Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) president, CEO and co-COO David Reeves has announced his retirement from the company. Sony Corp. CMO and group executive Andrew House takes his place this month.
Reeves, who is also deputy president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI), will leave Sony on April 30th. He joined the company in 1995, establishing and managing SCEE regional offices in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He returned to the UK in 1999 and was made president and COO of SCEE in 2003, and later CEO in 2005.
Sony Computer Entertainment president and group CEO Kazuo Hirai called Reeves' contributions to the PlayStation business "immeasurable."
“I would like to express my sincere gratitude to David for the many accomplishments he made to the PlayStation business and wish him the best luck in his future endeavors," Hirai said.
Exactly what those "future endeavors" will be is not clear at this point. A report citing anonymous sources on the games blog VG247 claims Reeves will take a senior role at Scottish studio Realtime Worlds, developers of the Xbox 360 game Crackdown and the upcoming MMO All Points Bulletin.
A woman who answered the phone at Realtime Worlds said she could not comment on the rumor at the moment, and a rep for SCEE said he has "no clue" what Reeves' plans are for the future.
House will take up all of Reeves’ previous roles, except for deputy president of SCEI. His new positions will see him become responsible for managing the PlayStation business across almost 100 countries in the European and PAL territories.
After joining Sony Corp. in 1990, House worked in corporate communications in Japan for five years. In 1995 he moved to the marketing and communications division of SCEI, where he worked on the original PlayStation. A year later he was promoted to VP of marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) and as of 2000 also lead the third party relations and developer support divisions. He was appointed CMO of Sony Corp. in 2005.
The heads continue rolling, apparently. And never forget: "We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even [if] it didn't have games" (http://gamespot.com/6151631)
