Is Ken still with Sony?

???????

is that joking or real asking?

and no he is not with SONY now

Don't read as a knock on your tastes or the games you like but it is pretty clear that the PSP is the source of all Sony's problems strategically, PS3 was based on PSP philosophy:

1) UMD is dead as a format. Tons of money had to have been invested in that just to get it into stores. The equivalent for PS3 is Home which was supposed to be another way to monetize content from the power of the hardware.

2) PSP divided Sony's resources into three ways for a time, and I don't think they were prepared for it. PS3 would have had an easier launch if they could have focused more of their internal studios on PS3.

3) PSP beat the 'innovative' DS initially out of the gate despite costing more money than DS. Sony surely saw DS as a stronger foe than the GC successor given that GB / GBA were big hits. If PSP had gotten its ass kicked from the begginning by DS and then pulled closer to even, instead of the reverse, I don't see why Sony wouldn't have chopped out the Blu Ray from PS3 for a year or two in a cheap SKU and sold it for $400 alongside the PS3 skus we've had so far. DS vs PSP went something like 1:1, 3:2, 6:2, but now its almost 9:3 for hw (27m vs. 9.9m last fiscal year - had been 31m vs 14m the previous FY), and 4:1 to 5:1 for software. As late as the quarter ending September 2009, Sony was expecting to ship 15m PSPs for the year ending March 2010 because of the PSP Go. Instead, they shipped 9.9m PSPs. I cite this as a problem because to me, it suggests PS3 will drop offquickly once it passes its fastest pace. PSP shipments were 16.08m from October 2007 to September 2008 but are off 60% for the year ending March 2010 to 9.9m - that is a nearly 40% decline in less than two years and it will probably accelerate as the Iphone, IPad and 3DS grow. I really don't see why Wii 2 or X720 won't be introduced in 2012 to do the same thing to PS3. Nintendo sure as hell isn't going to be launching Wii 2 for $600.

With a quicker pattern of growth from a cheaper price, the HD SW market would have been big enough to discourage publishers from putting the 50-60 games on Wii that have sold 1m units. Without their help Wii would have had a lower peak and unlike DS, Sony would have had a real shot at catching Wii with a later peak. But by going with a more extreme version of the PSP / DS price disparity the Wii peak will be high enough to insure that even with Wii in decline as PS3 peaks it isn't likely at all for PS3 to catch up because soon enough they'll both be in decline, leaving Wii with a base advantage.

4) That is a problem because in the next transition to PSP2/ PS4 Sony will have a smaller sw revenue stream from older systems then Nintendo will - and so it will be easier for Nintendo to take risks. Nintendo may even re-enter the graphical arms-race to try to cut Sony's software market further.

5) More simply if PSP had done to DS what PS1 / PS2 did to N64 / GC, we wouldn't even be having this discussion - Nintendo would have canned the Wii as it is just as based on DS philiosophy as PS3 is based on PSP philosophy. If you look at Nintendo's profits and compare it to SW shipments, they'd be in deep shit if totals on their systems were under 100m games per year for a number of years. With PSP taking 65% market share and PS3 launched at a lower price Nintendo SW shipments would have likely been 50m-80m for a while and that would have been it for Nintendo as a relevant company - so strategically that is my issue with Kurtagi - he was within two decisions of destroying Nintendo and Sega and instead he allowed Nintendo to come back and essentially erase all of Sony's dominance in the space of five years. Its not like Wii wouldn't have done better than GC anyway, but there were some indications early on that Nintendo expected it to do 50m or 60m - not the 115m its going to do.

So essentially creating something massive, and then nearly destroying it doesn't make you a genius. He certainly isn't an idiot, he made some good calls, but its more like 7 / 10 vs.  11 / 10 or 10 /10 as far as leadership goes.

Here I am!

I predict they will show a 3D version of Ken Kutaragi at E3. It will sell tens of millions in Japan alone.

I  have always love his was to analyze everything. Badgenome 4 Mod!!!!

Well if we consider the market size between PS1/2 and 3. We can clearly see that anyone who does think he is a genius is more prone to be a playstation fan. From a business perspective the guy lucked out by focusing on a market that wasn't tapped, then focused on it to death. A few comments from Sony has no bearing on the facts that his choices at the height of his position has led for the Sony's console division to flounder. The turn around if you want to consider it to have one has happened because he is gone.

An amazing man!

removal of hot topics wasn't enough....

Wow, the Source starting an argument for once (rather than just being attacked and being nice enough to justify himself week after week) and Zen backing down from an argument.  E3 sure has strange and magical effects on the Chartz.

What I've never understood about these discussions is that people often talk as if the PS3's loss of marketshare happened entirely because of a few executives making dumb decisions.  Oh, I agree, there were plenty of fucking dumb decisions to go around -- but do you really think there was any chance the Playstation marketshare wasn't going to be cut into this generation?

You had Nintendo, who were in a do-or-die position, who shocked everyone with a radically new approach,

and then you had Microsoft, a huge tech company who already had ties to most game developers in the world, who specifically targetted the Playstation as the competitor they had to take down this gen, going out of their way to get the same games on their system and blur the two products together, even going so far as to have their console's processor designed by the same people at IBM who were designing the Playstation chip (correct me if I'm wrong here).  Not to mention taking the Playstation's third party-driven strategy and running with it.

Just with Microsoft's challenge alone, I would have been shocked if the Playstation hadn't lost at least a tiny bit of marketshare (not to take anything away from Microsoft, who have exceeded everyone's expectations and done a great job with the 360).

But instead every company has made an extremely strong showing this gen, in their own way.  And, the Playstation 3 had a ridiculously bad launch.

So if you can't give a single guy credit for the success of two consoles he's referred to as "the father" of, why does he get the full blame when things go wrong?

Is it possible that we scoff at someone being a genius just because of who's on top at the moment?  What's the half-life of genius these days?

I mean, I understand that history is written by the winners, but why is it that the winners seem to have a long term memory which cuts off past the four-year mark? 

Yes a true genius, almost drove Sony into the ground and left the door wide open for Nitnendo to unleash its disruption