Masayasu Ito, Sony representative director and deputy president, who has served for the company since 1986, announced he will be resigning.
The longtime hardware chief is retiring on October 1st. Initially it was reported (via Bloomberg) that his reasoning behind retiring is because he is at that age.
However, it was later revealed that he is not actually leaving the company just yet, though his old position will be filled by Lin Tao as confirmed by Sony. Instead, Ito will have a mobility related assignment at Sony Group, where he also will be an executive adviser until March 2023.
Afterwards, it’s likely he will officially retire unless the man changes his mind or finds an opportunity he cannot deny. That said, his contributions for Sony cannot be understated.
After moving to the console division in 2000, Ito would eventually take the lead on engineering the PlayStation 4, its upgraded pro model, and the PlayStation 5. The former of which has now managed to sell over 100 million units, which doubled up on the competitor Xbox One. Meanwhile, the PS5 has struggled to maintain proper supply to be sold to gamers.
In a blog post on Sony’s website, Ito wrote about the struggles his team faced with supply shortages as a result of the pandemic. But he believes they persevered so that they “were able to achieve our goal of creating a product with a high degree of perfection and quality”.