"What the headquarters says is irrelevant."

Kazuo "Kaz" Hirai, who was the president of PlayStation from 2007 to 2012, apparently didn't pay much attention to orders he received from Sony's top brass.

Hirai recently revealed this in a conversation published in Japanese publication Nikkei XTrend , as translated by Game Observer . "When I was president of Sony Computer Entertainment handling the PlayStation home console business, whenever Howard [Stringer] and the other executives told me this or that, I went my own way, saying, 'What the headquarters says is irrelevant. We are PlayStation,'" Hirai revealed, reportedly while laughing.

Hirai would later succeed Stringer in leading the entirety of Sony, though, which he recalled was a time of struggle for the company that necessitated a change in direction.

"The first things I focused on were: 'getting people to know me' and 'getting them to move in the same direction," Hirai revealed.…