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Kutaragi Starts New Company
'Father of the PlayStation' Ken Kutaragi has set up a new company, Cyber Ai Entertainment.
Kutaragi, who also acts as president of game developer Cellius, started the new company in Tokyo to develop next-gen online services.
The former chairman and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment says the new venture will "initially focus on research and development relating to information processing, targeting cutting-edge networking operations," in a report by Japanese news service Nikkei, although he was not to be drawn on what exactly that means for the games industry.
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England and Wales company registration number 2008885
It's worth noting that while Kutaragi does have notable HARDWARE accomplishments, he was quite recalcitrant to adopt online while at Sony and struggled to understand it up to when he was forced out. This seems like an odd direction for him to take understanding that.
At least we'll have more amusing quotes to look forward to...
...and the houses he helped to build up; i.e. third party software developers and turning the video-game sector industry into a massive industry...lots to remember. He did a lot for this industry; no can take that away from him.
If I was given a £1 every time someone brought up the story about Nintendo and Sony with the PlayStation... Read a book called Game Over by David Sheff. Everything in the book is official so you'll read the full and true story. And did anyone know that the Sega Mega CD/Sega CD was made by Sony? As for Ken Kutaragi, he messed up the PS3 launch, who cares? Look at how many mistakes Nintendo made (Virtual Boy for one...).
Yes, great book.
Don't think the Sega CD bit is entirely true. Sony did manufacture the CD mechanisms (player) and some of the chips. In fact, Sony created the sound processor for the SNES as well.
@edshot, you are 100% correct. Unfortunately, so many associate Ken with the crazier days of the PS3 and don't reflect on just how brilliant he is. If you want to read one of the BEST business books on building intrepreneurial-ships in a large company, read "Revolutionaries at Sony". The Playstation platform was born from a sheer force of will by Ken and Sony basically survived to this day because of him.
Of course, the biggest problem is that whenever you get TOO big, and all the externals in the larger company start to come in, stuff goes wrong.
So true, that's why he deserve the title father of Playstation. People forget what the original Playstation did for gaming...
copy all of nintendo's ideas and market it to a teenaged audience?
Kutaragi had the foresight to go with the cd-rom whilst Nintendo stuck with the more expensively produced cartridges and priced accordingly.
Successfully marketed to savvy clubbers who were as far removed from gaming as you could get, melding cult techno merchants like FSOL and Chemical Bros, with 'nerdy' gaming thus arguably paving the way for more mainstream gaming on PS2.
He was well aware of graphical developments - pushing for insisting on gouraud shading, which made games like Ridge Racer so wonderful for its time.
The anti-grav racer F-Zero GX concept, nothing like Wipeout, then?
The F-zero series pre-dates wipeout. Nintendo isn't so backwards as anyone should know the PS was nearly an add-on for the Snes.
The clubbing crap mainly came from the UK and only because it was big at the time. Clubbers aren't the polar opposite of gamers. After all they're generally drugged out douche bags. Those people always played games instead of getting jobs. School preppies and sports jocks...now they would have been far removed from gaming.
i agree for f-zero besides it was my favourite game on snes but probably you have the same opinion with my grandma about "clubbers".i.m following the techno scene for years now buying music and clubbing still i do sports and have a regular job my only drugs are music and videogaming.don't judge something from what you've heard in news and stop watching opra
oh wipeout i download it from psn classics and the design of the game still looks fresh.not to mention the fantastic soundtrack...
i'm not sure but if i remember right nintendo asked sony to make the cd-rom drive for ultra 64.sony liked the idea broke the deal and did it's own console.then nintendo changed plans and use catridge to avoid piracy...but never accused sony for stealing their plans
The PlayStation for Nintendo was the CD drive for the SNES. The reason it was killed had NOTHING to do with Ken's group. There was another group in Sony working with Phillips on the CD (and the CDi) platform and did not like the idea of Ken doing this work (stealing their thunder). This second group went to Nintendo, without telling Ken's group, and convinced them to stop working with Ken's group and shift to Phillips.
The year this happened, Ken found out about it one day before he was supposed to announce that Sony and Nintendo were working on this. He went ahead and made the announcement anyway. The next day, Nintendo got on stage, told the press Ken was wrong and that they were going to work with Phillips. It was this betrayal that Ken used to pressure the board of Sony into taking the fight to Nintendo.
Had Nintendo honored their contract with Sony and released the PlayStation for SNES, we may never have had a "Sony Playstation" product in the market.
Completely wrong. The roots of the Playstation were actually in 1985 when Ken was working on real-time image based systems. He and his family had a Nintendo at home, like everyone else in Japan did, and while amusing to him, he saw the value in building a platform that progressed for decades on central philosophies.
Among the innovations of Ken's team was the complete rethinking of distribution in the industry. Anyone know why most CD/DVD/game release days are on Tuesdays here in the US? This was a direct result of the distribution model that was first established by Sony. Because they owned a significant porting of the CD/DVD manufacturing facilities in the US, they could poll retail stores on a Thursday, see what was hot or selling out of, prioritize that content in the pressing queue over the weekend and, you guessed it, have the product available in stored for purchase by Tuesday of the following week. The speed at which content could get out to shelves crushed Nintendo's cartridge lead times.
There were many other innovations that Sony made and, yes, some were an evolution of things that came before. But we are talking about the Sony of old, not the Microsoft of, well, forever ;)
Sony was one of the reasons that gaming started to become mainstream and more readily accepted by adults.
Sorry, I made the above post before I saw yours ; )
Cheers for the heads-up about the book. Def check that out.
I hope he remembers the heady, salad days of the PS1.
I think that old Kutaragi magic is what's needed to push forward this next-gen download only games model.