Game Industry Executive Phil Harrison Joins Google
to California.— Phil Harrison (@MrPhilHarrison) January 22, 2018Harrison received [...]
Today on Twitter, former Xbox and PlayStation exec Phil Harrison announced his next career move, to Google Headquarters in California. The industry leader, who has been working for nearly two decades in the space, announced that he'd be joining the tech giant as Vice President and General Manager. But, given his career-long dedication to video games, it's likely that Harrison may also be heading something within the company that has to do with gaming.
Excited to be able to share that today I've started a new role as Vice President and GM of Google - and relocating (back) to California.
— Phil Harrison (@MrPhilHarrison) January 22, 2018
Harrison received congratulations from a few other big names, including After Earth scribe Gary Whitta (former EIC of PC gamer and co-developer of Rogue One) Xbox's Phil Spencer, and Major Nelson himself, Larry Hyrb.
Bloody hell, nice one fella!
— Gary Whitta (@garywhitta) January 22, 2018
Congratulations Phil!
— Larry Hryb🎮🎙📺 (@majornelson) January 22, 2018
Congrats on the new role.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) January 22, 2018
Harrison's career began some time before 1982, when he worked as a game and graphic designer. He moved on to his first game industry job at Mindscape Interactive in 1989, and joined Sony in 1992. Since then, he's been primarily in executive management roles throughout his career, spending 15 years with Sony before heading to Atari, and eventually, Microsoft.
Harrison has been effectively "off the market" since about 2015, so it'll be interesting to see exactly what this new position holds for the mogul, whose out-of-the-box thinking has gone both well and not-very-well for him in the past. Regardless, Harrison has served on several boards for innovative game brands, and produced incredible results. Google's dive into gaming has primarily been within the spaces of mobile and VR development, so it's going to be interesting to see what develops under Harrison, who has famously worked on the console market in the past, overseeing development on the various phases of early PlayStation technology as well as the Xbox market. Harrison didn't comment further on what could be expected.
No official release or statement has been made by Google as of yet. Stay tuned as this story develops.