Ken Kutaragi makes his first good decision

[AtmaWeapon]

It wasn't hard to see something like this coming, with Kaz Hirai swiping Ken's President position over Sony Computer Entertainment late last year, but now Sony has gone and made it official: Ken Kutaragi, creator of the PlayStation and all-around good looking guy, will retire from his chairman and CEO posts over Sony Computer Entertainment on June 19th. Kaz will fill the CEO spot, while Ken will maintain "honorary" status as chairman of the group and will hang around with Sony CEO Howard Stringer, acting as senior technology adviser. We only have Sony's word to go on that this is a "retirement," instead of being "relieved" in response to recent troubles in PlayStation land. But any way you slice it, Ken had a good run, sold a few consoles, and can most likely officially wash his hands of that PlayStation Eye 'fro-cam his successor will have the pleasure of pushing. [Warning: subscription required]http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/26/sonys-ken-kutaragi-leaving-sce-chairman-and-ceo-spots-in-june/

It seems they are doing a lot to point out this is not getting "fired" but a retirement, but I'm not so sure I buy that. He masterminded the PS3 AFAIK, and it isn't exactly doing too well. It was hyped to be the next big thing that would completely obliterate the XBox 360 and the Wii; instead it is being outsold by both next-gen consoles and a handheld console that has been available for 3 or 4 years. His response to the crisis was not to turn on the damage control, but to exhude more hubris than a drunk frat boy standing on the edge of a balcony.

The fact that he will remain in an "honorary" position seems more like a face-saving move to me than anything else.

Hopefully the industry can recover from the damage he's done.

[Beldaran]

The fact that he will remain in an "honorary" position seems more like a face-saving move to me than anything else.


Precisely. This is a very Japanese thing to do.

[Warlock]

lol this is Yamauchi all over again.. almost EXACTLY in fact (he also still sits on the board as an "honorary member"). Yes, it's a very Japanese thing. Sort of a "preserve your honor" thing I imagine (you're not being fired, you are stepping down and playing a more passive role).

[MottZilla]

PS3 isn't some huge failure, it's just not the huge success they wrongly expected. t's problems are mostly the price barrier which will wear down in time. The real question is how far ahead the 360 and Wii will be by the time that happens.

[Glenn the Great]

I bet that if the owners of Sony could have their way, the Japanese method of face-saving to be used in this case would be seppuku.

[Pineconn lolz]

I highly doubt they fired him. He built the Playstation brand. I know they spent a lot on the PS3, but just because the thing hasn't sold like hotcakes in the first few months is no reason to fire him. I still don't think he screwed up THAT bad.

The PS3 may not be the dominate console by the end of this gen, but I doubt it will go the way of the Dreamcast.

[Warlock]

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3159047

Awesome

[Pineconn]

For some reason my web browser will never let me open 1Up pages. Could someboy quote the article?

[Warlock]

For some reason my web browser will never let me open 1Up pages. Could someboy quote the article?

It's just a bunch of funny quotes from him and stuff:


"I believe we made the most beautiful thing in the world. Nobody would criticize a renowned architect's blueprint that the position of a gate is wrong. It's the same as that." -- Nikkei Business, 01/05

"The PlayStation [3] is not a game machine. We've never once called it a game machine," -- Impress PC Watch, 05/05

"The Xbox 360 is more of an Xbox 1.5 than a next generation console." -- Impress PC Watch, 05/05

"[PS3 is] for consumers to think to themselves 'I will work more hours to buy one'. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else." -- Toyo Keizai, 07/05

"My homeroom teacher told me I wasn't cooperative ... I used to get mad, thinking I was being singled out." -- CNN, 09/00

"You can communicate to a new cybercity. This will be the ideal home server. Did you see the movie 'The Matrix'? Same interface. Same concept. Starting from next year, you can jack into 'The Matrix'!" -- Newsweek, 02/00

Not all of the good ones but some funny ones.

[Beldaran]

My favorite is how whatever Sony product he was trying to sell is identical to The Matrix.

[The_Amaster]

"The Xbox 360 is more of an Xbox 1.5 than a next generation console." -- Impress PC Watch, 05/05

HA! If you go by that standard, the only really next-gen console is the Wii.

They're gettign rid of this guy. It's suicide. I mean, the PS3 may have been mediocre, but can they replace this guy? He did bring them their cash-cow.

[MottZilla]

HA! If you go by that standard, the only really next-gen console is the Wii.

They're gettign rid of this guy. It's suicide. I mean, the PS3 may have been mediocre, but can they replace this guy? He did bring them their cash-cow.

He was never as great as people wanted you to believe. The fact is none of the Playstation systems were particularly amazing, they just fill a void. The problem is PS3 fills no void.

[Pineconn lolz]

The fact is none of the Playstation systems were particularly amazing, they just fill a void.

And that pretty much sums up why I hate Sony.

[AlexMax]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the best console on human slaying since Gumpei Yokoi.

Kutaragi getting Japan-fired twice in as many years . . .hilarious.

[Darth Marsden]

The fact is none of the Playstation systems were particularly amazing, they just fill a void. The problem is PS3 fills no void.
QFT. And I don't say that very often.

[Warlock]

http://www.shacknews.com/extras/kutaragi/070705_kutaragi_01.x

[AtmaWeapon]

I got interested in getting more details about the "humiliating, public fashion" in which the SNES-CD was dropped and found this quite detailed (http://www.n-sider.com/articleview.php?articleid=279) article. In particular it was interesting to read about how not only did Nintendo manage to wiggle out of the contract, they were getting screwed by Sony in an all-too-familiar way:

Sony's Ken Kutagari had bought his children a Famicom and came away unimpressed by the technology. He approached Nintendo with some technology that his company was working on. The Kutaragi-designed sound chip for the Super Famicom would be a key element to the system and was slyly designed in such a way as to make effective development possible only with Sony's expensive development tools.

[...]

Sony quickly began development on its home console using the proposed "Super Disc technology". The technology was not scheduled to be released for another 18 months. Sony's console was initially called the "Super Disc", and was supposed to be able to play both SNES cartridges and CD-ROMs, of which Sony was to be the "sole worldwide licenser," as stated in the contract.

[...]

All was looking just fine for Nintendo until it found that the deal they had struck with Sony way back in 1988 granted Sony the right to control and license all the CD-based games for the "Super Disc". Nintendo was now to be at the mercy of Sony and its "Super Disc", which could play SNES carts and Sony-manufactured CDs. Nintendo, understandably, began to get worried.



So basically, the backstory seems to be that Sony managed to do the following: Create a chip for a Nintendo system that required developers to pay for Sony tools Use a proprietary, Sony-only CD format for the Nintendo CD system so Sony would get a larger share of the profit Contract themselves the publishing rights to all of the SNES-CD games so Nintendo would only get the profits Sony wanted them to.I'm not saying Nintendo did right; the use of lawyers to interpret your contracts is generally a good thing and I hope this taught Nintendo a lesson. It was an interesting article to me though, for now I understand that it wasn't just "technical issues" or "Sony wants to make its own system" that doomed the SNES-CD, it was "greedy businessmen stabbing each other in the back".

(Also Warlock take some notes man people like linked articles better if you show the tl;dr; crew what they are missing. It's nice to have a general summary before you see a gigantic wall of text.)

I think Warlock meant to post this but his fingers slipped and hit Enter before he lost consciousness; this single paragraph from his article has explained more about Kutaragi than anything else I've read:
But in March of 2005, an important shift occured at Sony. It started with the retirement of Sony CEO Nobuyuki Idei. Kutaragi, as executive deputy president, had been long-assumed to take the position. Instead, he announced he was stepping down from the position as well as the head of home electronics division. The company then brought Howard Stringer, a Welsh, to run the Japanese giant. The set of moves must have been severly damaging to Kutaragi's ego; a man who redefined the Sony empire being scrubbed for a foreigner. All he had left was his precious PlayStation.So now I see Kutaragi as kind of childlike; he was high up in Sony and made these electronics that had successful and he felt like he was pretty bad. Then, when the position everyone expects him to get opens up, he is not only passed over but the position is given to someone that is not Japanese.

I worked for a Japanese manufacturing company for a year, and a few anthropology classes I've taken have touched on this as well: the Japanese culture is very concerned with the notion of the superiority of the "Japanese" race. This was evident every day I worked; it was similar to some kind of TV show where the mother and daughter trick the father into believing something is his idea so he will agree. So I can only imagine that Kutaragi went home and punched some puppies over this. I can now see his consistent over-hype as characteristic of a man who has been shamed and is desperately trying to prove those who shamed him wrong.