Sony boss Jim Ryan insists that things are okay in-house, despite the gaming magnate undergoing a restructuring period that was always going to be the cause of controversy.
The company named a new head of Worldwide Studios this week, while several other changes are afoot. And, while the PlayStation brand has been split between three countries for most of its life (the US, Europe, and Japan), the tech giants have been moving towards global centralization over the last couple of years.
From the outside, it does seem unnecessary. Sure the old model's made things complicated at times, but Sony has seen no end of success under the three-pronged venture that ultimately led to the PS4 selling over 100 million units.
The model has clearly been working and it doesn't seem like any big changes are needed. However, Ryan claims that the moves are more about preparing for the PS5 than anything else.
"If we are to be successful, we really have to leverage the opportunities that globalisation brings," he told GamesIndustry.biz. "I am going to give you some examples. One is around the productisation of PlayStation 5, the definition of the feature set, of the development and the implementation of those features. That process, this time around, has been massively more streamlined compared to anything we've done in the past.
"The product planners are now having one conversation instead of three different regional conversations, where they needed to reconcile positions that were often conflicting or contradictory, with an endless process of iteration and consensus. That's not happening anymore. We have one conversation and we get on and do stuff.
"The second area is in our marketing. The first global campaign that we ran was around Spider-Man. It's a great game obviously, but it also ended up as PlayStation's bestselling first-party game. It was one global campaign conceived and executed in an outstanding manner, as opposed to three different regional campaigns that are often executed very well, but the same thing in essence done three times."
Of course, he makes a good point; centralization does have its perks. But the regional difference is one of the reasons PlayStation has been so unique and it did give them a special edge in locations where competitors hardly make a dent.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz