Sony isn't paying him to make the company lose money. People not buying wipeout isn't his fault.
Yeah, we haven't seen new IP from Sony in years and who in their right mind makes sequels to successful franchises?
As a finance guy, I understand business realities and of course we don't have the numbers but he did make some wrong decisions in my opinion.
It may not be his fault that people don't buy Wipeout, but he plans the lineup of games so he could have had them working on other things (like the rumored agent game, which funnily got cancelled just like the similar sounding Black Tusk stealth game).
Wipeout HD as a PSN only title was probably still Harrison's decision so it is not his fault and I don't think 2048 did so bad for a Vita launch title. Actually, Liverpool isn't the one where I would list his bad decisions.
Looking at other dead studios though, there are some things that could have been done differently.
BigBig released a very good portable Motorstorm and than has to work on a minigame collection just to be closed. Instead, we get a top down Motorstorm from Evolution.
The Vita's launch lineup of racing games only had Wipeout as a stellar title (releasing modnation without MP, smh) and even today the racing genre is underrepresented without a GT even announced.
Zipper did seem to have a pretty tight release schedule, pushing out games on a yearly basis. That as a result, they lacked the overall polish, shouldn't be surprising. Releasing something like Unit 13 without online competitive MP when the whole launch lineup is missing such a game wasn't smart. Also, even though the Socom brand was damaged, it certainly would have helped the sales more than the new Unit 13 name.
Yes, he isn't the bad guy but for me he isn't the ultimative executive like everyone makes him out to be because of his piblic appearance. Actually, I liked Phil Harrison's stuff more so far.