Herman Hulst only had a few moments in the spotlight before Sony decided the co-CEO opportunity wasn’t the right decision.
Perhaps we could see this coming with the absolutely despicable fiasco that followed the announcement with Concord. Or maybe we could see sales on Lego Horizon being nothing worth celebrating. Whatever it was, Sony hasn’t been trending in a good direction as of late and at the helm of some of those decisions has been a co-CEO team of Herman Hulst and Hideaki Nishino.
You could say some of the blame trends all the way back to Jim Ryan, and we would agree, but with him stepping down and two qualified people stepping up, we expected a little more. And perhaps having two people in charge isn’t the right decision, especially when ideas start colliding.
That may be what happened at SIE as Sony has announced Hideaki Nishino will now be the single CEO lead of PlayStation, while Hulst will be stepping down as CEO of business at PlayStation, in charge of first party titles, and will report directly to Nishino.
Back in 2024 when the two were announced as the replacement co-CEO’s, it was Nishino that was excited for new hardware advancements and new IPs under their belt. Hulst meanwhile was more aligned with reviving PlayStation classic’s, and breathing new life into dormant IP.
In the year since the two took over, PlayStation has gone in several new directions. They went from 12 live service games announced under Jim Ryan, to canceling a majority of them after the debacle that was Concord. Several newly acquired studios had their games canceled with this announcement too. They closed two studios, and cut a lot of employees. They did, however, start branching their IP beyond video games with two new TV Shows, and a couple movie announcements.
2024 could honestly be looked at as a total flop for PlayStation, and hopefully Nishino can take them into a more positive light from here.
This of course comes off the recent announcement that Ted Price is also leaving PlayStation Studios.