Ken Kutaragi, the king of consoles and videogames, Options

[Guest_MAKAVELI_*]

Ken Kutaragi is revered by video-game enthusiasts the world over as the father of the PlayStation. Yet, ironically, the highly driven Kutaragi has only recently won the respect of his peers at Sony headquarters. "They used to say I was merely lucky with the PlayStation," says the 52-year-old president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., the consumer-electronics giant's game unit. "But now they're realizing it was no easy thing to create an $8 billion business from scratch."

In fact, it's Sony (SNE ) that has lucked out. Kutaragi's company kicked in $1 billion in earnings in the business year that ended in March--60% of Sony's operating profits. PlayStation 2 could well break all kinds of records. In the first 30 months since PS2 was introduced, Sony sold 40 million units, more than twice as many as the original PlayStation in the same time frame. The first one still ranks as the best-selling console on the planet.

Kutaragi is a rare breed in Corporate Japan: an engineer with vision and marketing smarts. But success didn't come easily. As a young researcher in the 1970s, he developed a liquid-crystal-display projector that Sony refused to approve, thus missing out on a new market. He also worked on a disk-storage camera that was years ahead of its time. Even after PlayStation launched in 1994, says Kutaragi, "many in Sony looked down on us because we were in games."

Not anymore. Kutaragi's PlayStation business model--using low-margin hardware to sell high-margin software--is being emulated throughout the company. Now he's overseeing development of a supermicroprocessor to power a console to handle all kinds of entertainment flowing into homes over broadband networks. If he creates another megahit, he could be running the entire Sony show someday.


KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS
-- Created cash cow out of video-game business, which contributed 60% of Sony's operating profits in the year ended in March

-- Developing new chip to power network machine capable of sending interactive games, movies, and music over broadband networks


WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT HIM?????

p.s - this is dedicated to mr:tecno_geek. i hope he feels a litle bit better with this.

[Guest_Tecno_Geek_*]

you still xbox360 fanboy and probably you will remain like your master artur69.

ken kutaragi one of my idols , and we done more for the videogame industry than mR BILL GATES and his shity ass consoles/operating systems.

thanks to kutaragi sony will sell again over 100 millions ps3 and microsoft will fail again with x360 , mainly because all their titles are imitations of sony greatest hits just seee:

forza = rip off grand turismo.
dead or alive = rip tekken
splinter cell rip off mgs.

and so and so....

ms only know how to lie and stil ideas from sony like the idea of putting network on consoles that sony pionerer with their psx.

[Guest_MAKAVELI_*]

you still xbox360 fanboy and probably you will remain like your master artur69.

ken kutaragi one of my idols , and we done more for the videogame industry than mR BILL GATES and his shity ass consoles/operating systems.

thanks to kutaragi sony will sell again over 100 millions ps3 and microsoft will fail again with x360 , mainly because all their titles are imitations of sony greatest hits just seee:

forza = rip off grand turismo.
dead or alive = rip tekken
splinter cell rip off mgs.

and so and so....

ms only know how to lie and stil ideas from sony like the idea of putting network on consoles that sony pionerer with their psx.

1)I DONT understand you! how can you be such sony fanboy , diss to bill gates and ms to death!!!and then own a xbox 360?

2) dont expect sony to sell like ps2 , if you count the release delays , the more than ever stong competition etc... its vey difficult to sony with the 100 millions with ps3.

3) microsoft didnt "rip-off" anything , their only had their own games and they try to compete with sony in any genre , and let me say that they succeeded.

4) so the psx had online capabilites? lololloll....plain lies man. the psx didnt had any online capabilites , the pioner was the sega saturn back on the 90's , altrought expensive and non-popular , it was possible play online (some titles) and navigate trough internet with a special Brosee .,,( u had to buy a sega modem !) http://www.vidgame.net/SEGA/net_link.htm

after even the ps2 had online capabilities , Sega dreamcast ofered online capabilites too and was the first relatively succesfull console online service.
until now the best service avaible is the xbox live.

5) """Ken Kutaragi, the king of consoles and videogames"""- that was to make you fell good , but everybody knows thats totaly false.

p.s i dont even will bother give you more links , is better if you research for yourself and learn something about the game history isntead of making the site look bad.

[B1ueBurneR]

"ken kutaragi one of my idols , and we done more for the videogame industry than mR BILL GATES and his shity ass consoles/operating systems."

Did you Catch that... "We Done more for the videogame Industry" Were did the "We" Come from? Techno whats your cut out that money your helping sony make? Zero? or are The more in the Negative cause your coming out of pocket. you sound like a proud member of S.D.R movement.

thanks to kutaragi sony will sell again over 100 millions ps3 and microsoft will fail again with x360 ,
If Microsoft failed with The Original xbox then how is it that Xbox Live continues to Grow. If come out from under Ken. Sack wipe the "ice cream " off your face, or if he allows you to.. you'll would know that XBL had about a 60% increase in Subscribers the and if you put 1 and 1 2gether then that must means that it equals to the 360 is selling. and selling, and that people will pay for quality.

forza = rip off grand turismo.
dead or alive = rip tekken
splinter cell rip off mgs.


do you mean like in the case of NBA Live07 now and NBA 2k7
where EA =(Sony) and scrap a game together and Visual Concept = NBA2k7 Capitalize on quality .. it comes down to quality. Ps3 will sell millions. and so will the 360 it'll be a closer compition. and Nintendo wil blow both the compititon out the water when it comes to sale.

[arthur56k]

you still xbox360 fanboy and probably you will remain like your master artur69.

ken kutaragi one of my idols , and we done more for the videogame industry than mR BILL GATES and his shity ass consoles/operating systems.

thanks to kutaragi sony will sell again over 100 millions ps3 and microsoft will fail again with x360 , mainly because all their titles are imitations of sony greatest hits just seee:

forza = rip off grand turismo.
dead or alive = rip tekken
splinter cell rip off mgs.

and so and so....

ms only know how to lie and stil ideas from sony like the idea of putting network on consoles that sony pionerer with their psx.

once again ive got to reply to an idiot who knows nothin about me.
i said i played more of the ps2 than the xbox, only that i n my opinion the xbox had better quality games.

i also said that im not particularly impressed by the way sony conducts its business but ive got to live with them coz there are some smashin games on their console, and yas im going to play a whole load of games on the ps3 when i finally get the opportunity to do so, but currently, the 360 is the place to be.

Again,i dont buy consoles coz of who makes them, i grew out of that 6 years ago when i was a playstation fanboy, i matured (that is what poeple do as they grow up), and yes, ive played the on majority of the consoles, except for nintendo (dont know why, maybe coz i was too caught up in the ps and xbox), so i find it really silly for anyone whose read my posts to come up blindly after me.

dude, DOA was around even before the PS1 was out, and yes, there are a lot of VF, DOA signature moves on tekken, especially tekken 5, if you played beat em ups seriously you would notice that, its still a great title to play, but with nothing new to offer.

Forza isnt close to being a copy of GT, if you read my comparison of the two, or even played both titles, you would notice that forza is more of a simulator than GT, and yes GT does need damage, better A.I, and weather would be great, but before they can come up with those, Forza remains king of this genre. yes forza was supposed to be the challenger to gt, it went better.

never heard any ps fanboy complain about Splinter cell, up to the time it went exclusive on the x360.

As for ken kutaragi, my only beef with him is that he talks and lies too much, nothin else.

Hope ive answered you well tecno geek

[The PlayMaster]

Geez can we have a reasonable debate on this forum?

Ken Kutaragi is a great man, he invented the Playstation in a time where videogames were looked on as the ultimate nerdy thing to do, and then turned it into something "cool", with the Playstation 1, now the PS2 has sold 100 million units, with over 150 million units of videogame consoles sold last gen, Kutaragi built videogames as we know it today.

Ken Kutaragi paved the way for genre leading, rival console killing games such as Forza Motorsport, Halo series, Ninja Gaiden, Splinter Cell, and soon to be Greatest games ever like Alan Wake, Mass Effect, Crackdown, and many more.

We should all be grateful for what he's done in this industry.