I'm surprised this hasn't been posted here yet, but the story has been popping up across news outlets, both mainstream and videogame-specific. You can choose your favorite news site for the details, but here is CNN's take on the issue. The long and short of it is this: Sony has asked Ken Kutaragi, the defacto father of the PlayStation brand, to step down/retire. In other words, he's been fired.

Poor Ken. He'll probably have to take up a new job if he wants to buy a PlayStation 3 any time soon. Work for that $600 next gen videogame console, Ken! Learn some discipline!

Ken got asked to be an "honorary" chairman because it would look horrible for Sony to leave him without any kind of "position" within the company as far as shareholders and public opinion are concerned. What Sony has done is let the man who created the PlayStation brand save some face while they shuffle him away to a position where he doesn't have any real sway over their videogame division anymore, and so can't do any more damage. The PS3 is a disaster right now. It's overpriced and hedging bets with costly tech that most consumers can't even utilize without spending a few thousand dollars on state of the art HDTV's, not to mention other top-grade home theatre equipment. Ken apparently went way over-budget with the development of the PS3, without getting the proper permissions from higher-ups in the company. It also doesn't help matters that Ken's been spouting all sorts of bizzare nonsense about the PS3 for the past year: "The PS3 is going to be 4D!" "People will buy the PS3 even if there are no games for it!" "The PS3 will be around for 10 years!" "People will have to work harder to buy a PS3!" "The PS3 will teach our children discipline!" Wow... Oh, and lest we forget some choice Ken gems concerning the PSP, such as "The PSP is like a work of art! It's perfect!" Surely, a man this full of himself would not step away from the product line he "masterminded" of his own volition. "Fired" is a strong, but fairly accurate description of what Sony has done to Ken Kutaragi. He's been relegated to the position of a figure head, where, with any luck, he won't be able to screw things up any more than he already has.

Ken Kutaragi definately made a huge impact on the videogame industry, but I prefer to reserve epithets like "genius" for people like Shigeru Miyamoto.

In all honesty, Ken got pretty lucky with the original PlayStation. It struck at a time when the "Big Two" of the videogame market back then both made huge blunders with their latest consoles. Sega's Saturn was an underpowered, overpriced machine. It's 3D capabilities were comparatively terrible, though it shined in 2D graphics (much to Capcom's delight). In what was definitely the weirdest and unfortunately, most crippling move, Sega actually launched their system months EARLY of their projected release date. It was no surprise that almost no games were ready by that time. Nintendo built a great machine, with the best 3D graphics of that generation, with one glaring problem. Nintendo banked on the cartridge format one generation too long, and lost big time. Their cartridge games cost anywhere from $10-30 more than equivalent CD-based games. 3rd party support dropped like a rock. In rolls the original PlayStation with a price point not too offensive to the consumer market ($299), with cheaper games and great 3rd party support. The PSX was really not so much a technical marvel as a marketing success, able to capture a relatively new videogaming demographic: college-aged males.

In the following videogame generation, Sega bungles things for the final time with the Dreamcast, and in swoops the PlayStation 2, gaining a lot of ground thanks to the brand recognition of the previous generation, and getting to market a year before Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox. Despite the PS2 being the WEAKEST console of the last generation, it got a big installed userbase FIRST and grabbed up the 3rd party support. No one else really ever had a chance.

Ken Kutaragi is a hardware engineer, but the systems he is famous for are hardly "innovative" machines. What "genius" did he really offer to the industry? Funny how things go south as soon as he puts out a portable and a console that both actually push industry standards for raw videogame horsepower, huh? I think Sony, rightly, realized that the PlayStation brand can live without Ken.

As I said before, a man THAT involved in himself and "his own creation" would not walk away from his position of power over it willingly. He was told by Sony to step aside and let someone else fix his mistakes. Don't be fooled by his new titles of "honorary chairman" and "senior consultant." Sony has done the equivalent of sending "grandpa" to the old folk's home. Sure, he's still part of the family, and even comes for Thanksgiving and Xmas, but no one really respects grandpa anymore, or listens to what he has to say. He's just kind of a specter of his former self now.

Sorry for the wall of text, but so rarely do interesting points about the videogame industry come up that don't degrade into the buyer's remorse bullshit of console fanboyism.

Some respect, yes, but there is nothing magical about the success of the PSX or PS2. Ken Kutaragi's position could have been filled by just about any other competent hardware engineer with similar results. The success of the first two PlayStation brand consoles was all about taking advantage of the market climate, something the PS3 is currently failing to do, unfortunately.

As for the Saturn, I was probably thinking about its very limited lighting capabilities and lack of hardware video decompression, but you're right, Syd, underpowered wasn't quite fair of me. Seems like poor Sega couldn't do anything right with the Saturn: difficult to efficiently program, architecture harder to consolodate to reduce production costs, non-standard 3D modeling geometry, shady marketing tactics that alienated 3rd party developers and retailers.

Thanks for posting that interview with Tom Kalinske, Syd. It is a very fascinating read. I knew about the hostility between Sega of Japan and Sega of America concerning the development of Sonic 2 and the ill-fated Sonic X-treme because "American" programmers were involved in both projects, but I had no idea the relations between the Japanese and American branches were so strained across the whole company. The only other videogame company I know of where development teams get THAT possessive of "their" franchises is Konami, the best examples of such being the Castlevania and, I believe, the Dance Dance Revolution properties.

I do have one quibble about that article. During what period of time, exactly, was Sega unequivically the "king" of the 16-bit era? If it's true, it couldn't have been for the entire time, because by the close of the 16-bit console generation, the SFC/SNES had outsold the MD/Genesis by a margin of 20 million units. The relatively poor reception of the MegaDrive in Japan compared to the Genesis in America and Europe can't account for a margin that wide. Seriously, isn't the SNES hailed as one of the most successful consoles in videogame history, before Sony introduced videogaming to a much broader consumer base with the PSX and PS2?

I think it's been quite civil so far. Just some discussion and debate on videogame history. Tempers aren't flaring, egos aren't bruised, etc., etc.

Char Aznable wrote:

And better sound quality. Can't forget the better sound quality.

Now THAT is something for which Ken Kutaragi can hog all the credit he wishes. Mr. Kutaragi actually designed the SFC/SNES sound chip.

The Genesis pulled off some really impressive visuals in its last year or two, but the sound NEVER improved. Tinny music and staticy voice samples from start to finish.