Ken Kutaragi, the Japanese engineer who created the very first Sony PlayStation gaming console, as well as the former head of Sony Computer Entertainment, will receive the Life Achievement Award at the annual Game Developers Choice ceremony on March 19.
In the early 80s, Kutaragi loved to watch his little daughter play games on the Nintendo Famicom console (well known in Russia thanks to the Dendy clone). Even then, Ken felt the enormous potential hidden in video games. But Sony in those years was little interested in this market, where Nintendo unconditionally rules the ball. But as if fate itself had given Kutaragi a chance to make her dreams come true. Nintendo management was looking for an engineer who would develop a sound processor for their future 16-bit Super Famicom console, and Ken Kutaragi single-handedly took on this project. On this project, he had to work at night in the strictest secrecy from the leadership of Sony, and when the truth nevertheless surfaced, he was almost fired for arbitrariness. And only Norio Og, who at the time was president of Sony Corporation, stood up for his subordinate and allowed him to finish the job. As a result, Kutaragi created the amazing SPC700 sound processor, thanks to which Super Famicom outperformed all its competitors in sound and music quality.
Despite the fact that the relationship between Sony and Nintendo began a relationship, Sony management continued to look with disdain towards the gaming industry. And here the case again intervened in the course of things. Kutaragi commissioned Nintendo to develop a disk drive for Super Famicom, but suddenly the president of Nintendo thought that they had in vain dragged Sony into their internal affairs and broke the deal. In order not to lose the money invested in the development, Ken Kutaragi persuaded the President of Sony to create his own game console based on a disk drive. He received the go-ahead, and in 1995, the first Sony PlayStation was born. The success of the idea of Kutaragi can be judged at least by the fact that today a little more than 102 million of these consoles have been sold.
After the incredible success of its first gaming console, Sony eagerly began to invest heavily in the development of this line of business. In 2000, the PlayStation 2 was born, which sold 155 million units in the world. Kutaragi again stood at the head of the project and designed most of the interior decoration of the console on his own. In 2004, Ken Kutaragi was one of the hundred most influential people in the world according to the Times magazine.
But with the PlayStation 3, Sony did not work out as smoothly as we would like. The architecture of the new console was too complex for developers, and the cost of production was incredibly high. As a result, the Japanese company lost a lot of money in the first years after the start of PS3 sales, and Ken Kutaragi lost the trust of management and immediately after the launch of the PlayStation 3 went on sale as president of Sony Computer Entertainment. His place was taken by Kazuo Hirai, who is known to all of us, who in 2013 will become president of the entire Sony corporation.
Currently, Ken Kutaragi is the honorary chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment, as well as a professor who lectures at Ritsumeikan University in Japan. The reward for life's achievements, which Ken Kutaragi is going to present during the upcoming ceremony, will certainly please this talented engineer who gave us so many wonderful moments spent on his PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 consoles. Mark Czerny, who is his old friend, as well as the chief architect and creator of the new generation PlayStation 4 console.
The article is based on materials .
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