While Koguchi Kuroyuki was still trapped in the Sega MD sales, although the sales of dreambox2 remained unchanged as usual, while the sales of dreambox2 were still worrying like taking a train. In the waiting hall of the New Tokyo International Airport in Tokyo, Japan, a young man under 30 was quietly waiting for his flight.

The New Tokyo International Airport is the famous Tokyo Narita Airport in later generations. It was changed to Narita Airport in 2004 in order to distinguish it from Tokyo International Airport, which is Haneda Airport.

The young man is 29 years old this year. His previous position was the assistant of Shigeo Maruyama, the founder of Sony Music. Now his position has been changed to Scea, which is the head of the marketing department of Sony Computer Entertainment's US branch, and he is fully responsible for the sales of Sony's new console that will be released soon in North America.

His name is Hirai Kazuo, and he is now only one of thousands of ordinary Sony employees. If you have to say that he has something special, then he is the kind of person who has a very high reputation in the group and is highly valued by senior management, which means that he has a bright future.

You only need to know one or two of them from the moment he was appointed as a market at a young age and the pioneer of the largest market for Sony Computer Entertainment in the future.

Shigeo Maruyama was one of the 100 veterans who founded Sony with Sony's father Fukuda and Akio Morita. He had a very high status in the group. As his assistant before, Hirai Kazuo was naturally evident.

Moreover, Shigeo Maruyama is a very small number of comments that he is optimistic about Ken Kuroki's gaming consoles will become Sony's future pillar industry. In the process of establishing SCE, Ken Kuroki was not only strongly supported by Norio Oga, but also within the group, Shigeo Maruyama gave him the most support.

Due to physical reasons, the originally established Sony President Toshio Ozawa suffered a heart attack after being the president of Sony Computer Entertainment for half a month. He has been admitted to the hospital, so it is impossible for him to continue to hold the position of president. Ken Kutaraki originally thought he would be directly corrected.

However, Sony has always carried forward their tradition of distrust, and with Ken Kutaraki's previous rebelliousness, he did not succeed in taking over the position. Instead, Shigeo Maruyama took the initiative to take on this position when he was arguing. If it were someone else, Ken Kutaraki might be very dissatisfied, but he was not dissatisfied with the veteran who was no more status and prestige than Toshio Ozawa, and even more than that of the higher his position than that of Toshio Ozawa.

Moreover, I knew for a long time that when he received many people's exclusion, it was Maruyama Shigeo who protected him.

"Haikai!"

While Hirai Ichio was quietly sitting in his seat and thinking about things with his head down, a voice called his name came from a distance. Hirai Ichio turned his head and looked in the direction where the sound came, then immediately showed a look of surprise on his face, and quickly stood up and walked over.

"Senior long!"

Hirai Kazuo was very surprised. He was unexpectedly the actual person in charge of the entire Ps project, the second-ranked second in Sony Computer Entertainment after Maruyama Shigeo. It can also be said that he was his immediate boss, Ken Kutaraki would actually come to see him off in person.

Because the flight was approaching, the two of them did not talk too much about work. In fact, during the more than 20 minutes of the meeting, Ken Kutaraki, who has always been known for his seriousness, did not even take the initiative to mention anything about work, or even whenever Kazuo Hirai took the initiative to talk, he would wave his hand and signal not to talk about this issue first.

He even further expressed his apology and sent the other party to the United States at this time, but it was because the issue of the release of PS was imminent, and the sales channels and markets in North America were still a bit less satisfactory.

One of the reasons why I said this is that Kazuo Hirai just gave birth to a child not long ago, and he has not even been in his current position for a hundred days.

Another reason is that Sony has always had a tradition of independent branches and independent governance.

Sony is huge and powerful, but Sony's internal management has always been extremely chaotic. Although Sony has always adhered to the concept of freedom, innovation and pleasure of Ibuda and Akio Morita, the relationship between various companies within Sony is far less harmonious than this concept.

As we all know, Sony has a big family and its industries are scattered, but these companies are not all established and managed by Sony's company. They feel that most of the time they are the role of investors or controllers, and their management rights are mostly on joint ventures. This is why the important minister Shigeo Maruyama can almost regard Sony Music as his back garden.

When these companies are on track and on track, these branches can even further set up subsidiaries to operate independently. The emperor is far away, and Sony headquarters is almost out of reach for these companies that are almost in the form of "secretization". For their own interests, the competition level of each branch is no less than that of other non-Sony companies.

This is the thick department wall that Sony employees often talk about.

This situation is at least powerless to change so far, or in other words, it is unwilling to reform most of Sony's powers, because such reforms are like harming their own interests. This morbid and abnormal situation will not change until the behemoth of Sony is terminally ill and will completely disappear if it does not change.

That is the story of "A Sony" by a later leader of Sony.

Ken Kutaraki talked more about life problems, and Ikao Hirai smiled and answered one by one. His gentle personality and was not good at arguing with others. It was very different from Ken Kutaraki, but he admired Ken Kutaraki very much. When Ken Kutaraki was excluded and could only gain a foothold in the group under the protection of his boss Shigeo Maruyama, he was like this.

This time he was awarded such a crowd. Although he needed to leave his beloved wife and the newly born child for a long time, he still refused to hesitate. Even now, Hirai Kazuo can recall his first reaction when his boss Shigeo Maruyama asked him whether he wanted to go to the United States in the conference room.

It's ecstasy.

There was no other hesitation, worry, and I couldn't bear anything else, but I was just ecstatic. When I heard Senior Shigeo Maruyama ask himself in an inquiring tone, he went to North America to serve as the head of the marketing and sales department, I wanted to jump three feet high to vent my excitement at that time.

Then, of course, he agreed without hesitation.

Ken Kutaraki kept sending him to Kazuo Hirai on the plane. In fact, this was not the first time he came to see him off. When Yu Kato was appointed as the head of Sony Computer Entertainment in Europe, Ken Kutaraki also came to see him off in person, and it was in the cold wind in the middle of the night. At that time, Yu Kato, who was only a few years older than Kazuo Hirai, burst into tears.

There is a meaning of a scholar dying for his confidant.

Sony Computer Entertainment's appointment of Kazuo Hirai is very low-key. Like their previous appointment of Yu Kato, it has almost caused no news in the industry. Even when Sega appoints Kusuo Koguchi, it is worse than when he appointed Kusuo Koguchi before. At least Kusuo Koguchi's appointment has caused some quarrels in the industry.

The reason for the quarrel is whether a person who is only responsible for software development can do a good job in marketing.

Both sides argued and each other held a word. Although the initial strategy of Kusuoichi Koguchi greatly increased the sales volume of Sega MD, this strategy of price reduction sales was not recognized by those opponents, because such sales increase did not bring profits to Sega, and the profit was the most important.

However, those who support Kusuo Koguchi also believe that temporary interests are not important, what is important is market share. Now, no matter how many losses are, when there are enough machines, the game released can perfectly reverse these losses.

The supporters of these two factions are equally similar. Although it seems very reasonable to support Kusuo Koguchi, because Nintendo had failed before, many people still hold a cautious view of waiting and watching, at least they do not agree.

Sony, especially Sony Computer Entertainment, has also discussed this topic internally.

In general, there are people who support them and people who don’t. What’s different from the opposition dominated by Nintendo outside is that within Sony Computer Entertainment, he actually admires Kusuo Koguchi’s strategy.

Especially Ken Kutaraki, he even publicly said that Kutaraki's plan was very inspiring to him at internal meetings, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very much, and in this sentence, Kateraki used three times to express his importance to Kutaraki's sales strategy.

Ken Kutaraki also received support from Shigeo Maruyama.

At that time, Shigeo Maruyama had not yet replaced Toshio Ozawa as the president of Sony Computer Entertainment. Even so, Shigeo Maruyama still made public remarks in public as usual when Ken Kutaraki was excluded.

As Shigeo Maruyama, Hirai Ichio is of course no less.
Chapter completed!