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Former Atari/Sony exec joins venture firm targeting disruptive games

Phil Harrison, one of the fathers of the Sony PlayStation empire is helping found London Venture Partners, a new investment group with a mission to fund “disruptive” game development. He has joined the company as a general partner, reuniting with his former colleague, ex-Atari CEO David Gardner.

Together, the two will make up half of London Venture Partners’ founding members, with former EA vice president David Lau-Kee and investment banker Paul Heydon rounding out the team. Harrison was the former President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide, and one of the men responsible for building Sony’s juggernaut PlayStation brand before leaving in 2008. Later that year, he joined Atari as president under Gardner, the Atari CEO at the time. Both men left the company in 2009. See Industry Gamers for more.

Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.