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Oct 30, 2017
2,206
I'm a little hesitant about him being in charge, but that's really because I know very little of him outside of his ignorant views that were plastered everywhere.

Does anyone know of the successes hes had within Sony?
 

IIFloodyII

Member
Oct 26, 2017
23,938
Doesn't really matter. New CEO will bring their own new stamp on things. This is how business works folks.

Let me make myself clear however, this does not mean it will be bad for Sony. In all likeliness it'll be good this is why he was given this role. There's no worries about a major shift in strategy at this point in time that will negatively impact PS5.
If you bothered to read the press release, you'd know he and the former CEO have simply flipped positions as Kodera would prefer to 100% focus on PSN. They likely share the same plan, hence the switch in the first place and why it's very unlikely he's going to start replacing people.
 

LiquidSolid

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,731
In case anyone has already done the research (OP doesn't mention) who will now head SIE Europe?
I don't think we know but my guess is no-one. SIE have been consolidating and moving away from the regional approach for a while and just last year got rid of the SIEA head position (with Shawn Layden moving over to head up WWS), making the CEO (then Kodera) directly in charge of both SIEA and SIEJA. Jim Ryan remained as SIEE head while being Deputy President of SIE, presumably because Europe's such an important region for Sony and Ryan's done a great job there, but now that he's CEO, it seems like the final piece of the puzzle will be in place and there'll be no more regional heads, everyone will report to Ryan.
 

SPRidley

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,229
Remember, he is one of the top people that has managed to pretty much make Playstation dominate in mainland Europe.

He sure has some knowledge.
Lots of ads on tv and lots of presence on football, thats the way to convince european markets like Spain, Italy, etc... hard push for stores to put upfront their products since the ps2 days. People here also like the heavy narrative sony games usually have and still think the way to go for playing their favourite sports games is a sony console (see point about sony pushing marketing of thir console on football events). Even with multiplatform games they will do ads pushing their version and making the other seem unexistant.

Xbox, their direct xompetition, is a zero entity since 360 and Nintendo sells well when they do right as they have a market that complements the one of sony audience, while tberes another portion that will only buy their products when they get incredibly huge (wii, ds and seems that switch is going that route).

Dont give him that much credit because it a lot of marketing money spend and knlwing where to do it and not rocket science.
 

Ænima

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,513
Portugal
Jim is with Playstation since the earlier days. Playstation is in good hands. He did a great job as cheif of the European division. Sony is the only console manufactor that releases most of his 1st party games dubbed for Portuguese from Portugal in my contry since the PS3 days. (original voices also included ) Even if Portugal is a small contry with only 10 million habitants, Portuguese language is the 6th most speaked language around the world.

Hope he keeps doing a great job now as the boss of the whole thing.
 
Oct 30, 2017
2,206
Oh, he only played a role in making PlayStation a dominating force in Europe. No big deal.

Lol, I hear that, but how? What's he done to do that? It's no indication of his plans for playstation. Kodera made sense given his work with the network and wanting to bring that to the forefront of playstation. It will be nice to get an idea of his overall longterm and short term views of where he wants to see playstation in the next few years.
 

Melchiah

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,190
Helsinki, Finland
Lots of ads on tv and lots of presence on football, thats the way to convince european markets like Spain, Italy, etc... hard push for stores to put upfront their products since the ps2 days. People here also like the heavy narrative sony games usually have and still think the way to go for playing their favourite sports games is a sony console (see point about sony pushing marketing of thir console on football events). Even with multiplatform games they will do ads pushing their version and making the other seem unexistant.

Xbox, their direct xompetition, is a zero entity since 360 and Nintendo sells well when they do right as they have a market that complements the one of sony audience, while tberes another portion that will only buy their products when they get incredibly huge (wii, ds and seems that switch is going that route).

Dont give him that much credit because it a lot of marketing money spend and knlwing where to do it and not rocket science.

Any company can do what Sony has done for the past 2½ decades in Europe, but for some reason the other two haven't done so.

Here's an informative article about the history of PlayStation, and the importance of localization, that was posted on the old forum, which points out it's just not about marketing.

https://www./threads/mcv-how-playstation-conquered-europe.1119730/
That sell-out was partly driven by the fact Sony decided to launch PlayStation in ten European countries – which was more than its rivals ever did. A move that Deering insisted upon.

"The Japanese arm of Sony were looking at Europe through the eyes of their mates at Sega and Nintendo, who said that if you get France, Germany and UK, you basically have Europe and Europe is roughly half the US," he says.

Before I joined PlayStation, I had 20 years experience in international markets. I knew that Europe had the same population as the US and the same ?per-capita income as the US.

I thought Nintendo and Sega were being lazy on producing translated versions. And they were dealing with distributors that were taking the mick with the video games industry. I remember saying to Ken Kutaragi [PlayStation CEO at the time] that Europe can have the same install base as the US. He laughed and said: In your dreams, go for it. And it did happen. We localised in multiple languages, we worked hard and made it happen.

Goodwin went out of his way to win over the indies. He treated them all like a multiple High Street chain. He took PlayStation on a regional tour to do product demonstrations, and even launched an intranet system where indies could plug in their data, and in return would receive point-of-sale materials – the sort of posters and standees usually reserved for the likes of Dixons.

"We were looking to engender hearts and minds, and we saw the indies as the biggest opinion formers in influencing the consumer," says Goodwin.

Those faithful decisions still continue to pay off for them.
 

ArmGunar

PlayStatistician
Member
Oct 30, 2017
6,527
please explain more (seriously)

Before being CEO of SIE, Kodera was SVP, Corporate Strategy at Sony Network Entertainment International (SNEI) and then, President of SNEI in 2013
Kodera is responsible of the expansion and the launch of several services like PS Store, PS Now, PS+, PS Vue/Music, etc...
 

IIFloodyII

Member
Oct 26, 2017
23,938
I think i understand why sony moved kodera to network after Google's conference.
They've pretty much said why (though he chose to step down), he's heading up PSN, PSNow and Sony's digital transformation strategy, which is of all their media, Sony probably cooking up something that combines all their services together.
 

Hugare

Banned
Aug 31, 2018
1,853
The guy who is one of the leading people making Playstation dominate in Europe is giving you Don Mattrick vibes? How?
I'm not doubting, I'm just curious: what did he do to make Playstation dominate in Europe?

Because from my understanding, it's not something that should be that hard, since PS4 is dominating everywhere across the globe
 

IIFloodyII

Member
Oct 26, 2017
23,938
I'm not doubting, I'm just curious: what did he do to make Playstation dominate in Europe?

Because from my understanding, it's not something that should be that hard, since PS4 is dominating everywhere across the globe
He's been there since pretty much the start of PlayStation. He was head of marketing too, so he probably did something in that time to earn that position.
 

Hugare

Banned
Aug 31, 2018
1,853
He's been there since pretty much the start of PlayStation. He was head of marketing too, so he probably did something in that time to earn that position.

Don't know, man.

Sometimes you're in a position where you can surf the success wave, finally leading you to a position where you can start making some serious mistakes

Since people are using Mattrick as an example for Microsoft's failure at this gen's beginning , take this:

"In the six years since Mattrick has overseen the division, the Xbox 360 installed base has grown from 10 million to more than 76 million worldwide, while the Xbox LIVE membership has increased from 6 million to over 48 million. "

Incredible Senior Vice President, right? And we all know how that turned out in the end

So I understand people being cautious
 

IIFloodyII

Member
Oct 26, 2017
23,938
Don't know, man.

Sometimes you're in a position where you can surf the success wave, finally leading you to a position where you can start making some serious mistakes

Since people are using Mattrick as an example for Microsoft's failure at this gen's beginning , take this:

"In the six years since Mattrick has overseen the division, the Xbox 360 installed base has grown from 10 million to more than 76 million worldwide, while the Xbox LIVE membership has increased from 6 million to over 48 million. "

Incredible Senior Vice President, right? And we all know how that turned out in the end

So I understand people being cautious
Despite what people want you to believe, the XB1 fuck up isn't all down to 1 person. That would have been through pretty much every high up at Xbox and some from MS before reveal. I also doubt Jim has managed to ride a wave of success for over 20 years, without contributing to it.
 

HStallion

Member
Oct 25, 2017
62,197
Don't know, man.

Sometimes you're in a position where you can surf the success wave, finally leading you to a position where you can start making some serious mistakes

Since people are using Mattrick as an example for Microsoft's failure at this gen's beginning , take this:

"In the six years since Mattrick has overseen the division, the Xbox 360 installed base has grown from 10 million to more than 76 million worldwide, while the Xbox LIVE membership has increased from 6 million to over 48 million. "

Incredible Senior Vice President, right? And we all know how that turned out in the end

So I understand people being cautious

The guy must be the greatest surfer to ever lived to have ridden a wave from nothing to something huge for 2 decades.
 

Hugare

Banned
Aug 31, 2018
1,853
The guy must be the greatest surfer to ever lived to have ridden a wave from nothing to something huge for 2 decades.

My point is that it's not like Europe was struggling to sell Playstations, ever since the beginning.

The performance in Europe followed the rest of the world sales.

Maybe I'm wrong of course, but if so, can someone please provide the numbers?