Poorly.
Tretton was the best they had, Layden was horrendous and Ryan is just so far over his head in diluting the brand.
This might sound ridiculous, since the ps5 is the leader in the next-gen race. I own one, by the way, and PlayStation is my preferred console.
BUT, PlayStation should have been selling better this gen so the first two years are not really a good metric, as they came in with the most momentum. Starting with Layden and continuing with Ryan PS has lost all trust in the Japanese market, they have stopped making super diverse genres and games and narrowed into cinematic action games as a whole.
One of my biggest concerns is that Jim not only let Activision go FP to a rival (if you have ever been in the industry, you know that there is absolutely NO way Ryan didn’t know it was happening), but his acquisitions in response to Microsoft’s have been concerning and anti-climatic.
MS grabs both Bethesda and Activision/ Blizzard. PlayStation grabs… Bungie… to not even make exclusives? A mobile studio next?
Meanwhile I lost a lot of faith the last few years with their disrespectful non-commitment to Bluepoint, who deserves more than PS has given.
My absolutely BIGGEST beef is that he has allowed first party games go multi platform, which PlayStation being a VG only company makes ZERO sense. You need people to WANT to buy a PlayStation, and the way to do that is through primarily a strong exclusive library (see: Nintendo and PS of the past).
This isn’t even touching on that he has shown interest in creating services like gamepass rather than just going against it, and then dumb PR stunts like raising the price of the console in virtually all major markets. Forget the studios closed or the inability to acknowledge there is a fan base for games like Killzone, Crash, etc.
Very disappointed in what has occurred since Tretton stepped down, as a whole. Ryan is just another spoke in that wheel.
I still have love for PS, and again - still my preferred console. But to say I am not disappointed would be a lie. You have to be able to criticize things you like, or you end up blindly allowing them to become things you don’t.