Sony Announces New Management, Kaz Hirai Replaced as SCEI CEO, is Now Chairman

For the past few months, Sony has been dealing with a little too much bad press: They remove the PlayStation 3’s ability to install a Linux operation system, a well-known hacker responds to the removal and Sony takes legal action drawing the ire of the homebrew crowd, then — as we’re all well aware at this point — Sony’s PlayStation Network got hacked, a load of sensitive user information was stolen, and Sony finally had to shut the service down entirely in order to rebuild it from the ground up to make it more secure. After all of this, current CEO of Sony Corporation Howard Stringer was asked to step down at Sony’s 94th annual shareholders meeting two days ago. Obviously, the company has been experiencing a bit of turmoil lately.

It seems the first corporate response to this turmoil is to shake things up a bit at Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., appointing Kaz Hirai as Chairman and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s Andrew House as President and Group CEO, filling Hirai’s former positions. The change is expected to take place starting September 1, 2011. Sony also announced the retirement of the current Chairman, Akira Sato, effective starting August 31, 2011, and Ken Kutaragi, known as “The Father of the PlayStation,” has retired as Honorary Chairman, effective two days ago. These are some big changes over at Sony, which happened to have fallen directly after the PlayStation Network mess has finally cleared up. One can only wonder how the company will fare going forward, or if the shareholders will get their wish and Howard Stringer will step down.

(via GamesRadar)

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James Plafke