Another person leaves Sony – this time the leader of Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Asia.

It looks like early October, the beginning of the second half of the fiscal year (which starts in April, not in January), seems to have made Sony shake its internal positions significantly. Yesterday, we already wrote about the departing of Shawn Layden, the chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios. We need to mention Takashi Mochizuki, who works at Wall Street Journal: „I have no idea why people keep saying Shawn Layden “retired,” citing SIE’s press release in Japanese. The word “tainin” doesn’t necessarily mean retirement. It’s just step-down, left position, or departed. So PlayStation US’ tweet about the announcement is most accurate. And it’s not just Sony that announcing bunch of personnel moves. Oct. 1 marks the start of 2nd fiscal half for most Japanese companies and I got many e-mails about personnel announcements from many companies I cover. Don’t read between the lines—nothing’s there,” Mochizuki wrote on Twitter. So we were correct yesterday, as we wrote that Layden, who doesn’t seem to be old enough for retirement yet, is departing, and not retiring altogether.

However, the president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Asia is indeed retiring! Sony announced that Atsushi Morita has retired from Sony due to age. Kazuhiko Takeda was named as a new corporate director. The Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Asia president list has disappeared from their page (they only name the president, vice-president, two part-time directors, and a chief financial officer now), so they probably haven’t decided about Morita’s successor.

So we wish the best for Atsushi Morita, and let’s hope that his successor will serve Sony just as well as he did, and this thought also applies to the currently unnamed successor of Shawn Layden as well. And, going by Mochizuki’s thought, we’re not going to read in between the lines of these moves.

Source: Gematsu