Farewell Ken

http://news.com.com/Sony+says+sayonara+to+father+of+PlayStation/2100-1043_3-6179598.html?tag=nefd.lede

Off to join "Barbie" - well, I would.

Isn't Barbie a Wii exclusive?

It's about time... From what I heard he was half of Sony's problems with PS3 delays. But then he might just have been used as a scapegoat.

You must admit though, he did come up as a bit of a nob.

Interesting. Is the PS3 'officially' a flop now, then?

Having looked into my crystal balls, I reckon the PS3 will be a slow starter, but will eventually rule the console world.

Presumably, your balls also predict a large price cut, then?! :)

I've scratched my crystal balls

Yes I see a price drop below £350 within two months, and below £300 at Christmas

Ken Kutaragi has always interested me because of the duality he's supposed to possess ... great engineering skills and a keen business mind. Obviously the Playstation family of products are pretty amazing and few people will ever acheive what he and his teams did but still at the end of the day as many a genius has done he went off the deep end a little, pushing for a future that perhaps the world just wasn't ready for. I know my wallet wasn't ready anyway ...

I wanna crystal ball!

Scapegoat. I think he was pushing for features that other Sony execs wanted to scrap if I remember.


Ken was the father of Playstation in that it's more or less his creation. He has no/little part in marketing/securing games/whathaveyou. The PS3 is not going to be taken off the shelves because he's gone. It's a solid product with a long term future.

There's a reason why it's to be considered a long term product (unlike its competitors)... because there won't be anybody else around to fill his boots and design another one for quite some time. His role has been filled already, but the new guy has a lot of history to catch up on.

Yeah, I can already see Peter Moore and Reggie Fils-Aime doing their victory dances about all this. Then again, you still have Kaz Hirai and Phil Harrison, so don't think Sony's holding the white flag just yet...

Actually I was thinking Peter Moore must be shaking in his boots.

the PS3 is doomed, it was doomed from the second they released their planned specs.

Microsoft had the idea, lets not make the machine the most powerful, lets just make it good and make the games even better.... The trouble is that Nintendo also thought the same thing but took it to a new ex stream and its paid off for them.

The PS3 is never going to be anything more than sloppy 3rds. All Hail the new kings of the console market, MS and Nintendo.


On a personal note, I hope MS kick nintys ass, not because I am a huge MS fan, I just see a future in consoles where the line between an Xbox 3,4 or 5 and a PC is non existant, and a game works on either machine just depending on what one you have or want to play it on. thats the future people. 1 game, any platform.

That wasn't their idea at all. First of all the XBox 360 is only marginally less powerful than the PS3. Secondly, it is not even remotely well built with thousands of customers experiencing the "Red Ring of Death" general hardware failure indicator amoungst other critical problems. Lastly their games aren't "better" by a long margin, the top three selling games being run of the mill FPS, and the fourth best selling game being yet another EA Sports title.

You left out "Microsoft". As in one game, any Microsoft platform. Which is somewhat of a moot point. And as for "Kicking Nintendos Ass", that's probably going to be fairly difficult, since 9 of the top 10 selling games of all time are Nintendo games (with EA's The Sims on a respectable 9th place) and Microsofts most popular game to date (Halo 2) on a pathetic 31st place.

Not a huge MS fan? Please. No-one else would ignore the financial aspects of Microsofts catastrophic entry into the console market. Never mind the fact they can't seem to come up with a compelling reason to buy, or that their "Micro" payment scheme for Live is ridiculous beyond belief (a months worth of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report is $10 USD more expensive than a month of cable subscription, that would also get you all the other Comedy Central shows).

When your selling so many consoles there are going to be problems, even nintendos number one machine was plagued with problems at the start, normally no matter what company it is they get fixed, and they are almost always happening to a small portion of customers and always get blown well out of proportion thanks to the net and press.

And the Xbox 360's Games are far better than anything on the WII, I didnt say games developed by nintendo or Microsoft, I said better games, the developer is irrelevant.

And the games currently out for the Xbox 360 are far better than those on the WII, having said that I do enjoy playing WII bowling. its loads of fun. and I will be getting my son a WII on his birthday.



I left it out for a reason, Microsoft will dominate the console market, Mr Gates and his wealth will see to that, and he wants to shove all that money into developing a better console then who the hell cares, as long as it works and the games are good. He has also stressed his desier to have a unified developing system so that one game can be run on different platforms, and he will do what ever he can to make that happen. Sure, at first thats going to be XBox and PC only, but it wont be long until the other's follow on, its simply business, by making their machines use this common development base they open up their machines to games from ALL developers, and we will no longer see any of those stupid exclusive title per machine deals.

Its the way forward, and I cant wait for it.

Well what's "better" is highly subjective. Suffice to say that while you prefer the XBox 360's games, everyone else is buying Wii games. Wii games have totally dominated any sales chart in recent history. Look at this weeks US chart for example, 1 DS game, 3 Wii games, one PS2 game. Not a single XBox or X360 game in the top 5.

No they won't, no matter how badly you want it.

The idea that you can "buy" success in any market is absurd - even if Microsoft wasn't a publicly traded company. For starters if you've ever heard Bill Gates speak, he couldn't care less about game consoles - what he wants is computers that you can talk to, and that can talk back to you. Secondly even if Bill Gates wanted to shove all that money into the $26 billion USD deficit that the XBox venture has cost Microsofts shareholders, he wouldn't because Bill Gates has pulled out of Microsoft and is currently moving all his funds and interests to the Bill and Miranda Gates Foundation.

And you believe this? Bill Gates has spent the better part of the last 25 years, doing the exact opposite, intentionally violating anti-trust legislation - what on earth makes you think that's going to change? Because he said so? Oh my god man!

I find it interesting, that you think that the guy who is personally responsible for "stupid exclusive titles" (we'll call it Halo) in the first place is the one you think is going to put an end to it. How can you possibly claim that you're not being a fanboy?!? All your posts read like an "Ode to Mr. Gates" - even tho' he "left" Microsoft in 2006.

The least you could do is provide some sort of credible source for your inane hypothesis, speculation and wishful thinking.

Wii will be the biggest selling console this round so long as Nintendo don't mess up by not releasing half of the very good games from Japan in North America and especially Europe. Recently they seem to have been learning their lesson on the DS, at least when you compare the number of top draw games that finally do get released in the West compared to their previous consoles. Also on the DS they've realised they need to get western developers on board to win in the west.

As for the 360/PS3 the difference in the graphics between 360 and PS3 is vast, so at the moment is the price but the price will drop dramatically over the next 18 months but the superior graphics capability will always be there. Some people say the difference is minor but I haven't seen a 360 game that couldn't be done on my PC. Looking at the detail on Motorstorm just blows me away.

As for games working on any platform, never say never, but don't say soon either. Just look at Microsoft, they're currently going the other way with their different speced 360's. You may be right that it would be a good idea for consoles to be cross compatible but I think you're very wrong about the possibility of it happening any time soon.

Uhh, correction, Nintendo is not exactly a NEW king. Remember that before the PSX reign, Nintendo was on top with the original NES, and was in a close neck and neck with Sega during the 16-bit era. They were always kings in the handheld market, also, the PSP, even tho it's cheaper than it was, can't touch the DS Lite units sold.

Microsoft, however, since the original Xbox failed to meet the gaming world needs, the X360 more than makes up for that, and stealing those "once-would-be" exclusives to the PS3 were being stolen left and right by MS's deep pockets.

360 is selling more games per system than all the other consoles. Just not so many of one particular game. Lets face it, at the moment there are only one or two games for Wii that are actually worth playing.

last weeks top 10 selling games.

1. Spiderman 3 (Xbox 360)
2. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (Xbox 360)
3. Mass Effect (Xbox 360)
4. Super Paper Mario (Wii)
5. Spiderman 3 (PS2)
6. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Xbox 360)
7. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (Xbox 360)
8. TMNT (Xbox 360)
9. F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon (PS3)
10. Forza Motorsport 2 (Xbox 360)

Not sure how some of those got on the list, unless they are preorders. Was taken from game industry biz

lets not forget the 360 has a year head start. There are several really good wii games out now, ones that are better than any of the games on the 360.

keep in mind. Super Paper Mario is number 4 on that list... and it has about half the number of consoles as the 360.

The number one is a movie game, and is expected to have great sales, and C&C3 is also a shoe-in big seller.

Oh, And big surprise. Mass Effect is an Action RPG made by Bioware..

The Wii isn't going to be having the same kinds of sales as the 360. They won't have everyone shooting out to buy the latest and greatest.. It has a lot of people that hit the store every so often with the family and pick a new game for them all to enjoy.. I wouldn't be surprised if Wii Play is still selling strong in 3 years.

> lets not forget the 360 has a year head start.

Why not? Many people were happy to forget the PS2 had a head start on the Xbox

> There are several really good wii games out now,

True, but sadly no FPS games

> ones that are better than any of the games on the 360.

Just as good, yes, better, no.

Hmm, none of those top ten were even handheld games, let alone knowing that the DS Lite seems to feature far better handheld games than Sony ever did on the PSP.

LMAO!!!!

Chew on that Flameduck ha :P

It's just a better time to go Wii60 over a PS3 any day...

Just wait for MP3 Dynaman Just wait

> Just wait for MP3 Dynaman Just wait

What is MP3?

Metroid Prime 3, I'd assume.

err



Just a quick scan over that list, these games have not been released yet. As mentioned, pre-orders ?

I don't know where you get your sales numbers from.

ELSPA (Europe)

VGChartz (US and Japan)

Well, seems like Nintendo is now willing to claim bragging rights to what they weren't able to do in well over a decade... Dethrone Sony in all markets, and make themselves big in the video game industry all over again by reinventing themselves, much like they did in the 1980s. Still surprises me that the original PlayStation was originally going to be a Nintendo console.

Let's face it, Nintendo was sick and tired of being on the back burner, and decided that it was time for a bigtime change. With them outdoing Sony, that may have taught Kutaragi a lesson. Now Sony's being pointed at as a copycat of both Nintendo AND Microsoft, dunno what to make of that...