Breaking: Phil Harrison resigns from Sony Computer Entertainment

ATARI? I thought they are no longer making games, and next to bankruptcy ?

wow that caught me completely off guard. he did seem kind of raw at GDC though but everything he said was true. he was one of the more respectable guys at Sony. i mean didnt Kaz Hirai alraedy get demoted once cause he handle it? now your going to give him a doulbe work load? i mean good luck to Phil at Atari (who is overhauling their front offices apparently) but i dont like the look of this at all. there is certainly evil afoot.

yea i thought the same but they have been stockpiling new executives lately. i know they already got somebody from EA. never say die i guess.

there goes the best speaker for Sony. we'll miss ya.

Why are we surprised he is OUT just after having said Japanese Sony execs weren't keen on 'social' gaming?! Sony's arrogance and reluctance to change is the main cause of their troubles; had they not considered Eye Toy & co as gimmicks & let Nintendo steal their thunder, Sony would be far better off now & Harrison was the only big nob in the company to think so. I'm really enjoying Sony's ongoing crash and burn, bound to continue without Harrison.

As for Blu-Ray: quite easy to win studios over when you're giving them 150m a pop; now Sony has to earn that money back somehow! Good luck!

Why did he resign? Can somebody tell me, I can be bothered to read an article.

Didn't he already announce he was resigning a few months ago to work at a beer company or something?

...or who am I thinking of?

LMAO!

The guy is a douche...he deserves nothing but contempt.

I called this move the other day when he made his comments.

I think the bigger issue here is that they feel Kaz Harai can just be put into any position/situation and work out fine. Phil was the only one at Sony I really admired and it's a shame that the one guy that seemed to think outside of the Japanese and old-business-dude box was him. Now he's gone, and instead of getting a replacement smart-british-accent-guy-that-speaks-his-mind we're getting Harai.

Harai's a klutz. He barely knows what he's talking about half the time, he's horrible at spinning bad news into good, and he flip-flops constantly on things. :(

Thanks Phil, you and ME brought gaming away from the geeks and into the mainstream with the Playstation brand. I know that this has been in the works for a while now, and that you were looking for new chalenges and grew tired of some old school executives not realizing your vision of social gaming soon enough to derail the WiiCube.

Best of luck to you sir, you will be missed. I know that Kaz Hirai will Phil your spot with dignity and honor but I do not know if ANYONE other than myself has your VISION of how social gaming and gaming in general should be.

At least your tireless efforts with HOME will continue to show fruit for years to come, and Kaz know how important Home is hence his dicision to hold back the release of it and re-tool it to make it even better. That shows that you have correctly passed on your vision to him and that Sony is indeed in good hands as it continues on its path of World Domination for a 3rd generation, and NO the wii does not count since it is last gen tech. The wii is competing with the PS2 and so far it is getting its ass kicked by about 100mil. or so.

If there's one thing I'll always remember about Phil, it's how he couldn't stop talking about Motorstorm. Always pronouced it as "Mo-tah-stowum."

"Backwards compatibility, as you know from PlayStation One and PlayStation 2, is a core value of what we believe we should offer. And access to the library of content people have created, bought for themselves, and accumulated over the years is necessary to create a format. PlayStation is a format meaning that it transcends many devices -- PSOne, PS2, and now PS3."

http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=55108

While I own an 360, I have nothing but mad respect for this man.

Sony is losing an important person and all the best of luck for Phil.

"Taking his place will be SCEI president and group CEO Kazuo Hirai, who will assume Harrison's duties on top of his own."

OMG YES, PLEASE GIVE HIM MORE TO DO?

So Kaz Harai's going to be doing all the talking for Sony now? Well we know how well that worked out before.

Too bad for Phil, that movie had literally no chance of winning Best Picture. Great movie and all, but really.

I'm shocked. Seroiusly. Does this mean that the PS3 and PSP will get better...or does everything go downhill?

Well, I'm surprised.

This is a Japanese company, their strategy in general (Japanese companies) and in particular (Sony in the past) is to window seat people that can't toe the line, not to fire them.

Normally he would have been "promoted" into some job where he had no responsibilities and then he would have quietly retired some months later.

I think this is less a push and more a jump.

Oh well, good luck to him.

I hope he can save Atari..somewhat.

Nah Atari are toast, I have never bought an atari game. They suck more than a...they just suck.

Lanky baldy git / corporate ghoul resigns...Peter Moore?
Bye Phil. Ps3 has lost its Lex Luthor.