Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai, who was the president of PlayStation from 2007 to 2012, apparently didn’t pay much attention to orders he received from Sony’s top brass.
Hirai recently revealed this in a conversation published in Japanese publication Nikkei XTrend, as translated by Game Observer. “When I was president of Sony Computer Entertainment handling the PlayStation home console business, whenever Howard [Stringer] and the other executives told me this or that, I went my own way, saying, ‘What the headquarters says is irrelevant. We are PlayStation,'” Hirai revealed, reportedly while laughing.
Hirai would later succeed Stringer in leading the entirety of Sony, though, which he recalled was a time of struggle for the company that necessitated a change in direction.
“The first things I focused on were: ‘getting people to know me’ and ‘getting them to move in the same direction,” Hirai revealed. “Without respect, no one is going to think, ‘Let’s work hard together!'”
Ironically, as Sony CEO, Hirai wanted to prevent the different divisions from doing what he used to do at PlayStation. The executive wanted everyone to work towards a unified goal, rather than each doing their own thing. He famously came up with the ‘kando’ slogan, based on the Japanese word that means being emotionally moved by something. It was a corporate strategy to encourage staff to create products and experiences that touch people’s feelings and not just function well.
Hirai’s tenure as PlayStation president saw him lead the gaming division during a key period in its history. He took over shortly after the launch of the PlayStation 3, the rocky launch of the PlayStation Vita, and the infamous PlayStation outage in 2011. Hirai stepped down as Sony CEO in 2018. He is also known for the much lampooned and memed PlayStation E3 2006 press conference.
