Sony’s longtime PlayStation hardware chief is retiring on October 1st. 60-year-old Masayasu Ito, who led the engineering for each the PS4 and PS5, is retiring, as reported by Bloomberg.

In accordance to Sony communications supervisor Cathy Liu, accountability for the PlayStation platform, which incorporates hardware engineering, safety, product technique, and design, amongst different issues, remains to be led by senior vice chairman Hideaki Nishino. Nishino was promoted to that function in March 2021, and reviews immediately to SIE president Jim Ryan. Present director Lin Tao is taking on Ito’s function as deputy president and consultant director of Sony’s Japan operation. Sony introduced the modifications in a temporary press launch as we speak.

Ito initially joined Sony in 1986 earlier than shifting to the corporate’s PlayStation division in 2008 to lead PlayStation hardware engineering. Ito oversaw the engineering for the PlayStation 4, a vastly profitable console that hit lifetime gross sales of 117.2 million as of March. The PS4 even reached a milestone of promoting extra video games than every other console in historical past final 12 months.

Ito was additionally chargeable for the creation of the PSVR headset, the PS4 Professional, and Sony’s newest PS5 console. Sony started work on the PS5 in 2015, and Ito and his crew spent 5 years designing and creating the console. Ito detailed the PS5 improvement course of forward of the console’s launch in 2020, revealing that Sony targeted on lowering noise ranges and enhancing cooling capability within the PS5, alongside favoring “a effectively thought out, fantastically designed structure” contained in the console.

Picture: Ifixit

Whereas the PS5 is the largest recreation console in fashionable historical past, Sony has been lowering its weight in latest revisions. Sony quietly launched a revised PS5 final month, lowering the burden by 13 % from the unique launch mannequin. The brand new PS5 mannequin comes simply as Sony hikes the worth for its PS5 consoles exterior the US. Sony is rising its PS5 costs within the UK, Europe, Japan, China, Australia, Mexico, and Canada. Costs are leaping by 10 % in Europe, 21 % in Japan, and by round 6 % within the UK as inflation charges impression Sony’s gaming enterprise.

Sony first launched its PS3 in 2006, adopted by the PS4 seven years later in 2013, and the PS5 seven years after the PS4 in 2020. Given it took Sony 5 years to plan and design the PS5, if the seven-year sample holds true for the next-gen PlayStation (2027?), Sony might be about to enter the early planning levels for a brand new PlayStation era with a brand new hardware chief on the helm.

Correction, September sixth, 12:39PM ET: An earlier model of this story stated Ito’s substitute Lin Tao can be in command of future PlayStation generations, Sony says that accountability is constant beneath senior vice chairman Hideaki Nishino. We remorse the error.