Ken Kutaragi is, if nothing else, passionate about his creations. He's credited as the father of the original PlayStation and has been a guiding hand for its successors. In November, however, Sony did some upper-management shifting and Kutarai found himself pulled away from his role as president of Sony Computer Entertainment. While still Group CEO and Chariman, Kutaragi's switch certainly suggests someone wanted a shake up.
And a Wall Street Journal (subscription required) article about the struggles of current Sony CEO Howard Stringer provides some insight into why. Kotaku picked up on the story from analysis blog Information Arbitrage, and the exerts show Kutaragi didn't exactly get along with everyone at Sony, remaining a one-man-renegade, even though he's been leading the division for some time now.
   "Mr. Kutaragi was notorious within the company for his reluctance to communicate with his bosses or other units. In 2005, Mr. Kutaragi hosted an event at a big electronics conference in Las Vegas to celebrate the U.S. launch of the PlayStation Portable handheld game machine -- one of the company's biggest products that year. He didn't invite executives from Sony's electronics division, which provided the parts."
Considering Kutarai sort of, uh, needs these people in order to produce his babies, that probably burned a bit. Oh, well, he must have kissed and made up before approaching the ambitious PlayStation 3 technology, right? Nope.
   "In September, Mr. Kutaragi announced Sony was halving shipments of the new PlayStation to the U.S. and Japan and was pushing back its European launch. At a news conference, Mr. Kutaragi blamed Sony's electronics group for failing to produce enough of a critical component, exposing his tense relationship with the division."
Good move -- next step? Blast them publicly to the press! "If we're asked whether Sony's quality of manufacturing has declined, I would have to say 'yes,'" Kutaragi oh-so-kindly said of the folks responsible for turning his experiments into products.Â
Well duh, we all knew that. His visions of creating technical greatness get in the way of feasibility...
That SNES sound chip really inflated his ego. Now, it's not a problem for me, every piece of Playstation hardware has been far superior to the previous version...
He is the visionary (a dreamer to some and krazy to many , lol).Now it is up to the manufacturing elite at Sony to reduce costs and really push towards software and services to make it happen.
"Hey look guys. Too much good news about Sony. Let's find something attacking one of the people that work there!" "Good idea" "Do it. Do it. Do it"KeyWii
Yeah, I'm sure that exactly what the people at WSJ were thinking when they wrote the article. :roll:
[QUOTE="KeyWii"]"Hey look guys. Too much good news about Sony. Let's find something attacking one of the people that work there!" "Good idea" "Do it. Do it. Do it"Truewiseblade
Yeah, I'm sure that exactly what the people at WSJ were thinking when they wrote the article. :roll:
Wall Street Journal is a conservative publication. It probably would rather see Sony fail because it's foreign company. Protectionism for the lose.
[QUOTE="KeyWii"]"Hey look guys. Too much good news about Sony. Let's find something attacking one of the people that work there!" "Good idea" "Do it. Do it. Do it" You're right, the rave reviews of Motorstorm, VF5's massive amount of sales, and all the exclusive's that have been announced for the PS3 are just too much to bear. Oh wait...
[QUOTE="Suyomizzle_"][QUOTE="KeyWii"]"Hey look guys. Too much good news about Sony. Let's find something attacking one of the people that work there!" "Good idea" "Do it. Do it. Do it" You're right, the rave reviews of Motorstorm, VF5's massive amount of sales, and all the exclusive's that have been announced for the PS3 are just too much to bear. Oh wait... Sony patched up with Immersion. Sony's internal development is larger than Mircosoft's and Nintendo's combined. PS3 has outpaced X360 sales. PS3 is about to launch in Europe and Australia. Sony has the best March out of all 3 in terms of software. Killzone trailer coming. PlayStation Home coming. Tell me, what bad news have you heard recently?
It is because "Kutaragi" brought the first PS that so many people cling to him. But the guy's eyes are bigger then his stomach you could say. There is a difference between being a dreamer and being a raving lunatic. Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima and others THEY are dreamers and creative masterminds. They have ideas and search for ways to make them reality... but Kutaragi being a president back then and now CEO (the backseat) tried to force his reality. The dreamers should never become the "doers".
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