14 DAY TRIAL // Kaz Hirai, the leader of the division at Sony that is in charge of the PlayStation brand, has been promoted to executive deputy president of Sony in a company management reshuffle and sources say that he might be in line to become the overall boss of the Japanese giant soon.
Howard Stringer, who is now the chief executive officer and the chairman of Sony is widely expected to resign all his positions in 2013 and Hirai will probably be the man to take his place, leading all the operations of the company.
Hirai is now in charge of all consumer products and services at Sony, which analysts are saying account for about two thirds of all the operations conducted by the company.
He will take up his position starting on April 1.
His closest rival is led by Hiroshi Yoshioka and is in charge of design for electronics and manufacturing of products that go from semiconductors to batteries and also of supplying business partners.
The PlayStation brand is one of the most important that Sony owns and in the last few years the network products and services division has become more important inside the company, after a few tough years immediately after the launch of the PS3.
Hirai has seen the division finally turn profitable after the launch of the Slim version of the home console and the upswing in sales generated by the associated price cut.
At the moment the PlayStation 3 is behind the Xbox 360 in terms of sales in the United States market and analysts are saying that in February the Microsoft-made console will sell about 60,000 devices more than the PS3.
The company has big plans for 2011, pushing for a wider adoption of the PlayStation Move motion tracking system and also working with the Bravia brand to show off the possibilities linked to three-dimensional gaming.