The transition, which began with the appointment of Howard Stringer as CEO of Sony instead of Ken Kutaragi is now complete. Ken Kutaragi, the father of the PlayStation and current CEO of Sony’s games division is officially retiring from his executive position at Sony in June.
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.
It is important to remember, that while Kutaragi’s career at Sony is not ending on the highest of highs, he remains a visionary and trailblazer in the games industry, having fundamentally affected its shape and course. Rob Foley at GamesIndustry.biz has an excellent editorial detailing the ups and downs of Ken Kutaragi’s career at Sony - a definite must-read. His accomplishments at Sony should in no way be diminished:
“The 56-year-old Kutaragi built the PlayStation business from scratch. His story is chronicled in the book, “Revolutionaries at Sony.” He was brash, technically brilliant, aggressive and had a vision for digital entertainment. With the PlayStation launch, he correctly predicted that the CD as a replacement for ROM chip storage would dramatically lower the costs of doing business and allow for a huge variety of games on the PlayStation platform. That was key to beating Nintendo in that generation. With the PlayStation 2, he again made a gutsy move with the inclusion of DVD movie playback. And Sony ruled in terms of being on friendlier terms with game developers compared to Nintendo.” [Dean Takahashi, San Jose Mercury News]
His impact has been tremendous. He successfully created a games division at Sony by driving the development of the PlayStation. The success of the PlayStation eventually made the SCE (Sony Computer Entertainment) the most profitable division at Sony. He fundamentally and almost singlehandedly reinvented the business focus at Sony. It is difficult today to imagine Sony not involved in the video games business.
His success at taking a non-gaming company and becoming a market leader in the console business is sure to have played some part in Microsoft’s decision to make a similar attempt with their own console, the Xbox. Without Ken Kutaragi, the industry’s landscape would be quite different. There would be no PlayStation (and PlayStation 2 and 3), and possibly no Xbox (and Xbox 360).
Kutaragi’s legacy is the PlayStation brand. While the PS3 has been a disappointment so far, we should hold on judging its merits for a few years. Over time, the technological achievements of this console will become clear to everyone as developers become increasingly proficient at tapping the power of the PS3. This is when Kutaragi’s true genius will come to light. His accomplishments will impact our industry for years to come.
