Not that we’re counting, but you don’t often spot a bona fide Geordie as the CEO of a world-conquering tech company. As the president of Sony Interactive Entertainment and the man in charge of bringing the PlayStation 5 to life, Jim Ryan certainly fits this billing. Having grown up in Kenton, Newcastle, Ryan joined Sony in 1994, as the original PlayStation launched and the rest really is history.
Over the past seven years alone the PlayStation 4 has sold more than 110 million units worldwide to become the second bestselling console of all time. Its only remaining rival? The 155 million-selling PlayStation 2.
All of which is to say there’s quite a lot riding on the success of the PlayStation 5. So it’s just as well the console is off to a flyer of a start, at least more so than Steve Bruce and co’s latest Premier League campaign. As we said in our PS5 review, “This console is coming good straight off the bat,” and that sentiment is borne out by the fact it's been near-on impossible to get hold of one since pre-orders opened up a couple of months ago.
As of today, Sony’s next-gen machine is out in the wild with gamers across the UK and Europe, having been released across North America, Japan and a few more territories last week. So we leapt at the chance to chat with Ryan while he’s launching a console in the middle of a pandemic. “I certainly don't recommend it,” he said. From the five-to-seven year future of PlayStation 5, its “eye-catching” design and responding to the toxic backlash against The Last Of Us Part II, here’s the head of PlayStation on the lay of the gaming landscape. Lilting Toon accent not included.
Given the success of the PlayStation 4, Sony was always going to make a PlayStation 5. When did the new console begin to become a reality though?
Around about five years ago. These things are a long time in their gestation. The biggest thing is the chip technology and trying to find the right moment to lock that in. There’s always a tension between being able to catch the latest wave of chip technology and allowing yourself enough time to productise it, turn it into silicon and then a games console.
But it's not one of those things where there's one big meeting with 50 people in a boardroom. It’s more a series of endless iterative discussions, ‘Is this the time for the cloud or is this going to be a console?’
New consoles have historically been sold on the strength of their improved graphics, but the PlayStation 5 places a far greater emphasis on its SSD drive, Dual Sense controller and 3-D audio capabilities. Are we entering a different era of console design in that respect?
I do think that the sensory aspect of gaming is one that perhaps has been overlooked in the nuclear arms race of horsepower and I'm really heartened by the initial reaction from developers saying, “We can do big things with this.” Some of the things that we have in the Dual Sense were simply not possible when we built the Dual Shock at the start of the last decade.
So some of the ideas in the PS5 have been in the works for a long time?
One of the things with console generations is that over the course of the last ten years you get a chance to pick up new technologies as they come along. Your R&D people then flesh out ideas based on them and sort of stick them in a big sack, so when you get to the next generation you go into that sack, pull all that stuff out and put it to good use.
How does your role feed into the design of a console? How hands-on are you?
I will have an opinion on the commercial viability of certain ideas. When it comes to “What does the chip technology look like?” I will leave that to people who have a deeper knowledge about these things, such as Mark Cerny [lead system architect of the PS4 and PS5].
Does that mean you have to play bad cop?
Yes, it does, because technology people will say, “Here's a really cool chip that's gonna make a great gaming console.” And I might have to say, “Yeah, but that really great gaming console is going to sell for a$1,000. So sorry, we can't do that.”
The design of the PlayStation 5 is a real break from tradition…
[Laughs.]
I’m trying to put this delicately, but it doesn’t shrink into the room like past consoles. It’s meant to be looked at. Why lean into that aesthetic?
With something as bold and as radical as the PlayStation 5, we fully accept that there will be people whose palate doesn't doesn't quite run to it. Obviously we kind of monitor this stuff microscopically and the reaction to the design has been great. We just wanted to do something bold, a bit different and more future-facing than consoles have been in the past. I think the reaction vindicates our bold decision.
To go out on this kind of a limb is a sign of your design team’s confidence, isn’t it?
I think that's probably right. One of the challenges that I've been dealing with is trying to ensure that confidence doesn't spill over into complacency, particularly team members who joined us since the PS4 launch who have only known really good and successful and profitable times. I keep trying to say, “Hey! Hold on. It's not always like this and don't take it for granted.”
So it would be fair to characterise the design decisions as having been made from a position of confidence, but certainly not from one of complacency.
In a lot of ways Sony’s strategy for the PlayStation 5 feels like a bit of a redo of the PlayStation 4 era: there are going to be lots of great exclusive games, you've got a very capable console and you're going to charge players full whack for those games. Is that a fair assessment?
That’s certainly the strategy with which we launch when it comes to the games that we make ourselves from Worldwide Studios. I humbly submit that we've never been in better shape than we are now. The studios over the course of the PS4 generation have really come on. It's a real point of difference for us and we intend to continue to grow that capability.
We’ve invested a lot organically over the course of the PS4 generation, more than people realise. We've added Insomniac Games [Spider-Man Miles Morales’ developer] through acquisition. We're making great games now and we certainly plan to continue making great games.
The thing with those blockbuster games is that they need a box office release. They cost more than $100m dollars to make these days and in order to be able to do that and bring new IP to the market – which is a very risky thing and and we did four times in the PS4 generation – you've got to have a box office release.
One of the things I find really interesting about those big box office games is that a lot of them are crowd pleasers, such as Horizon Zero Dawn and Spider-Man. But you've also got titles such as Death Stranding and The Last Of Us: Part 2 that are more challenging and meant to provoke different emotions. Is that strategy of divergent experiences going to continue with the PlayStation 5?
Yeah. We have a management organisation that sits over the individual studios and one of the things that we look at a lot is the portfolio and we look at is the balance between new iterations of much-loved series such as God Of War or Uncharted and shaking things up with new IP such as Horizon Zero Dawn or Ghost Of Tsushima. We think about this very deeply and very carefully.
The initial PlayStation 5 reveal in June got delayed due to the Black Lives Matter protests. Once you ran the presentation, Sony’s first game to be revealed was Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the console’s big launch title starring a black superhero. Sony has been pretty good in terms of representation over the PS4 generation. Is that something that comes organically from the studios or is it advocated for from above?
It’s a little bit of both. We're working harder than we ever have to ensure that we have as diverse a working population as we possibly can and that we behave with the right respect towards each other. I think that's permeated down to the studios and is resulting in a greater number of female protagonists, as well as Miles Morales, but it's not management by diktat. With Miles... that’s probably been about three years in the making.
And with those challenging games such as The Last of Us: Part 2, where there's pushback from the more toxic corners of the internet, how do you deal with that kind of blowback as CEO? Do you talk to Neil Druckmann [Naughty Dog vice-president] or anything along those lines?
I met Neil last year and congratulated him on his art and his storytelling. Neil's a big boy, as am I, and I don't think either of us would allow ourselves to be unduly bothered by that stuff.
Neil knows he makes great art. He knows that he's successfully broached topics that have never been addressed in a mature manner in any video game ever before. I think that is an outstanding thing and I'm very proud that the PlayStation is the platform in which that happened. The rest of the toxicity you just take in your stride and just move on.
You’ve been with Sony since 1994 and in that time consoles have gone from being a nerdy corner of lad culture to something mainstream. When did you begin to realise PlayStation’s audience was broadening out in such a significant way?
Perhaps the greatest legacy of the first PlayStation was to turn gaming into something that was cool for people in their twenties to do by doing stuff like putting consoles in the “chill out room” at the Ministry Of Sound. As the generations have gone by and as people have stayed with us the demographic has kind of broadened organically, so you've got people who are now in their fifties, who were with us back in 1995, probably hanging out in that “chill room”.
A lot of men of a certain age remember that “chill room” quite fondly...
Yeah. Their life is a bit different now. A lot of them have kids and their kids are PlayStation gamers, so hopefully we’re still able to be relevant and bring them joy.
At the start of the last generation there was a lot of talk about how mobile apps were the future of gaming or virtual reality was the future of gaming. Now that kind of prognosticating has turned to subscription services and streaming. How do you see the landscape changing over the PS5’s lifespan?
It seems that I’ve spent most of my life at PlayStation listening to people tell me that this generation is going to be the last one because something else is going to make the console model redundant. I'm sure these people are really wise and really intelligent but to date they haven’t been correct.
Since we've got serious about talking to the world about PS5 it just makes me really positive about the future that awaits over the course of the next five, six, seven years and after that, who knows? I think the cloud will probably become more important over the course of the next few years, even though there are still business model and technology challenges. As that happens we're continuing our studies and our investment and looking at this very carefully.
Does that mean that services such as PlayStation Now are going to be more important in the next few years?
PlayStation Now and Plus are very important to us today. This year we're just trying to keep it focused on the PlayStation 5 and the games, but that doesn't mean we're thinking deeply about our services and figuring out some quite interesting stuff that’ll get its own moment in the limelight.
Is the PlayStation Plus Collection a one and done thing or should people expect that to be expanded upon as the PlayStation 5 continues its lifespan?
Well, we're going to wait and see how the world receives the Plus Collection. You know, which games are played how much they're played before we make any decisions about that. We think it's potentially going to be a great user acquisition tool. Arguably if you never had a PS4 and you choose to buy a PS5 you basically get a PS4, right?
I’m sure you don’t like to play favourites, but is there a title from the PS4 era that you’re most proud of?
Lately I find myself really thrilled with the way Ghost Of Tsushima has outperformed everybody's expectations. The team at Sucker Punch did Infamous: Second Son at the start of the generation and then they kind of did a little bit of internal R&D with this concept of a West Coast US studio making a game about medieval Japan.
We were a little bit sceptical about it when there were Japanese developers who've done that in the past, but they hung on in there and the game has catapulted them into the top tier of our world class studios. As a poster child for the organic growth in our studios over the course of this generation it’s probably the best example we have.
Which PlayStation 5 titles are you most looking forward to as a gamer?
Miles Morales, without question.
Is that something you’ll play with your family? How do you tend to play at the moment?
I only just got my PS5 at home. I’ve played the games quite a lot in the office, but it'll be a busy weekend.
You couldn’t pull any strings to get one earlier? I’m astounded.
You’ve got to set an example with these things.
Fair enough.
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