Shawn Layden (born June 25, 1961) is an American businessman and was the Chairman of

SIE Worldwide Studios PlayStation Studios (formerly SCE Worldwide Studios and SIE Worldwide Studios) is a division of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) that oversees the video game development at the studios owned by SIE. The division was established as SCE Wor ...

. Previously, he served as the president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America (SIEA), executive vice president and COO of Sony Network Entertainment International (SNEI).

Career

Layden joined Sony's corporate communications department in 1987 in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

, Japan, and was the Communications Assistant for Sony co-founder

Akio Morita was a Japanese businessman and co-founder of Sony along with Masaru Ibuka. Early life Akio Morita was born in Nagoya. Morita's family was involved in sake, miso and soy sauce production in the village of Kosugaya (currently a part of Tokonam ...

for several years. Layden managed international software development at Sony Computer Entertainment's London Studio until 1999, when he became Vice President of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. After serving almost nine years he became President of Sony Computer Entertainment Japan in October 2007, a position which he held until March 2010. In 2010, he was one of the founding members of Sony Network Entertainment International, serving as its Executive Vice President and COO. In April 2014, Layden succeeded

Jack Tretton Jack Tretton is a member of the advisory boards for Genotaur, an artificial intelligence startup, and LifeApps Digital Media, a digital publisher of products and services focused on health, fitness, and sports topics. He is best known for being th ...

as President and CEO of SCEA after Tretton stepped down from the position the previous month following a mutual agreement between Tretton and SCEA not to renew Tretton's contract. Following his appointment as President, Layden participated in Sony's conferences at E3 from 2014 to 2018. In March 2018, Layden's role shifted to focus solely on Worldwide Studios, to "provide platform-defining content that helps drive the growth of SIE." Sony announced on September 30, 2019 that Layden was stepping down from CEO of SIE Worldwide Studios. Journalists at the time believed this may have been due to a result of an internal power struggle with SIE President Jim Ryan over the further restructuring and globalization of SIE, However, in September 2021, Layden stated he retired due to exhaustion, believing the launch of the PlayStation 5 was a "good time to put the pin in my legacy." Layden announced in September 2022 that he had joined

Tencent Games Tencent Games () is the video game publishing division of Tencent Interactive Entertainment, itself a division of Tencent Holdings. It has five internal studio groups, including TiMi Studio Group. Tencent Games was founded in 2003 to focus on on ...

as a strategic advisor.

Personal

Layden graduated from the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic university, Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend, Indiana, South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin fo ...

in 1983 with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in American Studies. He is proficient in the

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...

References

1961 births Living people Sony Interactive Entertainment people Sony people University of Notre Dame alumni American chief operating officers Video game businesspeople {{US-CEO-stub