What a week we’ve had! Eddie Murphy died but didn’t really, the Giants won the Super Bowl, and Kazuo Hirai was named as the new CEO of Sony corporation. Now this sort of thing normally wouldn’t interest me in the slightest. I’m sure a lot people would agree with me if I said that CEOs are just fat cats who shout their orders and take a healthy slice of a company pie. But when this fat cat is about to take control of Sony, I take notice. I take notice because I have invested large amounts of time and money in Sony. I also take notice because of what it might mean to the future of gaming.

The first PlayStation was released in 1994 after a failed joint venture between Sony and Nintendo. The little grey box enjoyed a fantastic reception and was the first game platform to sell 100 million units, with the production of PlayStation games only completely ceasing in 2006. Sony followed this up with the PlayStation 2 in 2000, which sold more than 150 million units, with game production continuing to this day. In 2005, the next generation of Sony’s console family was announced with the PlayStation 3 being released in 2006, with a worldwide sales figure of over 50 million units. So it may come as a shock to hear that Sony have just announced the net loss of £1.2 BILLION for its third quarter!

Is Hirai ready to drop the PlayStation brand?