Phil Harrison leaves Sony Comments by Tom Bramwell

I think he found out first hand that the number one rule in a Japanese company is to never insult or ridicule the Japanese branch. I guess he is lucky he didn't have to cut of his pinky ;)

I agree he was mr bullshit, he never answered any questions without that arrogant corporate propaganda, not a single out of the box moment in his entire staying at sony. Let's send the kid back to some sinking companies in need of a very well known noob.

That Jack Tretton guy is okay.
Let him have a go at it.

Jedi

I think the chicken and egg situation is easily answerable - in over 15 years he has never said a single derogatory remark against his pay master; the first time he does he leaves a week later.

We aren't talking about the Newcastle manager here so clearly there has been plans put in place and this was a considered decision, his remarks merely a little frustration + wine + cavalier "I'm leaving" attitude, finally allowing him to let of a little of his personal discontent.

That's what I was thinking, I doubt someone in his position could be let go of so easily for some passing comments, so I think you're right.

And let's put a straight man in charge this time, tired of english Gayishas....

And let's put a straight man in charge this time, tired of english Gayishas....

/presses homophobic-comment alarm button
/abandons ship

"And let's put a straight man in charge this time, tired of english Gayishas...."

Wear you out, do they?

Usual moron who can't take any joke and see discimination everywhere. Don't worry your politically correct free of homour society is what u deserve.

well, it looks like we have irony well covered, at least.

(edit: so tempted to ruin it all now with a "backward compatibility" gag).

pervertron, why is Sony Europe fucked? Do you even know what Harrison's job was?
Erm.. yes *cough* I used to wor.. *cough*.

Phil Harrison becoming head of the Sony Worldwide Studios was a good sign for Sony Europe - a way of readdressing the political balance between Sony Japan's "We'll do what the fuck we like - and you're gonna have to take it" and Sony Europe/USA. I wouldn't be suprised if part of his leaving was due to the lack of support from Sony Japan he was getting towards his vision of the PS3 (whatever that may be - good or bad) - especially after the comments he expressed at GDC.

I do hope this doesn't have a big knockon for all the guys/gals working on Home - they're a talented bunch that has been pushed around a lot. :)

Fucking great, now how about a price drop, rumble as standard and i'm sold!

pervertron: any thoughts on the timing of this? I would have thought he'd stick around to see Home launched and maybe LBP. He talked UGC a lot, that seemed to be a big thing of his.

monkie_king: any thoughts on the timing of this?
Hrm, I do wonder if Home is going to be delayed - but that's pure speculation. Time will tell.

As for Phil's pushing of UGC - I don't think he was doing that entirely because it was his idea, I think he pushed it as a way of defining PS3 as a different market entity from Wii and XBOX 360. It may well be that the bubble has burst on that front - especially seeing as Singstar PS3 hasn't been making any waves (or maybe I've missed them) with it's youtube approach.

"Sony Europe is fucked. Sorry guys!"

Nah, no worries. David Reeves is still in charge.

Wax, lol!

"Usual moron who can't take any joke and see discimination everywhere. Don't worry your politically correct free of homour society is what u deserve."

I put this into babelfish. Still no idea...

Seems like baaaad news for Sony to me. Wasn't it Phil Harrison who managed to turn around the disastrous pre and post launch publicity for PS3 with his keynote at last year's GDC (not to mention overseeing the marketing that helped console gaming become "cool" in Europe with the original Playstation and PS2)? As others have said, it was Phil Harrison who backed up European developers - the people who've come up with Home & LBP as opposed to the slew of shooters, racing games and sequels from America and Japan that have so dominated the XBox. If the way of the future is Kaz "Riiiiiiiidge Racer" Hirai then I think we're entitled to query the direction that PS3 is sailing off into.

French to English and then back again

"Weak usual which cannot take any joke and see the discimination everywhere. Do not worry your politically correct free of the company of homour is what U deserve"

Man I have too much time on my hands..............................

I especially enjoyed the Freudian slip:

"free of homour"

The guy needs a haircut.

"good, with that cockhead gone I can now buy a ps3"

Childish nonsense.

Soo is this one a sign that Sony are planning to exit the console biz in 2yrs time?

*buzzzz*

No, that's my dad on the intercom and he tells me you can only sucessfully make people beleive conspiracy theories when they concern MS, Sasquatch and UFO's

There was me hoping it worked both ways, dammit

I think that Harrison leaving sony is a bad thing. Imo, he is responsible for getting a lot of European devs onboard (giving sony a european face works wonders - see Peter Moore for that). I fear now that Europe will completely drop off the map again for the japanese.

"I don't want to get into a big hoo-ha about this, but shouldn't Harrison be judged on the work he did rather than the comments he made in public"

You mean the string of high-profile, multi-years-in-development expensive flops?

I would say 80-90% of people who bought a PS3 have never heard of Phil Harrison. Still sad to see him go. I kind of liked the days of Peter Moore and Phil Harrison. Mattrick and Kaz seem like grey moneymen and just don't have the same spark.

Oh and those saying Phil leaving is a reason to get a PS3, that is the lamest most transparent excuse to jump on a bandwagon I've seen.

I have nothing to say about my leaving Sony, yet I hope it does not delay Home.

"You mean the string of high-profile, multi-years-in-development expensive flops?"

What, like EyeToy and SingStar? Perhaps you mean The Getaway? Hmm, maybe God of War? Forumula 1, Wipeout, maybe? Buzz?

Nope, I'm stuck, you'll have to help me.

RIP Phil :-( Does anyone know if he had a wife and kids?

ea bought him out for $2billion

shares in phil harrison have just gone through the roof

coming soon: gta home! prostreet 2009...

Phil Harrison is good people and one of the best public speakers in the industry. He will be missed.

I remember when Peter Moore left at Microsoft, and the cry's went out then "The xbox is screwed" etc...

And everything carried on as normal (except nobody can ever remember the new guys name). Because Peter Moore did the groundwork and laid the foundations so the xbox could prosper,before he moved on.

The same can be said of Phil Harrison.

He did alot to promote gaming and the PS3, and without him i doubt the creativity of games like LBP would be coming through. But he's done his job well and laid the foundations properly. This along with the PS3 recent upturn in sales and popularity has helped to put them on the right course. If he wanted to step aside and let someone else take charge, now is the right time to do it, so his replacement is able to continue what he started and contribute as well.

"What, like EyeToy and SingStar? Perhaps you mean The Getaway? Hmm, maybe God of War? Forumula 1, Wipeout, maybe? Buzz?"

No, I'm thinking more games released withing the last three years, you know: Lair, Uncharted, R&C, HS, SingStar PS3, Folklore etc. etc. cratered out the box, the lot of them.

That Jack Tretton guy is okay.

That Jack Tretton guy is the one who started the KZ2 in-game bullshit. Not sure if that's such a good idea.

Harrison was the European guy for PS, he's the one who got the PSN started with the "quality over quantity" policy and stimulated companies like That Game Company to flourish. And this is without mentioning LBP. Can't really imagine Kaz wanting to invest in that concept.

Arrogant he might have been, but he actually was less corporate than most in Sony.

"he came across as slightly creepy (LOL) and I rarely believed anything he said anyway."

Too right, everything he has ever said was carefully cooked bullshit. I'll not miss him, one less smug propagandatard to pay attention to.

Phil was doing so little that Kaz can now do his own job, and Phil's, at the same time?

Not sure I have any feelings about it - for every comment that Phil made that seemed to come from the heart of a gamer, there was another formed by the corporate shill.

Good luck in his future endeavours, I say. Like Peter Moore, it is nice to at least *have* personalities, rather than whats-his-name.

Not sure I'd waste my millions on starting up a company, Phil, better to retire to the sunshine and get involved in posting on the EG forums. You know - answer your critics! Call people c****!

You know you want to.

Most of the games you mention are very well regarded by critics all round, and if sales are low in some cases its due to the lower installed base of PS3s than anything else.

You got any sales figures, with attach rates if possible. I'd be surprised if Uncharted and R&C sold poorly in relation to the number of PS3 owners out there.

As for SingStar PS3, that is simply the next gen extension of a franchise that has been the very essence of successful. If it hasn't sold well yet, its simply a matter of time.

I don't want to seem like I am holding a torch here, but (as usual) it grates when internet posters just spout "knowledge" from the hip when they have no real clue what they are on about. Phil Harrison would simply not have held the jobs he has held at Sony if he wasn't extremely good at what he does (same goes for most of the guys at his coporate level at Sony, Nintendo and MS).

There is something just slightly ridiculous about EG posters acting like they could do any of these high level jobs for even half a day, let alone do it actually better than the target of their critisisms.

Uhm what if EA buys pretty much everything they can possibly buy and makes the usual deals with sport federations and then MS buys EA, which means each console makes games only for its own customers, a possible only first party scenarios in some 5-10 years time??? This would explain all these merges, attempt of buying companies and moving execs.

Uhm what if EA buys pretty much everything they can possibly buy and makes the usual deals with sport federations and then MS buys EA

Two words: not good.

"You got any sales figures, with attach rates if possible. I'd be surprised if Uncharted and R&C sold poorly in relation to the number of PS3 owners out there. "

Well neither charted, which is bad. Compare and Contrast Gears, which did several million at the same point in it's parent console's lifecycle.

I missed out on Warhawk, which was especially bungled, to the point where GameStop in the US sent out enough to the stores to fill pre-orders then rang Sony to come over to the warehouse and cart the unsold copies away. Phil's "Electronic Distribution Initiative" has done nothing more than piss off retailers and allow the PS3 fanbois to fudge sales of games like Warhawk (going by retail it tankered horribly, but who can tell for sure?)

Then of course we can get to The Lies, most of which sprang forth from Harrison's slit-mouth: KillZone 2 at E3 2005 is running on PlayStation 3, Rumble is a last-gen feature, backwards compatibility is so important to Sony because Playstation is a format not a console etc. etc.

"There is something just slightly ridiculous about EG posters acting like they could do any of these high level jobs "

Ah, "better than you can do". I don't claim I could do a better job running a worldwide game studio, just that from the outside looking in Phil Harrison's job seemed to be burning millions on games that tanked and lying to the public.

"Well neither charted, which is bad"

Charted overall or charted in a PS3 sales chart? If they didn't chart compared to other PS3 games then fair enough, but without a context of sales compared to installed base you can't really judge the titles in isolation.

As for "The Lies".... don't get me started. I have always said that was just the madness of an army of grumpy internet posters. What you are describing is marketing spin, and it is the same for every other games company and every other industry that sells you stuff.

Your cat does not really prefer Kitty Kat, Nescafe will not enable you to shag your cute neighbours, a nice car will not make traffic disappear from the roads when you go out driving.

Sony are really no more guilty of marketing than anyone else, except that off the back of the PS2 they were the top dogs and so became the obvious target. I'm not saying marketing spin is great and we should all have two bowls of it for breakfast each day, I'm just saying that anyone with an iota of intelligence could always see the spin for what it was and make up their own minds.

To take your Killzone 2 example, nobody but nobody could actually BUY the game when that footage came out, so whilst I absolutely agree that suggesting it was real time was a bit cheeky and a mite foolish, seriously who gives a f*ck for more than about 20 seconds whether it was real or not. What does it matter? WHAT DOES IT MATTER?

I looked at that footage, thought to myself "no, you can tell by the way it moves that isn't in game" and then went and had a cup of coffee. Seemingly everyone else (although obviously it wasn't everyone else, whingers just shout louder) acted like their only water supply had been poisoned with mercury and cat shit.

I mean no one ever suggests they were fooled by the spin, they just whine about being confronted with it, like it makes any difference to them AT ALL. People continually act as if they HAVE to spend their money. I have no time for that sort of thing I'm afraid, its just the playground talk of a bunch of self created victims who should just get a pair and (in the words of Arnie) stop whining.

NO!

I don't mean you specifically Garulon btw :)

"To take your Killzone 2 example, nobody but nobody could actually BUY the game when that footage came out, so whilst I absolutely agree that suggesting it was real time was a bit cheeky and a mite foolish"

He wasn't suggesting it was real time, he came right out and said it. I read it in Edge and everything. Coffee came out of my nose.

"I mean no one ever suggests they were fooled by the spin, they just whine about being confronted with it, like it makes any difference to them AT ALL. "

So if someone lies and you don't believe them it's OK?

I guess it's OK if you run NeoGAF, something like 50% of the posts are based on things Phil said :)

"So if someone lies and you don't believe them it's OK?"

I never said it was ok. In fact I quote (myself)

"I'm not saying marketing spin is great and we should all have two bowls of it for breakfast each day, I'm just saying that anyone with an iota of intelligence could always see the spin for what it was and make up their own minds."

My point is that it doesn't really matter that much. We can anecdotally find specific incidents all day long, but my point is that all companies do that and its NOT a big deal. Seriously, it just isn't.

So some company fibs about the details of an advert, for a product that doesn't even exist yet. I'm NOT saying its ok, I'm really just saying I don't much care. Everyone gets so damn emotional about it all, and for what? Think of your blood pressure if nothing else :)

Garulon

We all know that in reality you're distraught.

"it's only a matter of time before Reggie Fils-Aime turns up dead"

Oh, please! PLEASE!

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
iiiiiiiidge Racerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!
!!!!!!

Rumours are he wont be the last to leave sony, all is not well in the worldwide studios, lots of dissatisfaction about everything still having to go through japan