The recent major reshuffle of Sony’s executive has led to a lot of speculation amongst analysts. N’Gai Croal at Newsweek does an excellent job of breaking down all the rumors and predictions to give an insightful analysis of the move.
Most of the speculation focuses on Ken Kutaragi’s role in Sony. Mr. Kutaragi has gone from being Sony’s President and CEO to becoming Chairman and Group CEO. To some, the move represents a demotion, a possible consequence of the difficulties experienced in the lead-up to the launch of the PS3. Others claim that Kutaragi is actually being groomed to succeed Howard Stringer as the new head of Sony.
It is interesting however to note that several analysts believe Mr. Kutaragi will now be in charge of managing relationships with third-parties.
The irony here of course is that Ken Kutaragi is widely believed to be responsible for Sony losing exclusivity of two critically important Sony products: the Grand Theft Auto franchise and the upcoming AAA title Assassin’s Creed. The GTA series is one of the most successful franchises of the last generations selling tens of millions of units on the PS2. Assassin’s Creed is a visually stunning game which has captured the media’s attention and is poised to sell millions of copies. It is sure to become the first in a potentially highly lucrative series of games. The loss of exclusivity on both franchises is a severe blow to the future of the PS3.
Assuming the above allegations are true, putting Mr. Kutaragi in charge of the relationships with third-parties on the back of that enormous loss does not appear to be the smartest of moves. We’ll be watching further developments.
[…] Ever since the December demotion, which saw Kutaragi replaced as President of Sony by Kaz Hirai, the signs of his impeding ousting were quite clear. In Japan, this retirement is as close as one gets to a high level executive firing. It is clear that Kutaragi is being held responsible for the failure of the PlayStation 3 to come out as strongly out of the gate as many expected. This is not to say that the PS3 is itself a failure, but in the short term its sales have strongly underperformed. Many commentators attribute this primarily to the high cost associated with including a Blu-Ray drive. […]
Left by Inner Bits » Blog Archive » Ken Kutaragi “Retires” -- Changing the Games Industry, One Bit at a Time. on April 30th, 2007