The next Sony chief, Kazuo Hirai, has spoken out about his task of turning around the companies fortunes and the size of the challenge ahead of him.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal he said: "I thought turning around the PlayStation business was going to be the toughest challenge of my career, but I guess not. It's one issue after another. I feel like 'Holy sh*t, now what?'"
Hirai takes the reigns from current boss, Howard Stringer, in April, and he appreciates the complexities of the challenge ahead of him; "We can't just continue to be a great purveyor of hardware products, even though some people expect us to do that."
He then added: "We really need to buckle down and be realistic. I don't think everybody is on board, but I think people are coming around to the idea that if we don't turn this around, we could be sitting in some serious trouble."
In the past Sony has relied heavily on the sales of televisions to make their fortune, but their late embracement of LCD technology has left the company trailing in the wake of their rivals.
Hirai said that Sony would "build only what he could sell" and, looking ahead, sales targets have been slashed in half in that division. He also feared that, due to the independence given to different divisions within the company, Sony's product range was becoming disjointed. "We're going to tell you what you are going to make-not the other way around," he said. "This is a complete sea change."