D+ for me. I think he mostly coasted off the brilliance of the management from the PS4 era, which was a thing to behold. As far as I could tell, the Ryan era saw a total retreat from communication with fans on almost any level. It was a transition to a sort of "premium brand" type of posturing that feels too cool for E3 shows or casual interviews. A retreat from announcing roadmaps. Closing Japan Studio is literally unforgivable for me. Demoted Shuhei Yoshida.
Seems like they are focusing exclusively on only mainstream AAA blockbuster style games now with less portfolio diversity than I have been accustomed to, less risk, less creativity. Raised prices of games early. Raised price of PS+ extremely aggressively. Hard pivot to GAAS and remakes as far as I can tell for a large chunk of their efforts. PS+ saw improvement so he gets some credit there, but it doesn't really appeal to me much with a library mostly consisting of older games.
He seemed to lack vision and while dominating in sales mostly from PS4 goodwill, didn't seem to know where to take his company in the future. Didn't invest in BC or seem to understand the value of it. Didn't see a GAAS bubble while he put nearly every team on one business model. Didn't see the growing cost of development exploding even though Layden specifically warned about it. Seems his solution for all of that is to just raise prices on PS+ and PS games so consumers foot the bill entirely with no reforms. The head of development studios Connie Booth had to be fired under his watch, and multiple projects have been canceled. Multiple studios have been closed. I felt he was misleading regulators and practically lying during the Activision debacle.
I went from having no Xbox last gen and loving PS4 to feeling entirely alienated from the whole Sony brand by late 2021. It was a drastic shift. I think the whole culture of the PS fandom and the PS culture in general flowed partially from the top, and seemed to gravitate away from the PS3 and PS4 days that included some fun and casual elements. They could crack jokes like the used game sharing video. They had middle management people and indie teams that were public and spoke to fans and journalists. Now it is all silence and seriousness and you see that focus on only speaking about sales numbers and little else throughout the PS fandom, and it started with Ryan.