What kind of guy is Sony’s new CEO Kazuo Hirai, really? Four months since his appointment, Hirai sits down with Businessweek to talk about how things have been going, his plans to turn the company around, and the devices he uses in his own life, including a Sony flip phone.

On the company's troubled TV business, the CEO notes how dissolving its joint ventures with Samsung and Sharp gives Sony the freedom to shop around for the best prices on panels. He also mentions that the company is shifting a lot of its engineering resources to Malaysia as another way to cut costs, and touches on how the acquisition of Gaikai will "propel the movement of the video game business into the cloud space very quickly." But the key to Sony regaining its cachet in the marketplace, says Hirai, is creating products that move people emotionally.