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Veteran industry analyst Michael Pachter believes Sony has “lost its way” due to executives who “don’t know what they’re doing”.
In a brutal video – where he mistakenly spoke about Haven Studios’ Fairgames, and has since clarified his comments – he went to town on the current PlayStation management team, implying that he doesn’t believe the company can ever get back on track without new blood in the boardroom.
He said:
“The biggest mistake they made lately was getting rid of Andy House and Shawn Layden. Andy was an oddball but a very competent leader, and Shawn Layden was great. They replaced Shawn with Hermen Hulst who was really good, but then got rid of Shuhei Yoshida. They put Jim Ryan in charge who was really bad. They’re not thinking the way the old Sony guys were thinking.”
Just to clarify Pachter’s comments here, our understanding is that Andy House stepped down in 2017 in order to “pursue new challenges” after 25 years with the company. There’s no indication he was ever pushed out.
However, Shawn Layden, who held a number of roles throughout the company, likely decided to leave after Jim Ryan got the CEO job in 2019.
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According to Pachter, this was the turning point for the company. “They started doing stupid sh*t when Jim took over,” he explained. “The stupid shit was, ‘Oh everyone makes money on live services, let’s do that.’”
The analyst believes one of PlayStation’s biggest mistakes was buying Bungie, instead of a publisher more familiar with live service games – specifically in the mobile space.
He continued:
“They paid $3.6 billion for Bungie, instead of a mobile publisher. They could have bought Scopely for $4.9 billion with $3 billion revenue, but instead Bungie has $300 million revenue. It’s dumb. They didn’t buy people who know how to make live service games. Then they turned all their developers into live service developers. They are bad managers, and they don’t know what they’re doing.”
Pachter added that Sony needed to buy “what they’re not good at”, and should have looked at the likes of King and Zynga instead of a studio that primarily makes console games, like Bungie.
To be fair to the analyst, while he’s not beating around the bush here, the Bungie acquisition does look like a bad one.
Following the recent delay of Marathon, Sony said that it’s looking for ways it can integrate the Destiny maker into its PS Studios umbrella, as its current autonomous management structure is not working out well at all.
This isn’t the first time Pachter’s spoken out about the Bungie acquisition, as he previously went on record saying Sony overpaid for the developer out of desperation.
Fortunately, Pachter presented a solution to PlayStation’s purported predicament:
“Sony has lost its way, they have no idea what they’re doing. The solution is to get rid of all the people in charge right now and bring back some of the old people or new ones. They pushed out all the smart people.”
While it’s hard to argue with some of Pachter’s comments – the company’s live service push clearly has been poorly executed, even if it’s not necessarily a bad idea – it’s difficult to agree with comments about the firm “not knowing what it’s doing” when it’s making record-breaking profits, like the $1 billion operating income in its most recent quarter.
For us, we’d like to see Sony start to get back on track by having a more open dialogue with its consumers – at least attempting to explain its aims and objectives.
But the current management seems utterly uninterested in engaging with fans, and it’s giving rise to all kinds of misplaced speculation about Sony’s current direction.
For us, a little more community outreach would be the best way for PlayStation to set the record straight, but it doesn’t look like its approach is going to change while it’s posting such absurd profits.
[source youtube.com]
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As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.