The head of Sony’s PlayStation division, Andrew House, has stepped down after six years at the helm.
House’s replacement as president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment is John Kodera, formerly the division’s deputy president, whose focus was cloud-based gaming and streaming digital media. House will hang around as chairman of the unit until the end of the year.
Kodera, like House, is a long-time Sony veteran, having joined the company’s portable audio division back in 1992. He became president of Sony’s “network services” online media and gaming division in 2013, where he was responsible for services such as the PlayStation Store and the PlayStation Now cloud gaming service, and for the company’s tie-up with music-streamer Spotify.
“With the significance of network services increasing across the entire Sony Group, I believe that John is ideally equipped to build on the foundations Andy has left in place, and drive Sony’s game and network services business to further growth and excitement going forward,” Sony Corporation chief Kazuo Hirai said in a statement.
House has been at Sony since 1990, working his way up from a corporate communications role to leadership of the PlayStation business in 2011.
He was responsible for the launch of the PlayStation 4, which has been a huge success—but which is also getting a little long-in-the-tooth—and also for the introduction of the PlayStation VR virtual-reality platform. A greater focus on digital media could provide stability as generations of physical gaming consoles come and go.
“PlayStation has been a huge part of my life for more than 20 years but with the business having achieved record-breaking success, now seemed to be the right time for me to pursue new challenges,” House said in the statement.