Father of Sony Playstation Steps Down
Posted by
Zonk
on Tuesday June 19, @02:21PM
from the a-retirement-with-games dept.
from the a-retirement-with-games dept.
Raver32 wrote with a link to a CNN article about the end of Ken Kutaragi's time at Sony. His departure was announced back in April, and now leaves Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) headed by Kazuo Hirai, Sony Computer Entertainment's (SCE) former president and COO. "Though no longer a board member, Kutaragi will hold an advisory post at the gaming unit, according to SCE official Sayoka Henmi. The departure of Kutaragi, an icon among gamers, marks the end of an era at Sony Corp. that saw the company long dominate the video game industry with its flagship PlayStation consoles. But it also highlights troubles at Sony amid a series of blunders over the rollout of its PlayStation 3 and intense competition from Nintendo Co.'s popular Wii console and Microsoft's Xbox 360."
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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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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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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.'"
Father of Sony Playstation Steps Down
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Honesty.
(Score:5, Insightful)Mr. Kutaragi, I rarely agree with your opinions on the business of video games, as well as your opinions on what gamers "want". However, you are still an icon in the industry and I respect you as such. Godspeed to you, sir.
occasional failure.
(Score:3, Interesting)(Last Journal: Monday August 23, @12:14PM)
Re:occasional failure.
(Score:5, Interesting)NPD numbers for May in the US:
* Nintendo DS: 423K
* Nintendo Wii: 338K
* Sony PSP: 221K
* Sony PlayStation 2: 187K
* Microsoft Xbox 360: 155K
* Sony PlayStation 3: 81K
The Wii sells twice as much as the 360, which sells roughly twice as much as the PS3. I call that a spectacular failure for Sony.
Father of the playstation?
(Score:4, Funny)(http://www.burbleland.com/ccalam/?page_id=42 | Last Journal: Tuesday June 19, @08:48AM)
Half a dupe?
(Score:2)http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/26
I really hate it when I see "news" and think it's old, because I read the "announcement of the announcement" a month or two earlier.
Bouncing tits
(Score:2)(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 10, @05:09AM)
Bouncing tits.
Yes, bouncing tits. He replied without blinking. "The former sold games with rocky tits while the latter sold games with bouncing tits [gametrailers.com]."
Japan based consoles manufacturers care about the reaction of traditional Japanese parents so they tend to sell games with relatively 'clean' contents(even the external game developers are aware of their concern). That'd be in contrast with your believes in Japanese culture when looking at their AV and H productions, but think about the major market segment of game consoles in Japan comprised of very young children, this could be understandable.
What I want to say is, Ken Kutaragi faced the major challenge from Wii, not XBox 360, in Japan.
Politics
(Score:4, Interesting)old news
(Score:1)(http://www.bizzeh.com/)
Re:shame and dishonor
(Score:4, Funny)I snickered when I read parent and the bottom of the slashdot page had the following quote:
Practice yourself what you preach. -- Titus Maccius Plautus
Re:Sony "blunders" are not limited to the PS3
(Score:2)(http://www.justjournal.com/)
Re:shame and dishonor
(Score:2)Clearly, an honorable suicide is the only way to remedy this situation.
Mods on crack! This is a troll? Sheeze, i don't know who this guy is but he owes me a new keyboard.
Re:Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!
(Score:2)That said, the PS3 is more fun than the 360... at least for me...
Re:Sony "blunders" are not limited to the PS3
(Score:2)