Sony's Ken Kutaragi To Step Down 81
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."
Re:Is Microsoft gonna supply the boat for him to l (Score:3, Interesting)
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 about it. Those are all over 12 months away still, and I knew that when I bought the system.
In the meantime, I have it set up to run Linux, and it serves as a media PC for me.
All the PS3 needs is games, and it needs good ones, not the garbage freely flowing from SEGA studios.
Re:Is Microsoft gonna supply the boat for him to l (Score:3, Interesting)
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 just considered a "kiddie" system by the masses. Xbox was late to the table, and Microsoft was just trying to figure out how the console gaming market worked.
This time, Sony is up against a determined Microsoft, who was first to market in the generation, and a seriously damned strong Nintendo, which has single-handedly revolutionized gaming. I shit you not man, they are THE force in bringing gaming to the masses. The GBA SP was a big first step in that direction, being the first handheld game system that a) could comfortably fit in almost anyone's pocket and b) didn't look like a fisher-price toy.
In addition, this is Sony's second generation of alienating developers. The Playstation succeeded in large part because it was the easiest console on which you could get good results. N64 had no optical drive, so that took it out of the running for many publishers right there. Saturn was $100 more than the Playstation, and had two processors with no OS to help you use them or any other hardware, so it was the most difficult to utilize in its generation. Sony won that fight more or less by default. But the PS2 was the most complicated game console platform (from a programming standpoint) that had ever been released! The main CPU was made of two other 64 bit cores glued together with a 64 bit processor with some 128 bit instructions, the two cores behind the glue logic meanwhile being asymmetrical. But the PS3 is even harder to fully utilize than the PS2, with its eight total [usable] processors, not counting the graphics core.
Meanwhile, this is Microsoft's second generation of attracting developers with easy-to-use development tools, and Nintendo has never made a console that was especially complicated from an architectural standpoint - every system so far has had one CPU, one graphics chip (whether 2d or 3d) and so on. The systems are easy to develop games for and that is a huge selling point to the developers. And the only manufacturer not working to make work easier for developers is Sony.
The result of this is that the PS3 games cost more to make because of the added complexity. This will not only make them more expensive but piss off developers and bias them against projects on the PS3. They'll still support the platform if they're told to (and paid to) but I think we can expect the PS3 versions of non-exclusive titles to be the least impressive in many cases even though the PS3 has the most raw power, both because it's harder to utilize the hardware to the fullest, and because the developers will simply not want to work on it as much.
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?
Re:Is Microsoft gonna supply the boat for him to l (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as the new consoles go.. I think I'll only be getting a Wii (when I can find one..) I can't stand the evil empire, and the PS3 is just.. well, too expensive. That leaves Nintendo.
Gunpei Koto (Score:3, Interesting)