Ken Kutaragi Retires from executive role

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Erik Aston said:

fishamaphone said:

Erik Aston said:

I didn't think this would happen for another year or two, but I knew it would happen.

This was a necesary step. Its an exact mirror of Iwata leaving Nintendo 5 years ago.

 Don't you mean Yamauchi?  Iwata is the *current* big-boss.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

Yamauchi and Kutaragi are very comparable in their roles... Though Kutaragi had a bigger hand in the actual hardware specs, while Yamauchi let Yokoi and Miyamoto run that (to his credit.) But they were both one time visionaries who eventually ran their company (or division) into the ground.

Its good for Sony that they got rid of Kutaragi now, instead of waiting a whole generation like Nintendo. Though Ninty were always profitable, so they had some time to sit around deluding themselves during the N64 generation and GC launch. Its always necesary to fire the old exec who drove you into the ground (even though he brought them success, too), in order to revive the brand.

The downside for Sony, is that while Kutaragi is comparable to Yamauchi, Kaz is not comparable to Iwata and Phil is not comparable to Shiggy.

Edit: No disrespect to Kutaragi. He has a place as one of the top 5 most important figures in gaming history, for the way the PS brand created the European market and especially for how it rewrote the rules of third-party relationships.

I would personally see Kutaragi more like Yokoi. They both had visions, practically unlimited trust from their superiors and they were both pretty much successfull until... Yamauchi was a little harder to fire than Kutaragi, although, Yamauchi was the biggest shareholder.