New Sony president and CEO, Kazuo Hirai, has walked into a tough job – and he knows it, admitting to the Wall Street Journal that the company could be in “some serious trouble”.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Hirai wasn’t shy to share his concerns over the challenges ahead, saying, “I thought turning around the PlayStation business was going to be the toughest challenge of my career, but I guess not. It’s one issue after another. I feel like ‘Holy s**t, now what?'”
Hirai hints at some big internal changes being required to ensure a future for the company, saying, “We really need to buckle down and be realistic,” he explained. “I don’t think everybody [working at the company] is on board, but I think people are coming around to the idea that if we don’t turn this around, we could be sitting in some serious trouble.”
It’s been an extremely rough couple of years for Sony, culminating in a Q3 decline in revenue, low stocks and increased losses year after year. In the midst of all this was a series of highly publicized, embarrassing breaches of security courtesy of hacker group Anonymous. Hirai was a key figure during the marketing of the original Playstation brand in the mid-90s, making him a valuable asset in turning around the franchise.
However, Hirai himself notes that great hardware alone isn’t going to cut it, saying, “We can’t just continue to be a great purveyor of hardware products, even though some people expect us to do that.”
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