Jim Ryan, who leads Sony’s PlayStation online game console enterprise, will retire subsequent 12 months, Sony mentioned on Wednesday.

Mr. Ryan joined Sony in 1994, and has held varied government positions on the firm. He turned the chief government of Sony Interactive Leisure, a subsidiary of Sony, in 2019.

“I’ve discovered it more and more tough to reconcile residing in Europe and dealing in North America,” Mr. Ryan, who’s British, wrote in a weblog submit saying his retirement.

Hiroki Totoki, one other prime government at Sony, will turn into the interim chief government of SIE after Mr. Ryan’s departure in March, the corporate mentioned. Bloomberg earlier reported his deliberate retirement.

Sony has lengthy been probably the most dominant firms within the profitable online game trade, publishing common franchises like Spider-Man and The Final of Us. In 2020, the corporate launched the PlayStation 5, its newest console, to crucial acclaim. Mr. Ryan wrote in a weblog submit in July that Sony had offered greater than 40 million PlayStation 5s.

Sony’s chief rivals are Nintendo, which makes the Change console, and Microsoft, which makes the Xbox. Sony has lengthy held an edge over Microsoft within the variety of hit video games it makes which can be unique to its system, driving players’ curiosity within the PlayStation.

To compete, Microsoft pioneered a brand new type of online game distribution: a Netflix-style subscription service during which players pay a month-to-month payment for a library of titles, fairly than shopping for particular person video games.

Microsoft has additionally been on a spending spree in hopes of catching as much as Sony, shopping for Bethesda Recreation Studios and a number of different studios in 2020 for $7.5 billion. Sony was a fierce objector to Microsoft’s different massive buy: a $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard that’s nonetheless below assessment by regulators.

Mr. Ryan testified in a recorded video deposition with the Federal Commerce Fee that he believed Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision’s library of video games would hurt PlayStation customers and restrict competitors.

He mentioned he believed Microsoft may withhold Name of Responsibility, Activision’s greatest sport, from PlayStation “to break us.” However a federal decide didn’t purchase his arguments, and the Activision deal may shut subsequent month after a British regulator’s assessment.

Sony has additionally made acquisitions. Final 12 months, it purchased the sport studio Bungie, which makes the Future franchise, for $3.6 billion.