Ken Kutaragi Steps Down From His Position At Sony
 

http://www.gamersreports.com/news/55...ition-at-sony/

Thoughts? Good, bad, indifferent? I don't know much about him other than the stuff around the PS3 launch so, to me, this seems like a good split for Sony. I don't know anything about this "father of the rebirth of gaming" nonsense.

According the article, they say that because he was the creator/visionary/lucky dude that pushed the original Playstation out which, despite the author's opinion, I don't believe was as monumental as he claims.

Playstation wasn't a rebirth of gaming at all.

It *was* the birth of mainstream gaming though.

If anything I think this may help Sony get some of their fans back. The statements he was making about the PS3 up to its launch made many people not want one.

Are you serious? I could believe it to be the birth of modern gaming, though.

Sure. Before then, gaming was pretty much seen for kids/nerds. Starting with the PS1, it became much more "MTV" to play video games. The Xbox really cemented that notion, but it definitely started with the PS1.

Eh, I dunno about that. I feel gaming is far more accepted by people my age (I'm 30) because we all grew up with video games. So right when the Playstation hit (I was in college) it was in a great position for all of the people my age to pick one up.

Sure, kids got them too but the PS1 was almost immediately a fixture on my college campus. I think it was more of a "right place, right time" than anything they really did.

I agree, but Pixy's point stands regardless of whether it was anything they did or just luck on their part.

It was the turning point where gaming began to become "cool."

Yup. At the time when you heard the word Nintendo, you thought of kids. The Playstation made gamers out of a lot of late teens/early adults who never would have if the only options were the N64 or Saturn.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=R98qC0fd_1w
P.S. I have an XBOX, PS2, GC, PSP, GBA and DS. I have none of the current consoles.

Also, back in the '80s/early '90s, Nintendo and video games were basically synonymous and interchangeable. How many times would you say "I want to play Nintendo" instead of saying "I want to play video games" or some other similar statement.

I agree that the Playstation was the beginning of video games becoming mainstream and "cool." Back in the NES/SNES era video games were meant for kids. That is why some people today still see video games as being for kids because they are the type of people that live in the past and refuse to move forward.

They were meant for kids? I know some games back then would still get an M rating today if you think about it. Nobody remembers Narc? Blowing guys up into 5 pieces with your rocket launcher? The games didn't look any less realistic, but there were still violent games. Splatterhouse?

I can't quite figure out how to say it, but I guess I think that games became "mainstream" because people who grew up with games finally had the money to buy them, not because the Playstation did anything unique. If it hadn't come along, I think the Nintendo and Saturn would have handled the transition just fine.

I guess I'm not ready to give Sony credit for something that everyone I know thought was "cool" back in the SNES/Genesis days.

There's always (well post Pong) been an adult market for games. Look at computer games of the 80s. I think they just weren't "mainstream."

NES/SNES were played by people of all ages to be sure, but it's biggest demographic was kids. That's not true anymore.

See, I don't think that was true. In high school and middle school for me (late NES through the SNES/Genesis era) games weren't cool. They hadn't caught on as "cool" in the jock or preppy crowd for sure and were viewed as kiddy or for nerds etc.

I do think the kid gamers growing up was part of it, but it was also going to CD-Rom, getting better graphics for sports games etc., but especially Sony's direct marketing of teens and older gamers that helped expand the base beyond what Nintendo had been doing.

And no bias here, I'm a life long Nintendo fan.

Didn't Kutaragi just get a promotion? Oh well, he made some of the outright dumbest comments in the history of gaming, so good riddance.

Lots of people in my high school were playing Madden and hockey on the Genesis - it seemed very mainstream to me at the time.

I remember being at a big party where we spent most of the night pulling off the fatalities in Mortal Kombat in front of about 20 people.

Granted, I ran with the "artsy" people rather than the jocks, but there was some definite cross-pollination and lots of people were playing games. This is also just my experience, but I still think the people who liked games bought PS1s, just like they had the other systems. And if it hadn't been there, something else would have easily taken its place. I don't think the Playstation did anything special that brought people in - just better graphics and longer loadtimes. :)

Sony started marketing games as something that makes you cool, which is not something the other game companies had tried before.

The Playstation definitely made the RPG genre "cool". In the NES/SNES days, RPGs did not sell well which is why Square never brought over some of their Final Fantasy games to the US. Final Fantasy 7 on the PS1 was the first blockbuster selling RPG that I remember.

I guess we will have to rely on a different bonehead exec to bring teh funny.

Not really.. other than a few titles (Final Fantasy, Pokémon, etc.), it's still a niche genre. The Square-Enix label allows some games to get a little exposure but for the most part, RPGs are still a hard sell considering the amount of localization work that needs to be done on them (especially now that they're all 500 hours long and have voice acting).

Kaz Hirai?

To keep the topic...well...on topic. Other than owning a PSP I've never really kept up with any of Sony's PR. What boneheaded things has this guy said and/or done? The article didn't really detail much.

Just google "kutaragi quotes", and revel in his craziness.

I just visited a couple of 2005 links devoted to his foot-in-mouth PR, and they were too early to capture one of his most-infamous comments about the then-mysterious pricepoint... people will want to work two jobs.

Everyone I knew (my age) always played video games. I think we're about the same age... I don't remember "cool" kids in high school and jr. high ever not playing video games. Granted, some of it was arcades, but video games were still popular.

If anything, I was the one who was less interested in consoles and arcades... cause I usually played computer games.