Sony Interactive Entertainment Announces New Leadership And Engineering Changes

Sony Interactive Entertainment has begun restructuring its management with several new key appointments. With SIE deputy president John Kodera taking on a new role focused on digital transformation within Sony, changes in the engineering leadership team have also been made.

Hideaki Nishino, who has been credited with several PS4 and PS5 innovations and has written the blog posts for Sony's upcoming PSVR 2 hardware, has been promoted to SVP of platform experience and will oversee network engineering and operations, research and development, design, data strategy, and operations as well as manage product and platform development. Nishino will be joined by the current VP of global third-party relations Michael Pattison, who will report to him as SVP of platform planning and management.

SIE deputy president and chief financial officer Kazuhiko Takeda will retire in June 2021 after nearly four decades of service at Sony, and Lin Tao, who currently works as senior general manager of the business development office, will become Sony's Tokyo-based SVP of finance, corporate development, and strategy in July, reporting directly to Sony CEO Jim Ryan.

On the board of directors of SIE Tokyo, Ryan will be joined by Masayasu Ito who has been appointed as representative director and deputy president. Lin Tao has been made director and deputy president, and SIE deputy president Takeshi Shibata will serve as board director.

Sony has seen a number of departures recently from Ape Escape, Knack, and Gravity Rush developer Japan Studio, as the company did not renew the contracts for a "vast majority" of its developers for the next financial year that begins on April 1. What's left of Japan Studio will be absorbed into Astro Bot developer Team ASOBI and will exist within Sony Japan as a standalone studio.