Phil Harrison is a British video game and business leader. He was part of the original PlayStation team at Sony Computer Entertainment before and after the PlayStation's launch. He held positions in its European, American, and global departments until 2008. In 2012, he joined Microsoft and served as the European corporate vice president of Xbox until 2015. Harrison joined Google in 2018, leading its Stadia gaming division. He left the company after the service ended in 2023.

Background

Harrison showed interest in computers when he received a Commodore 64 computer as a gift. At the age of 14, he had his first computer-related job, where he did graphical work on a British computer named Oric-1.

Career

From 1989 to 1992, Harrison worked as head of development for Mindscape International. Before that, he worked as a game designer and graphic artist in the UK.

In 1992, Harrison joined Sony and held leadership roles in Europe and North America. From 1996 to 2000, he worked as vice president of 3rd Party Relations and Research and Development for Sony Computer Entertainment America. He was part of the teams that launched the first three PlayStation consoles and software, which helped grow the computer entertainment market worldwide. A 1995 article in Next Generation called Harrison "Sony Computer Entertainment's European PlayStation primary evangelist." At E3 in May 2005, he showed the first public real-time demonstrations of PlayStation 3 development hardware.

In September 2005, Sony Computer Entertainment created a global structure called Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios (SCE WWS) and named Harrison as its president. He worked with Sony's studios in Japan, Europe, and North America to set global product strategies and manage development operations for 13 studios in Japan, the UK (including Evolution Studios), the Netherlands (Guerrilla Games), and the USA.

On 25 February 2008, Sony announced Harrison's resignation, effective 29 February.

On 3 March 2008, Infogrames Entertainment SA announced Phil Harrison as their new president and Directeur Général Délégué. Later that year, he gave interviews in which he said single-player games would become less common as consumers preferred "network connectivity" and "community." On 29 May 2009, it was announced that Harrison became a non-executive director of Atari after Infogrames Entertainment SA was renamed Atari.

On 19 April 2010, Atari announced Phil Harrison had resigned from the company's Board of Directors.

On 17 May 2010, it was announced that Phil Harrison joined the advisory board at David Perry's cloud gaming service called Gaikai.

On 13 March 2012, it was announced that Phil Harrison joined the Interactive Entertainment Team at Microsoft. He led European operations for Xbox. On 17 April 2015, it was announced that Phil Harrison left Microsoft Game Studios.

On 22 January 2018, it was announced that Phil Harrison joined Google as a vice president and general manager of the unit that would develop the cloud gaming platform Google Stadia, introduced in 2019. On 2 February 2021, Phil Harrison announced that Google would shut down its internal game development studio. On 29 September 2022, Phil Harrison announced that Google would shut down Stadia entirely by 18 January 2023. Harrison left Google around the time of Stadia's shutdown in January 2023.