Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. is a Japanese multinational video game company specializing
in a variety of areas in the video game industry, and is a wholly owned subsidiary and part
of the Consumer Products & Services Group of Sony.
The company was established on November 16, 1993 in Tokyo, Japan, prior to the launch
of the original PlayStation video game system.
Sony Computer Entertainment handles the research & development, production, and sales of both
hardware and software for the PlayStation line of handheld and home console video game
systems.
It is also a developer and publisher of video game titles and is composed of several subsidiaries
covering the company's biggest markets: North America, Europe and Asia.
SCE's largest workforce is in the United States and has 8000 employees in more than 50 countries.
The company has sold more than 400 million PlayStation consoles worldwide.
History The company's North American operations, Sony
Computer Entertainment of America, were originally established in May 1995 as a division of Sony
Electronic Publishing.
They were located in Foster City and headed by Steve Race.
In the months prior to the release of PlayStation in Western markets, the operations were restructured:
All videogame marketing from Sony Imagesoft was folded into SCEA in July 1995, with most
affected employees transferred from Santa Monica to Foster City.
On August 7, 1995, Steve Race unexpectedly resigned and was named CEO of Spectrum HoloByte
three days later.
He was replaced by Sony Electronics veteran Martin Homlish.
As part of a worldwide restructuring at the beginning of 1997, Sony Computer Entertainment
America Inc. was reestablished as a wholly owned subsidiary of SCEI.
On July 1, 2002 Chairman of SCE, Shigeo Maruyama, was replaced by Tamotsu Iba as Chairman.
Jack Tretton and Phil Harrison were also promoted to Senior Vice President of SCE.
On September 14, 2005, SCE formed Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, a single
internal entity overseeing all wholly owned development studios within SCE.
It is responsible for the creative and strategic direction of development and production of
all computer entertainment software by all SCE-owned studios, all of which is produced
exclusively for the PlayStation family of consoles.
Shuhei Yoshida was named as President of SCE WWS on May 16, 2008, replacing Kazuo Hirai,
who was serving interim after inaugural SCE WWS President Phil Harrison left the company
in early 2008.
On November 30, 2006 President of SCE Ken Kutaragi was appointed as Chairman of SCE
while Kazuo Hirai, President of SCEA was promoted to President of SCE.
On April 26, 2007 Ken Kutaragi resigned from his position as Chairman of SCE and Group
CEO, passing on his duties to President of SCE, Kazuo Hirai.
On April 15, 2009 David Reeves, President and CEO of SCE Europe, announced that he would
be resigning from his post.
He had joined the company in 1995 and was appointed as Chairman of SCEE in 2003 and
President in 2005.
His role of President and CEO of SCEE would be taken over by Andrew House who joined Sony
Corporation in 1990.
On December 8, 2005, video game developer Guerrilla Games, developers of the Killzone
series, was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment as part of its SCE WWS.
On January 24, 2006 video game developer Zipper Interactive, developers of the SOCOM series,
was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment as part of its SCE WWS.
On September 20, 2007 video game developers Evolution Studios and Bigbig Studios, developers
of the MotorStorm series, were acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment as part of its
SCE WWS.
On April 1, 2010 Sony Computer Entertainment was restructured to bring together Sony's
mobile electronics and personal computers divisions.
The main Japanese division of SCE was temporarily renamed to "SNE Platform Inc." on April 1,
2010 and split into two division focusing on different aspects namely "Sony Computer
Entertainment Inc." consisting of a 1,300 employees which focus on the console business,
and the network service business consisting of 60 to 70 employees.
The network service business of SCE was absorbed into Sony Corp's Network Products & Service
Group which has already been headed by Kazuo Hirai since April 2009.
The original Sony Computer Entertainment was then dissolved after the restructure.
The North American and European branches of Sony Computer Entertainment was affected by
the restructure and will remain as SCEA and SCEE.
Sony Computer Entertainment CEO and Sony Corporation EVP, Kazuo Hirai, is leading both departments.
On March 2, 2010 video game developer Media Molecule, developers of the PlayStation 3
game LittleBigPlanet, was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment as part of its SCE
WWS.
As of August 23, 2010, the headquarters of the company moved from Minami-Aoyama to the
Sony City in Kōnan, Minato, Tokyo.
On April 20, 2011, Sony Computer Entertainment was the victim of an attack on its PlayStation
Network system, which also affected its online division, Sony Online Entertainment.
On August 1, 2011, video game developer Sucker Punch Productions, developers of the Sly Cooper
series and Infamous series, was also acquired.
On June 25, 2012, Kazuo Hirai retired as chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment, however, he
remains on the board of directors.
On July 2, 2012, Sony Computer Entertainment acquired Gaikai, a cloud-based gaming service.
On January 10, 2013, Sony renamed SCE Cambridge Studio to Guerrilla Cambridge which will act
as a sister studio to Guerrilla Games.
On March 6, 2014, Sony Computer Entertainment of America President and CEO, Jack Tretton,
announced he was resigning from his position at the end of the month, citing a mutual agreement
between himself and SCEA not to renew his contract.
Tretton had worked at SCEA since 1995, and was a founding member of the company's executive
team.
He was involved in the launch of all PlayStation platforms in North America, including the
original PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PSP, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Network, PlayStation
Vita, and PlayStation 4.
Tretton was replaced by Shawn Layden, who was the vice-president and chief operating
officer of Sony Network Entertainment International, effective April 1, 2014.
Hardware
Sony Computer Entertainment produces the PlayStation family of video game hardware consisting of
consoles and handhelds.
Sony's first wide home console release, the PlayStation, was initially designed to be
a CD-ROM drive add-on for Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console,
in response to Sega's Mega-CD.
When the prospect of releasing the system as an add-on dissolved, Sony redesigned the
machine into a stand alone unit.
The PlayStation was released in Japan on December 3, 1994 and later in North America on September
9, 1995.
Currently the highest selling home console of all time, SCE's second home console, the
PlayStation 2 was released in Japan on March 4, 2000, and later in North America and Europe
in October and November 2000, respectively.
The PS2 is powered by a proprietary central processing unit, the Emotion Engine, and was
the first video game console to have DVD playback functionality included out of the box.
Initially, the system was criticized for its complex development environment, due mainly
to the proprietary hardware included.
However, despite these complaints, the PlayStation 2 received widespread support from third party
developers throughout its lifespan on the market.
Today it has sold up to 150 million units world wide.
The PlayStation Portable is SCE's first foray into the small handheld console market, which
was and to this date still is dominated by Nintendo.
Its development was first announced during SCE's E3 conference in 2003, and it was officially
unveiled during their E3 conference on May 11, 2004.
The system was released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005
and in Europe and Australia on September 1, 2005.
The console has since seen two major redesigns, with new features including a smaller size,
more internal memory, a better quality LCD screen and a lighter weight.
A new design, the PSP Go, was released on October 1, 2009 for North America and Europe
and on November 1, 2009 for Japan.
It has a 3.8" LCD which slides up to reveal the main controls.
The PSP Go is 45% lighter and 56% smaller than the original PSP and does not support
UMD.
The device does support Bluetooth and will be completely digital meaning all media must
be downloaded or transferred to the device which has 16 GB of internal flash memory.
The PlayStation 3 was launched in November 2006.
It utilizes a unique processing architecture, the Cell microprocessor, a proprietary technology
developed by Sony in conjunction with Toshiba and IBM.
The graphics processing unit, the RSX 'Reality Synthesizer', was co-developed by Nvidia and
Sony.
Several variations of the PS3 have been released, each with slight hardware and software differences,
each denoted by the varying size of the included hard disk drive.
The PlayStation Vita is the successor to the PlayStation Portable as part of the PlayStation
brand of gaming devices.
It was released in Japan and parts of Asia on December 17, 2011 and in Europe, Australia
and North America on February 22, 2012.
Internally, the Vita features a 4 core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor and a 4 core SGX543MP4+
graphics processing unit, as well as LiveArea software as its main user interface, which
succeeds the XrossMediaBar.
The PlayStation 4 was announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 and was launched in North
America on November 15, 2013.
Software development studios Owned franchises and properties
Corporate affairs
The President, and Group CEO of SCE is currently Andrew House, replacing Kaz Hirai, who himself
had replaced longtime CEO Ken Kutaragi, also known as "The Father of the PlayStation".
Kutaragi officially retired from his executive position at SCE on June 19, 2007, and now
holds the title of Honorary Chairman at the company.
Shawn Layden and Jim Ryan currently serve as President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment
America and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, respectively.
In June 2011, it was announced that Kaz Hirai was to become Chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment
and Andrew House to become President and Group CEO as of September 1, 2011.
Headquarters SCE currently has three main headquarters
around the world: Kōnan, Minato, Tokyo, Japan which control operations in Asia; San Mateo,
California, US which controls operations in North America; and London, United Kingdom
which controls operations in Europe and Oceania.
SCE also has smaller offices and distribution centers in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California,
US; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Melbourne, Australia; and Seocho-gu, Seoul, South Korea.
Game approval SCE evaluates and approves games for its consoles.
The process is more strict than for the Nintendo Seal of Quality, and developers submit game
concepts to Sony early in the design process.
Each SCE unit has its own evaluation process; SCEE, for example, approved Billy the Wizard
for its consumers but SCEA did not.
The company sometimes imposes additional restrictions, such as when it prohibited PlayStation 1 and
2 games from being ported to the PSP without 30% of content being new to the Sony console.
See also
List of video games published by Sony Computer Entertainment
SCE Worldwide Studios Microsoft Studios
Nintendo Worldwide Studios References
http:www.dualshockers.com07playstation-close-to-8000-employees-we-have-a-lot-of-fun-in-what-we-do-proud-of-cultural-diversity/ External links
Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Sony Computer Entertainment America Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
SCE Worldwide Studios Gaikai