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Sony's Ken Kutaragi To Step Down
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Apr 26, 2007 02:16 PM
from the no-more-easy-quotes dept.
from the no-more-easy-quotes dept.
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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Ken Kutaragi's Famous Last Words 527 comments
When we look back on this E3, I think one of the moments we're most clearly going to remember is the dead silence in the Sony press conference following the price announcement. Eurogamer and GameDaily has coverage of Phil Harrison's spin work, trying to recover from that moment, discussing how Sony is not ripping off Nintendo and Microsoft probably won't meet their 10 million units goal. More interestingly, they discuss an interview with Ken Kutaragi conducted by a Japanese website. From that piece: "SCEI president Ken Kutaragi has defended the PlayStation 3's high price tag once again, declaring that not only will consumers be prepared to pay the cost but that the console is 'probably too cheap.' In an interview with Japanese website IT Media, partially translated by IGN, Kutaragi said: 'This is the PS3 price. Expensive, cheap - we don't want you to think of it in terms of game machines ... For instance ... Is it not nonsense to compare the charge for dinner at the company cafeteria with dinner at a fine restaurant? It's a question of what you can do with that game machine. If you can have an amazing experience, we believe price is not a problem.'"
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Kutaragi Admits Sony Hardware In Decline 68 comments
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More PS3 Words From the Horse's Mouth 78 comments
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Why Sony Needs a 'Major Nelson' 84 comments
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What the Sony Reshuffling Actually Means 30 comments
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Sony and Kutaragi - What Went Wrong? 57 comments
Last week's news that Ken Kutaragi was stepping down from his post at Sony wasn't exactly a surprise, but it does raise a number of questions. Given reports that Kutaragi has visions for PlayStations 4, 5, and 6 and analyst speculation that he'll be involved with those products as well, why is he on the way out the door? 1up's Editor Sam Kennedy spends some time ruminating on the situation on his site blog, and comes to the conclusion that this may be what Kutaragi wanted all along. "No one doubted Kutaragi's vision or ability to create fantastic hardware, but his failure as an executive was holding the division back. This is why Kaz Hirai took his place. With the PS3 off and running at the start of a 10-year life cycle, Sony won't need a visionary for quite some time -- now, it needs someone to run the business. And Kaz is right for that. He's a team player and has great relationships with the publishers. He can take things from here. But in all of this hubbub surrounding his departure, what's perhaps been overlooked is that this may have been what Kutaragi had also wanted. It's unfortunate, as the expectation was always for Kutaragi to climb the corporate ladder, yet this wasn't necessarily his goal. As he once told Newsweek about his executive role, 'We have so many things to create, but unfortunately for me I have a lot of responsibility right now...This was not in my dream.'"
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Father of Sony Playstation Steps Down 57 comments
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Yokoi? (Score:3, Funny)
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I was envisioning an expensive Sony-brand proprietary Wikazashi(sp?), a blade shorter than a katana that is especially for suicide. That seems more appropriate.
Either that, or he'll be assigned to staring out of a window forever, or maybe that weird white cube-room we saw in the bizarre PS3 commercials.
I think something should be missing... (Score:4, Funny)
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I suppose it depends on your definition of success.
Re:I think something should be missing... (Score:4, Funny)
Yep, but so did the Challenger.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
By that comparison, 3D0, the Sega CD, Atari Jaguar, and the Intellivision II all had successful launches.
Well, it's about time. (Score:2)
Rob
"His decision to leave the organization?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, thanks to Ken, for one of the most entertaining business dramas I've seen since 3dfx.
Re:"His decision to leave the organization?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Leaves to spend more time with family - Flat out quit, had to be begged to give some kind of notice
Leaves to take on new challenges - "There's the door, don't let it hit you on the ass."
Parent
Re:"His decision to leave the organization?" (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a code phrase for "This guy did a really lousy job and we're finally happy to be rid of him."
If you follow college football at all, this kind of thing is normal. You learn that, for example, the administration making an official statement to the effect of "We stand behind Coach Winsnogames 100%" is pretty much a guarantee that the guy is either about to be fired, or will be if he doesn't win it all the next year. "I committed to this school because of their outstanding academic support" means that someone will take the tests for him. And "I committed to Texas A&M" means the athlete's only committed to that school until a real school offers him a scholarship.
I mean seriously... A&M's had what, 6 decommits already?
Parent
Heads continuing to roll at Sony (Score:2)
I guess Gabe Newell (head honcho at Valve) had it right all along [destructoid.com].
My question is.... (Score:5, Funny)
RIIIIDGE RACER (Score:5, Funny)
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A visibly distressed Mr. Kutaragi was seen crawling from head offices clutching his crotch. Meanwhile, a victorious looking Mr. Hirai gave an applauded speech at the press statement, explaining how he had been inspired by a battle that took actually place in ancient Japan, and how his new strategies are based on japanese history.
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The reporters weren't quite sure how to take it until he explained that he was working at Sony for far "too cheap". "Is it not nonsense to compare the charge for dinner at the company
Shareholders (Score:5, Insightful)
aka. poisoning the water supply. (Score:2)
Gunpei Koto (Score:3, Interesting)
Ken's a scapegoat (Score:4, Insightful)
Remove the 6 month delay necessitated by adding the Blu-Ray drive, as well as the expense, and the obvious maneuver to push Blu-Ray into homes using fanboys and loyal customers, and it's an entirely different story... Sony still has a problem with the gaming experience, and the whole fiasco over feedback controllers, but those become minor issues. In making DRM so central to the PS3's strategy (or should I say, making the PS3 central to Sony's invasive DRM strategy) after Sony's horrible anti-consumer behavior primarily in its media divisions has made many of its loyal customers angry and resolute in not supporting the company. It's made them consciously avoid all things "Sony" - from CDs that may install rootkits that open security holes on your PCs, to movies that take extreme measures to eliminate fair use of customers to back up their own movies (while pirates release those same movies on the net days or even weeks before they are released for retail). Until Blu-Ray is added to the mix, one can simply argue that the PS3 is an island in the sea of things wrong with Sony as a corporate citizen; with Blu-Ray, however, the PS3 becomes yet another pawn - a cynical move in an agenda to control consumers' rights and increase control in media markets.
So, here we are, months after the PS3's dismal launch, and we all can agree, game quality issue aside, the PS3 would have sold much better without the Blu-Ray drive inflating the price. All of Ken's crazy words would have merely been a sidenote in a frenzied battle of consoles. It's launch would have occurred 6 months BEFORE the Wii, striking quicker and likely deeper into the market that the Wii got exposure to on equal terms with last holiday season. Can you blame Kutaragi for it all? Would he have agreed to include the Blu-Ray drive if he had not gotten incredible pressure from higher up?
It's no coincidence that Sony's leaders are media people - their media division makes money by the tankerful. What nobody seems to grasp is that those profits are not thanks to those same executives that wield so much political power within Sony's corporate arena.... media sells these days, even crap media. The world is hungry for movies and music - I suppose you could say they at least didn't make so many boneheaded moves that they dragged the company down, but even that's not entirely true - yet they hold the power, and likely forced Blu-Ray upon the PS3.
Ah well... they sweep Ken out the door and play it up as a "shake up" between the lines, it looks like SCE is making moves to improve the PS3 situation, but in reality, it does nothing to solve the underlying problem of a system tied down with a 50-ton boat anchor. It will satisfy the stockholders, many of whome have no idea when it comes to gaming consoles, only that that division has lost money for the last 5 years and is losing money at a rapid pace (even though others might realize it's a strategy to lose money on every PS3 sold).
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In fact, I find it funny that the only highly rated games for the system are ports from successful PC games. The reviews are high, but they all say the same thing - "If you played this on PC, there's nothing new here." So why shell out $60 more for something I played 1-2 years ago?
I'll buy GT5, White Knight (if we see it here), FF XIII... that's
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There was less competition in the prior generation. Dreamcast was killed at least in part by Sony's fraudulent claims of performance. (Not only could the system actually not push as many triangles as they originally claimed, but it CERTAINLY couldn't push that many triangles in anything but a demo.) Gamecube was still
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