Life After Sony
Former SingStar and EyeToy boss Jamie MacDonald discusses leaving Sony and his new social gaming venture
Last year Jamie MacDonald became one of several big names to leave Sony, alongside Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison, SingStar producer and director Paulina Bozek and Sony Europe head David Reeves.
MacDonald had been at Sony for eight years, leaving the company as VP of Worldwide Studios and head of the company's London and Cambridge teams. During that time he brought huge franchises such as SingStar, The Getaway and EyeToy to market. Talking to GamesIndustry.biz, MacDonald explains what prompted his decision to leave the company, and talks about his new foray into online and casual gaming spaces.
It was just one of those times when you want to move on. I'd had a great eight years at Sony and I felt like I wanted a different kind of challenge really. Working in that corporate environment is great and I really enjoyed it. But it felt like it was a very exciting time in the industry and there were a few opportunities out there, so that's what I did really.
Yes, I think that hits the nail on the head really. I'd moved out of London and I felt like I had done everything I could do. And things had changed at Sony - Phil Harrison had moved on and global boss David Reeves left - so it just felt like the right time.
I was responsible for starting EyeToy, SingStar and PlayStation Home - they were all initiated by and brought to market by me. And I think they're doing great. I was really pleased to see SingStar: Take That and EyePet came out, which was something I'd been very closely involved in, and the digital comics on PSP. It's like anything, if you move from a football team, you always look for your old team first in the results and I'm really happy that they seem to be doing so well.
To be honest, I think Home is such a long term play... I mean I'm not party to any of the numbers, but from the public announcements I've seen it seems to be doing really well and I saw a quote from Peter Dille, the senior VP of marketing in the US who's very pleased with it and very positive. And I think it is a clear differentiator for Sony PlayStation. I'm not the person to speak to about Sony any more but, having said that, when I look back at the things which I was involved in they all seem to be doing very well, and I'm very pleased about that.
When I was at Sony I was very much focused on the challenges for the PlayStation business and growing that business, so leaving Sony has allowed me to go and look at the wider games development scene, beyond PlayStation and beyond the traditional console market, and engage with it from a platform agnostic point of view in a way that I couldn't really do, or just didn't have time to do when I was at Sony. I've now met and talked to an awful lot of people across a whole range of areas and it's quite clear that there's a very healthy independent development scene which exists in the UK in particular which is focused very much on digitally delivered content - be that Facebook games, or App Store games, or browser-based games - there's a lot of activity in that space both in the UK and in continental Europe. That's the thing that has really struck me most of all in the last few months, and indeed I'm involved with a couple of start-ups in the MMOG space in an advisory capacity which, after my corporate role at Sony, is great fun and really exciting to be involved in on that scale of endeavourer.
I can't unfortunately - it's still early days. But - hopefully - in the fullness of time they will be successful. But I can talk in more general terms on the challenges facing these types of start-ups in this space.