Sony’s longtime PlayStation hardware chief will retire on October 1. Masayasu Ito, 60, who worked on PS4 and PS5 engineering, is retiring soon. According to reports Bloomberg.
Responsibility for the PlayStation platform, including hardware engineering, security, product strategy and design, remains under the leadership of senior vice president Hideaki Nishino, said Sony communications manager Cathy Liu.Nishino being promoted to that role March 2021, reporting directly to SIE President Jim Ryan. The current director Lin Tao succeeds Ito as the vice president and representative director of Sony’s Japan business.Sony announces changes short press release today.
Ito initially joined Sony in 1986 before moving to the company’s PlayStation division in 2008 to lead PlayStation hardware engineering. Ito oversaw the engineering of the PlayStation 4, a hugely successful console with lifetime sales of 117.2 million units as of March. PS4 even hit a milestone Sell more games than any other console in last year’s history.
Ito is also responsible for creating the PSVR headset, PS4 Pro and Sony’s latest PS5 console. Sony began developing the PS5 in 2015, and Ito and his team spent five years designing and developing the console.Ito Detailing the PS5 development process Ahead of the console’s launch in 2020, this shows Sony’s focus on reducing the PS5’s noise levels and improving cooling, while supporting “a well-thought-out, beautifully designed architecture” inside the console.
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While the PS5 is the largest console in modern history, Sony has been cutting weight with recent releases. Sony quietly unveiled a revamped PS5 last month that’s 13 percent lighter than the original model. The new PS5 models come at a time when Sony is raising the price of its PS5 console outside the US. Sony is raising its PS5 prices in the UK, Europe, Japan, China, Australia, Mexico and Canada. Prices rose 10 percent in Europe, 21 percent in Japan and about 6 percent in the U.K., as inflation hit Sony’s gaming business.
Sony first released the PS3 in 2006, the PS4 seven years later in 2013, and the PS5 seven years later in 2020. Considering it took Sony five years to plan and design the PS5, if the seven-year model holds true for the next PlayStation (2027?), Sony may be about to enter the early planning stages of a new PlayStation with a new hardware chief at the helm .
Correction, September 6 at 12:39pm ET: An earlier version of this story said that Ito’s successor, Lin Tao, would be in charge of future PlayStation generations, a responsibility Sony said continues under the leadership of senior vice president Hideaki Nishino. We regret this error.
