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Sony and Kutaragi - What Went Wrong?
Last week's news that Ken Kutaragi was stepping down from his post at Sony wasn't exactly a surprise, but it does raise a number of questions. Given reports that Kutaragi has visions for PlayStations 4, 5, and 6 and analyst speculation that he'll be involved with those products as well, why is he on the way out the door? 1up's Editor Sam Kennedy spends some time ruminating on the situation on his site blog, and comes to the conclusion that this may be what Kutaragi wanted all along. "No one doubted Kutaragi's vision or ability to create fantastic hardware, but his failure as an executive was holding the division back. This is why Kaz Hirai took his place. With the PS3 off and running at the start of a 10-year life cycle, Sony won't need a visionary for quite some time -- now, it needs someone to run the business. And Kaz is right for that. He's a team player and has great relationships with the publishers. He can take things from here. But in all of this hubbub surrounding his departure, what's perhaps been overlooked is that this may have been what Kutaragi had also wanted. It's unfortunate, as the expectation was always for Kutaragi to climb the corporate ladder, yet this wasn't necessarily his goal. As he once told Newsweek about his executive role, 'We have so many things to create, but unfortunately for me I have a lot of responsibility right now...This was not in my dream.'"
The problem Sony put themselves into is that "better" could mean less power [on paper] which would be hard to sell given their current attitude that FLOPS == fun.
If the PS4 was more economical, and also less powerful chances are it would be a very hard sell without really distancing themselves from the PS3.
Look at Wii, sure they made it faster, probably added some ram to it, etc. But they're not a stats junkie. They're not dependent on raw numbers to sell consoles. Instead they rely on it actually being a fun toy.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.