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Father of Sony Playstation Steps Down

Posted by Zonk on from the a-retirement-with-games dept.

Raver32 wrote with a link to a CNN article about the end of Ken Kutaragi's time at Sony. His departure was announced back in April, and now leaves Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) headed by Kazuo Hirai, Sony Computer Entertainment's (SCE) former president and COO. "Though no longer a board member, Kutaragi will hold an advisory post at the gaming unit, according to SCE official Sayoka Henmi. The departure of Kutaragi, an icon among gamers, marks the end of an era at Sony Corp. that saw the company long dominate the video game industry with its flagship PlayStation consoles. But it also highlights troubles at Sony amid a series of blunders over the rollout of its PlayStation 3 and intense competition from Nintendo Co.'s popular Wii console and Microsoft's Xbox 360."

2 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. Re:occasional failure. by hibiki_r · · Score: 4, Interesting

    About even? I guess that they are, in the same sense that 30 are 60 are about the same.

    NPD numbers for May in the US:

            * Nintendo DS: 423K
            * Nintendo Wii: 338K
            * Sony PSP: 221K
            * Sony PlayStation 2: 187K
            * Microsoft Xbox 360: 155K
            * Sony PlayStation 3: 81K

    The Wii sells twice as much as the 360, which sells roughly twice as much as the PS3. I call that a spectacular failure for Sony.

  2. Politics by rlp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My understanding is that there was no love lost between Kutaragi and Stringer. Kutaragi had expected to be made CEO, but instead the board picked an outsider. Problems with the PS3 gave Stringer an excuse to ease Kutaragi out.

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