Jim Ryan just wants to drink wine and watch soccer
After five lucrative but swagger-less years at the helm, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan is saying goodbye. He officially retires from the media conglomerate he’s worked at for the last 30 years at the end of March, and most PlayStation fans won’t be sad to seem him go. The last time he appeared before them it was in May 2023 showcase for the PS5 where the company teased a slew of upcoming live service games at a time when the genre seemed absolutely toxic to P&Ls and very online players alike.
We now know that Helldivers 2, the second game shown during that event, would become a huge hit and the biggest first-party console exclusive launch ever on PC. But there still doesn’t appear to be any love lost for the longtime Sony marketing man. Ryan is ostensibly leaving of his own accord, tired of transatlantic flights and persistent jet lag. Unlike predecessor Shawn Layden’s departure, which was sudden and unceremonious, Sony threw Ryan a party with cookies and a custom PS5 that looks like a PS1.
At the same time, his retirement also comes at a time when Wall Street is freaking out about the PlayStation business’ deteriorating operating margins as a wave of expensive blockbusters and studio acquisitions collide with a stagnating console market. Sony missed its 25 million PS5 sales forecast for the year by a lot, and PlayStation VR2 appears to be failure. Bungie, acquired for its live service expertise, reportedly gave feedback that contributed to the decision to cancel The Last of Us Online, but Destiny 2, gearing up for a delayed finale, appears to be in dire need of a reboot as well.
Even aside from the mixed record, PlayStation fans just never seemed to feel like Ryan was one of them. He often came off as icy and uncomfortable in big gaming showcases, dutifully but dispassionately hyping new trailers and upcoming games. He rarely cracked a smile, making being the head of one of the biggest gaming businesses in the world seem seem like all work and no play. In stark contrast to his Xbox counterpart, Phil Spencer, Ryan didn’t appear to even really care about or enjoy games all that much. He infamously told Time magazine, “[PS1 and PS2 games] looked ancient, like why would anybody play this?” a quote that would forever echo in fans’ heads.
When asked what his favorite PS5 game was in a 2021 interview, he said Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, which just happened to be the game the company was working the hardest to promote at the time. More recently he was asked about his “top” games for each PlayStation console generation by Variety. His answers were revealing in just how little they revealed:
PS1: ‘Ridge Racer,’ 1994
“I and most people were like, ‘Wow, this is really different and a really fun and enjoyable game to play.’ It set the standard for much of what was to follow in that generation.”
PS2: ‘Grand Theft Auto 3,’ 2001
“That was just such a transformative title for that generation and as a cultural moment. It’s had a huge and lasting impact on the gaming industry and certainly on PlayStation.”
PS3: ‘Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune,’ 2007
“Technology at this point was starting to enable storytelling and narrative and emotion in a different way from anything that had been possible hitherto. I’m very proud that that came from our own studio, Naughty Dog.”
PS4: ‘Marvel’s Spider-Man,’ 2018
“That game was so amazing, and seemed to resonate so well with the PlayStation community. It set us up for takeoff in the second half of what was a really successful cycle.”
PS5: ‘God of War Ragnarök,’ 2022
“It’s obviously a wonderful game, and was wonderfully critiqued. But it coincided with the time that we were finally able to start building enough PlayStation 5s. Things snowballed in a beautiful way.”
You could substitute Ryan’s comments about games and console generations for just about any other product you could imagine, from fast-food burgers to pickup trucks, and they’d sound about the same. He was not, as I wrote last year about the cult of personality around Spencer when it was revealed he spent over 900 hours playing Xbox games in 2023, “the gamer’s gaming boss.”
Players latched onto one particular meme to express their skepticism about Ryan’s gaming bonafides: a random photo of him where it looks like he’s never held a PlayStation controller before in his life. The image is from a 2013 press event the executive, then head of PlayStation Europe, did in Spain to promote the upcoming PS4. It was taken by the photographer Elvira Megías. I reached out to her last year to see if she could remember the moment at all and why Ryan was holding the controller like that but never heard back. It seems likely he was simply asked to pose that way to make it easier for a non-gaming audience to see what he was holding.
So who was Ryan really? As he prepares to cap of his three decade tour within Sony, my mind turns back to a completely nondescript Q&A he gave to design magazine Luxe last November. In it you get a sense of the “cozy, self-loathing, deeply melancholic Brit” Sony doesn’t want you to see. “Three reasons you love where you live?” asks Luxe. “I don’t really,” Ryan responds. He says in the interview he has the best job in the world but then goes on to make it sound absolutely miserable:
I get up very early for the London/Tokyo crossover, break around midday, then sleep, eat and have a walk, then start again around three just as the West Coast is getting going, and slog through on Teams until supper. By the end of the day, my eyes are bleeding from looking at a screen for too long…
Ryan goes on to say that his favorite things are good wine, watching soccer, and reading crime novels. He listens to Bach and is obsessed with the history of The Hundred Years War. His most treasured possession? A watch from his father. “I’m fortunate enough not to care in the slightest about material possessions,” Ryan tells Luxe. “Cars and clothes don’t interest me in the slightest and entertainment is all digital now.” Yes, the man in charge of selling a global consumer electronics brand doesn’t care about gadgets. Just give him a fully stocked Kindle and something to stream his favorite TV show: Sex Education.
Despite leaving Sony, Ryan told Variety his quest isn’t over yet. “I still have huge resources of energy and passion that I’m looking forward to deploying in some slightly different ways,” he said. “I’ve got a few things bubbling. I can’t say what they are — but I am going to take my life in a little different direction.”
A very weird little Nintendo showcase
Yesterday’s Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase included plenty of games, bot no real show-stoppers or major surprises. Obsidian Entertainment’s Grounded and Pentiment coming to the handheld-hyrbid would have been a welcome reveal if not for weeks of rumors and reporting stealing the announcement’s thunder. There was no Hollow Knight: Silksong release date as fans hope for with every new Direct, or a similarly big third-party “world premier” in the parlance of one video game industry hype man Geoff Keighley. There were lots of (for me) throwaway nods to soon-to-release multiplatform games like Sword Art Online Fractured Daydream, South Park: Snow Day!, and Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- Sweep the Board! (it’s the video game adaptation of the board game adaptation of the hit anime for $60).
There was definitely some cool stuff too though. Highlights for me were:
Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection (cult-classic multiplayer shooter)
Endless Ocean Luminous (spiritual-successor to the beloved and beautifully scored underwater scuba adventure for the Wii)
Penny’s Big Breakaway (3D platformer from the Sonic Mania folks)
Ender Magnolia (sequel to the underrated metroidvania soulslike Ender Lilies)
Nintendo also announced a bunch of old classics from Rare will be joining the Switch Online subscription catalog including Killer Instinct, Battletoads In Battlmaniacs, and R.C. Pro-AM (a personal favorite). It’s great that people will have better access to these games, but as I’ve written before I also think Nintendo’s version of Game Pass and PS Plus is a bit of a scam, mostly because there’s no way to buy the games separately. It’s high on my list of things I hope the company fixes with the Switch 2.
But the biggest troll from Nintendo was a separate announcement that Mother 3 will join Switch Online in Japan. The Game Boy Advance sequel to Earthbound never localized in the West, fans have been asking Nintendo for years to publish an official English version of the game. A fan-translated ROM has been in circulation since the late 2000s, but the game has never been playable on modern consoles. Depending on who you ask this is either a great or terrible sign for the prospect of an official localization ever happening.
”I for one see this as a good sign,” tweeted BoundaryBreak YouTuber Shesez “Fire Emblem 1 released on Japan's Switch Online and later we got a collectors edition with a fully translated FE1. Mother 3 is now in a position to do the same down the road.”
NintendoLife’s Zion Grassl is less optimistic tweeting, “It's official! MOTHER 3 is coming to the Nintendo Switch...but only through the Japanese GBA NSO app. Of course in turn, not in English I'm not sure what to say at this point, but I can't help but think this means a remake isn't in the works.”
Well that’s a little awkward
Xbox’s new multiplatform experiment begins. Microsoft announced Pentiment would be coming to PS5 as well, with Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush, and Sea of Thieves to follow. Sony celebrated the landmark moment with relative silence. There was a single tweet about Pentiment being available on PSN with a link to the store but not posts about the news over on the PlayStation Blog. Maybe there will be more attention closer to the other games’ arrival, but Sony seems to have little interest in promoting competitors’ games on its platform.
Elden Ring is still king
The biggest game of 2024 could end up being Elden Ring’s $40 expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree. Bandai Namco’s reveal of the new trailer and June 21 release date felt like the biggest gaming event of the year so far. FromSoftware’s hit 2022 open world action-RPG is a dense game with a very sophisticated story that takes dozens of hours to breakdown in its entirety. It’s enough to know that Shadow of the Erdtree will take place in a completely separate map called the Land of Shadow and will feature a new story, enemies, items, and spells. It almost sounds massive enough to just be its own standalone spin-off. The studio is calling Erdtree its biggest expansion ever.
Famed FromSoftware director Hidetaka Miyazaki sat down with IGN to dish on Erdtree and future projects. Will there be a poison swamp? You bet your masochistic ass there will be. Will there be an Elden Ring 2? There are no current plans but never say never. Is Bloodborne ever coming back? Miyazaki had an answer for Eurogamer that I’m sure will only torture fans more:
"Put simply, it makes me very happy to see it's a title with a lot of specific memories, both for me and the staff who worked on it," he said. "And when we see those passionate voices in the community, of course it makes us feel thrilled, it makes us feel very fortunate to have that and to have those memories."
Patch Notes
Spider-Man 2 long-awaited version 1.002 adds a new game plus with a higher difficulty as well as additional unlockables including Ultimate Levels, Golden Gadget styles, and new suits. Still no chapter select or night and day control yet.
The Division 2’s latest title update tweaks a bunch of stuff. One of the bigger fixes addresses a bug where players’ Exotic gear would get deleted if they reconfigured it while their inventory was full. Ubisoft is still working out the details on how to compensate players for the lost loot.
Sea of Thieves’ whopping 10.49 GB update 2.10.1 has a bunch of fixes but some players report new issues and worse performance on PC. The good news is that Ashen Athena Voyages have been buffed and are now actually worth it.
Baldur’s Gate 3 patch number 6 gives all characters unique kissing animations that are randomized from goofy to intense for each intimate encounter. On a more practical note, players can now swap out characters in their party by talking to them rather than having to dismiss whoever they want to leave behind first.
No Man’s Sky’s Omega Update overhauls expeditions, adds new on-planet missions, a new pirate dreadnought players can control, and myriad other improvements like “a large number” of new biscuit-based cooking recipes. Alien lifeforms will also now offer missions with “objectives specific to the alien’s personality” like “collect 170 copper.”
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth review round-up:
The review embargo for Rebirth is up and it’s currently the second-highest rated Final Fantasy game on Metacritic (behind Final Fantasy IX). The sequel to 2020’s Remake sounds both better and worse. Some critics have praised the open world chores as delightfully inspired while others have pilloried it as boring filler. The characters, combat, and nostalgic story beats—the real reason players will be showing up—all seem to be living up to the hype. New mini-games and mechanics appear to be a particular highlight. Cloud, Tifa, Barrett, Aerith and the gang now all have social links you can level up by, among other things, coordinating their swim suits. I’m not even joking:
Yussef Cole, The New York Times: “I feel implicated, as a player, participating in Rebirth’s fun-filled approach. It seems to recognize a certain truth: Much like in our own lives, there are far too many competing activities to focus on the end goal, no matter how important it may be.”
Todd Harper, Polygon: “Rebirth’s most enjoyable and powerful moments come from nostalgic emotions and cinematic style, not from clambering up a radio tower to tick another box on a checklist. A game that has more of the former and less of the latter feels like it would stick the landing the remake series has been trying for.”
Claire Jackson, Kotaku: “The world around me is a wellspring of life. Yet it’s haunted by a creeping shadow of harm. I see it in the people whose towns I visit, their lives marred by a history of a violence. I see it in the mindless, wandering robed remnants of a grotesque military campaign to scientifically produce a perfect soldier. This is a world of beauty and loss. And I fear it’s in its last days.”
Tamoor Hussain, GameSpot: “It's a superbly designed gameplay experience that instills a sense of freedom while also making exploration rewarding in a meaningful way. Refined gameplay that makes character synergy a focal point breathes new life into the slick and satisfying combat, and all the while it reinforces the underlying themes of the story. As a game that has the unenviable task of living up to one of the strongest legacies in the medium, it is a worthy second chapter.”
Michael Higham, IGN: “Even with the baffling delivery of its conclusion, some of the new scenes surrounding that finale do offer sobering messages about grief, letting go, and the acceptance of life's inevitable end – and sometimes that also means finding something worth fighting for. These quiet moments encourage a different kind of reflection that the original wasn't able to touch on. How we make sense of our lives and our place in a world full of tragedy is a complicated and messy endeavor that seems full of contradictions, and Rebirth makes that fittingly clear.”
Lewis Gordon, Vulture: “On the contrary, this world continues to be filled with wonder; its people carry on telling stories; they carry on playing games. So back to those children, entertaining themselves in the polluted scrub, transformed into frogs, making the best out of an undoubtedly shitty situation. That’s the essence of Rebirth, a game about getting by in hard times. In spite of its obvious absurdity, it is almost overwhelmingly relatable.”