Sony and Kutaragi - What Went Wrong?

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.'"

Wow, sometime's 1UP has their heads up their ass.

[BKX]

"there's a good possibility that the industry will come together on a platform standard"

My ass. There's no way in hell. We already have a standard gaming platform. It's called the PC. The industry won't make another one. Well, Microsoft might claim to, but it won't really be a standard.

Re:Visionary indeed

[timeOday]

True, Nintendo has been very successful focusing on gameplay instead of raw power. But I still think Sony's approach (FLOPS=fun) may have been successful, if only they had delivered! Instead, they put a revolutionary CPU and storage medium stuck behind a weak video card. On a games machine, that is a colossal mistake. PS3 games don't look any better than XBox 360 games. If you want to charge more, you have to deliver the goods.

Re:Visionary indeed

[tomstdenis]

I'd rather go for more interactivity than pixels. I mean what's the point of having 1600x1200 resolutions when you're no more capable to perform non-linear operations [e.g. mess with the env] than you could 10 years ago?

In FPSes for instance it would be nice to be able to destroy walls, pick up things, etc. Half-Life 2 kinda goes in that direction but many games are just really shiny with little going on behind the scenes.

Sure it's nice to play games with graphics, but usually their appeal lasts a lot shorter than games with actual engagement to them. The better studios know how to balance this.

Tom

Re:or, just maybe, the ps3 launch has been horribl

[Toonol]

Nobody's passionate about HD-DVD v. BluRay,

Oddly, many people are passionate about HD-DVD versus BluRay, but few are passionate about HD-DVD OR BluRay. Subtle distinction?

Ken's vision for PS4

[Krommenaas]

Let me guess: even more horsepower and storage so all the exact same games can be remade once again with even better graphics? The Wii has killed off this stale 'vision', thankfully. I hope and fully expect that in the next generation, the console makers will try to outdo each other with innovative controller concepts - think live motion capturing.