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Kutaragi Thumbs Nose At Other Consoles

Posted by Zonk on Fri Jun 10, 2005 03:30 AM
from the again dept.
PlayStation (Games)
Ken Kutaragi thinks very highly of the PS3. So much so, that he is once again badmouthing his competitors in the press. From the article: "This time, Microsoft has stated clearly that it is going after PlayStation. However, they're going not after the PlayStation 3, but the PlayStation 2. They were looking at 2, and that's why [Xbox 360] became like that". And by "that", he probably means crappy. I'm just guessing.
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[+] Sony's Ken Kutaragi To Step Down 81 comments
Joystiq reports that Chairman and group CEO for Sony Computer Entertainment Ken Kutaragi is retiring as of June 19th. The Sony reshuffling of executives late last year left Mr. Kutaragi out of the PS3 nitty-gritty, and one could imagine led to his decision to leave the organization. From SCEI's official statement: "[Mr. Kutaragi] stated that, in the six months since the appointment of Kazuo Hirai as President in December, the new generation of management, led by Mr. Hirai, has continued to develop. With the March introduction of PS3 in Europe completing the successful launch of PS3 worldwide, Mr. Kutaragi has identified SCE's Annual Shareholders' meeting in June as the ideal timing to pass on the torch to the new generation of management. Mr. Kutaragi will now apply his extensive technological knowledge and leadership skills to take on new challenges beyond the world of PlayStation."
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  • "sure ken, whatever"

    (preorders revolution)

  • News ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Luis Cypher (257898) on Friday June 10 2005, @03:47AM (#12778172)
    Summary : company slags rivals.

    The actual article is devoid of any real news.
    The article is flaimbait, ( it's written in that tone too) to stir up game console discussion before each is released.

    • "Luis Cypher"

      Hmm Weren't you in this one [imdb.com]?
    • Wanna Be Thug 1 - Yo G, you here 'bout Kutaragi? Man, he called those sucka's out and their system!
      Wanna Be Thug 2 - Nah, man. Nah.
      WBT1 - Yo homes, for real!
      WBT2 - Word?
      WBT1 - He call a sucka out like dat, his system gotta be for sheezy.
      WBT1 - True.


      Pigs! Pigs, I say, slopping at the trough that is pop culture! I will buy the system with the gaming soul. The other do can do whatever they please over there.
  • That guy goes on about how you can compare the PS3 to the XBOX 360 on specs, and how we should ahve seen the E3 presentation, but...didnt they had to do those with computer hardware cause the real hardware is still not finished?

    These people should really shut up and start badmouthing themselves once they actually have some real product to gloat about...
  • From the article: "We're not sure we completely understand what he's on about, in all honesty, but it's clear that the emphasis is on calculators." No?! Really, they use math in computer games?! WOW this must be the REAL thing! What a revolution this will be!

  • So Microsoft... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "However, they're going not after the PlayStation 3, but the PlayStation 2. They were looking at 2..."

    ...has invented the flux capacitor, which they will be installing on all Xbox 360 units? When you turn them on, they tear a hole in the space-time continuum, hurtling backwards in time to the year 2000 on the exact date and time you purchased a PS2. You immediately take back the PS2 because you now have the superior console. So, not only will Microsoft dominate the gaming market, they actually already di

  • sony console marketing strategy.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gl4ss (559668) on Friday June 10 2005, @04:21AM (#12778266) Homepage Journal
    ...just keep hyping yours and putting others down, that way you'll get press and people start believing you.

  • Remember: He only needs to delay your decision (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slot32 (815657) on Friday June 10 2005, @04:55AM (#12778336) Homepage
    All he's trying to do is delay your decision so insted of 'must have xbox in september' you say 'I'm going to wait for the PS3 to come out too, and then decide which one to get'.

    If he can do that, he's done his job...

    And by what I've been hearing people say, he's suceeded. If there is a shadow of doubt come xbox's launch in your mind, he's done what he needs to do.
    • I think he wants to dreamcast* the X360. Make everyone believe the PS3 can do much more and is just around the corner, no matter what it really can do or when it really launches. If nobody buys the X360 at first it might look like it crashed and publishers might decide there's no profit to be gotten there. When the publishers are scared away that means less game releases (look at the Gamecube or PSP) and without games there'll be less users and no reason for the publishers to come back.

      *= oops, eighth dead
      • Except Microsoft has (presumably) learned all their lessons from the original X-Box and from what I've seen they've managed to stable a large number of publishers for the 360, far more than they had last time. In fact they will most likely be neck-a-neck with Sony for this next round. Except by the time Sony launches, MS will probably be around to the next shopping season's worth of game titles, making Sony enter the market with possibly *fewer* titles than the 360.

        And I wouldn't imagine for a minute MS isn't going to be throwing a lot of weight at keeping those publishers in line - this battle is worth more to MS than the browser wars were!
            • No, the DS wasn't the one that was rushed. It was just easier to port PS2 code to the PSP. Hell, Sony didn't have hardware development kits to developers until September 2004.

              I'm willing to bet that all the PSP launch titles that were not ports of existing PS2 games were games that started development as PS2 games.

              On the other hand, the DS has a crazy new interface that does not lend itself to simple porting. At E3 2004, The DS was playable and the PSP wasn't. If either handheld were rushed, it was the PS
      • I think he wants to dreamcast* the X360. Make everyone believe the PS3 can do much more and is just around the corner, no matter what it really can do or when it really launches.

        That works. For a while, at least. It was Nintendo's strategy in every console since the NES, since Nintendo HATES developing new machines. The NES and Game Boy kind of spoiled them. It's surprisingly effective, but eventually it wears off.

  • This guy is just asking for it.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jarlsberg (643324) on Friday June 10 2005, @05:10AM (#12778378) Journal
    So in the interview, Kutaragi says:
    "Other companies may talk of game machines, but we've always referred to 'computer entertainment,' even in our press materials. It's entertainment and also a computer. That's what's important."
    Yes, because PS1 and PS2 are fabulous as computers.

    And this:

    "People probably won't be able to understand the difference between PS3 and Xbox 360 if the spec charts are just lined up," apparently.

    "However, at E3, a suitable number of people said that they were glad they came and saw rather than just looking at the specs. When the PS3 is actually released, this will spread and people will come to understand."

    But what did they get to see? I didn't go to E3, but from what I've read it seems Sony mostly showed pre-rendered footage.
      • Yeah, when all those celebrities were sitting down playing Perfect Dark, that was totally prerendered! Hell that Xbox that they were showing everyone was prerendered. They called ILM in to work some star wars magic and stick it in there.
        • Actually, while there were demo XBox models there, the games were actually playing on G5 units tucked under the kiosks. You can find pictures of them online in various places.

          Note, I'm not bashing Microsoft here - at least they were shoing realtime gameplay instead of prerendered stuff - but it was apparently running on tweaked G5 devkits, not final hardware.

  • Ken Kutaragi is a friggin' genius. I don't know if all his smack talk will have any positive effect on PS3 sales or negative effect on Xbox 360 sales, but he is just entertaining as hell. He's a lot more fun than J. Allard who too often seems intent on making the Xbox (and now the 360) look like it was designed for the entertainment of rock stars, actors and professional sports players. Allard bores me to tears.

    Ken comes off as a guy who cares about winning and is ready to say anything to help make that happen. What's not to like about that? Speaking for myself, an American, I think winning is more fun than just about anything not required for continuation of the human race.

    I'm an Xbox fan. I have all three consoles, but I feed more games to my Xbox than the other two consoles combined. I like the games that come out, I like the graphics and I like (love) the sounds (I bought my first DVD player way back when to get Dolby Digital; letterboxed movies were a secondary consideration). I went so far as to wait for its Xbox release before playing the latest GTA game - I've had to fight off some withdrawal-type symptoms, but I made it.

    All the above being true, I want to hear MORE Xbox 360 slams from Mr. Kutaragi. He makes me smile...and not in an ironic, "oh look at the silly monkey" way. No, he entertains me the same way one of the aforementioned Xbox-playing sports stars does when he goes crazy and guarantees a win or puts down an opposing team. It's just plain fun.

    Even his incoherent ramblings about the PS3 and Cell are a blast. I mean, come on: "However, if you look closely, the difference between things that are being calculated and things that are simply being changed and moved is clear." I, for one, will be less than a foot from my TV screen when I eventually hook up a PS3 just to see the amazing differences between motion capture and the magical Cell real-time calculations. I LOVE IT!

    Ken, you're out of your mind and I can't get enough. Go, man, go!

    PS- I get similar tingles when one of the Nintendo nuts goes on and on about their magical gameplay. You know, because giving Mario a water cannon revolutionized (apologies) gaming. :)

    • PS- I get similar tingles when one of the Nintendo nuts goes on and on about their magical gameplay. You know, because giving Mario a water cannon revolutionized (apologies) gaming. :)

      I can't wait to see what will happen to these kinds of posts in 30 years, when game console designers end up using every word in the English language, so everything becomes a pun.

      "I really liked (sorry) the Nintento XZ3000 and their ombudsman (not a plug for Microsoft) because (no pun intended) they tend (no, I don't work

  • So let me get this right (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cassidyc (167044) on Friday June 10 2005, @06:32AM (#12778578)
    His entire sales pitch is to show off pre-rendered movies, on the basis that the real game might look nothing like this but might feature this is a rendered cut scene. And slag off the opposition rather than extolling the (as yet non-existant) qualities of your own (as yet non-existant) hardware.

    Christ last time I heard that line of arguments was in a school playground (before they allowed guns :)

    J Allard (and Nintendos equiv) has been much more mature, raising the profile of thier own machines. Selling their machines, not slagging off competitors

    CJC
    • Yeah OK replying to my own post.

      But something else I feel is that the Console gamers have gotten a little smarter and are aware that Playstation isn`t all its cracked up to be, and will be prepared to see what it can really do before making a decision.

      Admittedly you'll still get the GTA and Gran Tourismo fanatics that would buy the PS3 if it had C64 level graphics/abilities ;)

      CJC
      • If you're talking about console gamers who are also online, yes - you're probably right.

        However, a huge number of people still trust print magazines and never really keep up with stuff like this - and GamePro has already put up articles calling the PS3 as the winner. It was a terrible article, but it is there, and I'm sure their print magazine will carry the same stuff.

  • Pretentious much? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mattgreen (701203) on Friday June 10 2005, @06:56AM (#12778647)
    The whole next-gen console war is so overblown. Every company takes themselves so seriously and resorts to insulting each other like a group of jealous seventh grade girls fighting over boy band members. Somehow, I get the feeling that these consoles are not going to revolutionize the living room and provide a fully synergistic entertainment experience like they all claim to be doing. I guess the console market has always been a bit juvenile (recall the Genesis' "blast processing" claims). I guess since I am much older now, I see these squabbles as mere publicity stunts.

  • Really trying hard to slam it... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thesandtiger (819476) on Friday June 10 2005, @08:07AM (#12778957)
    Which, I understand, is kind of their job. But why can't they praise themselves - and provide actual evidence to justify that praise - instead?

    What it comes off like is they're running scared. It feels like they've got nothing but pre-rendered stuff and a past track-record of overpromising and underdelivering and now they keep on just saying shit like "ours is sooooooo much better. Reeeeeeealllly better. Soooooooo. Muuuuuuuuch. Beeeeeeeeeter!" and waving their hands around nonsense numbers and specs.

    Personally, this amount of hot air and handwaving with *zero* real data to back it up at this point is making me think there are some real problems with the PS3 that they're hoping they can hype over.

    Of course, everyone's hyping their stuff - but, in the case of the original XBox, I really feel that they lived up to what they promised and delivered a damn fine system - so (ironic, isn't it?) I guess I trust them a little more than Sony who lied their asses off, didn't live up to what they promised, even if they did deliver a nice console.
    • I too love my Xbox. It was the last console I bought this generation, about a year and a bit after its launch (i bought both the PS2 and GameCube at launch). So far I've been playing the Xbox far more than any other console; in fact, I even let my friend borrow the PS2 since I ain't playing it much.

      As for the next generation consoles? I'm looking forward to getting the Xbox 360 at launch. MS hasn't overbullshitted their hype like Sony are doing, claiming that the Xbox 360 will be the end of everything (wh

  • I'd be curious to know how the xbox 360 could be aiming for the ps2 when the xbox was suprior in terms of performance and graphics (thats not a stab at sony. The xbox came out quite a lot later. It would be suprising if it wasn't)

    But of course remember, the playstation 3 will have REALISTIC EMOTIONS! using it's emotion engine and be able to RENDER TOY STORY IN REAL TIME! and be a SUPER COMPUTER!

    Wait.. that was the PS2 wasn't it?
    • Oh come one now...don't get all logical!

      I guess that Sony is the only one who doesn't realize that as far as technology is concerned, the first Xbox wiped the floor with the PS2.

      Yes, the Xbox 360 is going after the PS2- as far as sales numbers go. This whack job spouting Sony's poo has no interest in the actual reality as far as the technology is concerned...I'm sure he STILL thinks the PS2 is a great system.
    • I think the coolest thing Sony could do is to actually have Toy Story run in real time on a PS3... I thought for sure it would happen at E3. That would have been the single best E3 moment in history.

      Similarly, albeit a bit more devastating, they could have used a PS3 to guide a missile right into Iraq live on a huge screen.
  • It's nice to see a bit of progress in the geek community, a little bit of maturity.

    When the PS/2 came out, I tried to explain why the hype was incredibly overblown. I got the equivalent of "troll".

    If I tried now to explain why the hype for the PS/3 is overblown, now I'd get "Redundant".

    Nobody admitted it at the time. (Haven't seen many admit it now, either...) But I think a lot of people basically got burned. (The PS/2 is nice in a lot of ways. It also sucks ass in some completely inexcusable ways. It's
  • From TFA: "Other companies may talk of game machines, but we've always referred to 'computer entertainment,' even in our press materials. It's entertainment and also a computer. That's what's important."

    Hmmm... Computer Entertainmentspot, Computer Entertainmentspy, Computer Entertainmentpro... nope just doesn't work

  • Fanboy! (Score:3, Informative)

    by XXIstCenturyBoy (617054) on Friday June 10 2005, @10:00AM (#12779893)
    Ken Kutaragi is just a Sony fanboy and therefore must be ignored like any console specific fanboy on any internet forum.
  • People feign that they are fed up with the posing and back and forth banter of these companies but I for one welcome as much vitriol these companies can muster against each other. I hope they both remain very strong and we have a long term competitive relationship like we've seen with Intel/AMD and ATI/Nvidia.

    Here's one for you.

    http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2005/06/10/richard_hu ddy_ati/1.html [bit-tech.net]

    Interview with Richard Huddy of ATI. In a nutshell he basically says that CPU power of the PS3 will face a

  • Don't forget that Kusoragi was the shithead who said that the PS3 isn't a gaming device, and that the PSX and PS2 weren't gaming devices either.

    He's a moron. Just ignore him.

    • To be fair, I don't think any of the next gen consoles are going to use dedicated sound processors. Maybe the Revolution, but I'm pretty sure the 360 isn't.

        • actually it is, the whole design of the cell is so that a lot of the stuff seperate prossesors do is uneeded.
          • That's what the hype claims. Problem is, all of that means you need to get more data into and out off the CPU, and that means less bandwidth for other stuff.

            And I have yet to see a CPU that can handle sound processing better than a DSP. That's what they are for.
            • I dont think you actually understand how the Cell works. The cell isnt one prossesor, its 5. And they all pick up the slack if one isnt handling it, so you can have 2 running the data, 2 running the graphics and 1 running the sound, or a infinate combination of those 5.
              • No, you don't understand how the cell works.

                Not all of its cores are full blown processors - many are just glorified vector units. That doesn't mean it'll perform poorly, but you should not expect the performance multiple you would from, say, a 5-cored Athlon 64 - and there's still a finite limit on its resources.

                The simple fact of the matter is that a good DSP handles sound very well, and wouldn't add much to the cost. They're certainly not the only way to go, but just because a system uses a cell pro

              • Re:No Sound/All Cell (Score:5, Informative)

                by Hast (24833) <marcushast@gmail.com> on Friday June 10 2005, @11:01AM (#12780500)
                There has already been comments on Cell-Core vs Cell-SPE so I'll be brief.

                The problem (and this is a very real problem for all processors, not just Cell or consoles) is getting data into and out of the processor in a timely fasion. If a processor (core/SPE/whatever) doesn't have input data or if it's unable to send data out of the chip then it stalls. If it stalls then that processor part can't get any work done until this block is resolved. This is why it's important to manage input and output of the CPU in order to keep the processor working as much as possible.

                Besides this little misunderstanding you can't have "2 running the data", a processor (of any kind) doesn't work that way. The processor itself loads data from memory as part of the operations it executes. So each of them "runs their data" on their own just fine.

                And the Cell doesn't have 5 of anything, it has one core and 8 SPE (vector units). Finally if you have 3 actions (data, sound, graphics) and 5 cores to execute them on that gives you 243 different combinations. (And this is counting many duplicates as sound-sound-gfx is calculated separately from sound-gfx-sound.) In any case it's pretty far from an infinate amount of combinations.

                "Hannibal" over at ArsTechnica has some great no-nonsense articles (1 [arstechnica.com] and 2 [arstechnica.com]) on both the Cell and the X360. I recommend that you read them as he tends to dispell the hype and misunderstandings quite well.
    • MS or Nintendo didn't have actual hardware at their demos, so surely the comment applies to all 3?
        • I'm not sure I'd say MS was the most honest. They weren't bad at all but Nintendo didn't lie about a thing - they just basically said "wait". I don't see how either is really more honest than the other.

          Forthcoming, I'll give you - Nintendo doesn't seem ready to share much just yet.

          As far as the PS3 goes - well, I wouldn't make a judgement until I can actually look at the hardware. Until we've seen what the CPU and video hardware can do for real, it's all just guesswork (if intelligent guesswork) to a

          • They may feel dumb, but they'll never admit it. The fanboys are already too emotionally invested, the battlelines have already been drawn, even before E3 for a lot of people. It's weird.

            I've never had much love for sony, so when I saw how crappy the PS2 looked compared to what Sony was shoveling with their hype machine, I decided I wasn't interested. Fortunately for them, a while later GTA showed up, and I changed my mind.

            I am, however, a Nintendo fanboy, and will likely be buying a revolution as my first

    • The Saturn did horribly in the US.
      The Xbox did horribly in Japan.
      The Saturn caused Sega to lose a lot of money.
      The Xbox caused Microsoft to lose a lot of money.
      Sega releases their nextgen console only four years after their previous console.
      Microsoft releases their nextgen console only four years after their previous console.

      What happens next?

      Microsoft uses its cash reserves to keep the console going in case of bad sales?

    • Microsoft (almost) goes out of business?!!!!

      I've never been so excited in my life!

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