I totally agree with what you just said, the source should have at least tried to stay impartial instead he brought out his wii banner and trolled on ps3, krazy ken was a genious and yes part part of his vision was messed up (he did not expect a recession, which in my opinion made people choose cheap wii over ps3), but no other company has ever brought us such a unique and powerful console, I am sick of the "only nintendo innovates" rubbish that get's thrown around too muhg considering only 20-30 milion of the wii user base came from the SNES-N64-GC era's the rest are all ps2 and new casuals in to play on the wii.

I only cannot wait to see what happens when ps3 hits a lower price tag, what happens if ps3 regains it's market share, because I have stated that the ps2 user base is still out there, whether it be on wii or xbox, i think they all will return eventually, it will not make a difference because the gen will be well over by the time that happens so no doubt you will rub it our faces...

Also this is just opinion, if you ban me for it, then it really shows just how "biased" you are.

Yeah, let's forget about his first post in the thread, which was nothing but opinion (to argue against facts) and a personal insult to a staff admin.

I can understand being peeved at TheSource's initial flamebait post, but hating on everyone that's critical of Sony and praising all who are on your "side" (however crude) makes me wonder what you're really after, here.

Not everyone is in love with Kutaragi, but this does not mean they have some personal vendetta against Sony or Playstation. If you read some of the posts in the thread, you'd understand that. People bringing up how "PS1 and PS2 are the greatest consoles ever" mean absolutely nothing to the thread, by the way, seeing as how the actual games have little to do with Kutaragi himself.

It's hard to personally comment on Kutaragi on whether he was a "genius" or not, because I'm unsure to what extent he was involved with the Playstations. However, I feel that although the PS1 / PS2 were very successful, the PSP / PS3 lead me to believe they may have never understood the reason why they were successful. If we assume Kutaragi was making the decisions (though Kenryoku Maxis argues against this, just giving a hypothetical scenario), it's possible he was simply in the right place at the right time, rather than being the genius people credit him for.

Why are so many people in love with a man who folded the first time his company ever faced real competition? Even Nintendo put up far more of a fight and retained much more of their previous market power with the N64! Nintendo would have won every scenario pretty much outside of revisionism where someone goes back in time and tells Sony the result of the current generation and next generation efforts sometime in 2003 so they could have done things differently.

Sony had no clue as to why they were even successful in the first place. Nintendo and to a much lesser extent, Microsoft understood why the PS1/PS2 were successful better than Sony did. No company deserves success which it cannot replicate. In this respect as Microsoft cannot replicate their success with Windows, Sony cannot replicate their success with the Playstation they are both as undeserving of it as each other. They can both take a poison pill and go to sleep forever in each others arms for all the good it will do for them.

Lol no one ever gets banned for opinion, though I haven't read anywhere that said anything bad about the playstation brand, or even the PS3 for that matter, The Source probably shouldn't have made a sarcastic post, especially with how overly sensitive people are being, but on the other hand there has been no reason for some of the reactions either, two wrongs don't make a right as they say.

As for what The Source actually said, it's true PS3 has been terrible for Sony on a business level, there is no pile of opinions that will ever change that fact, losing all the money you made with a previous console and then some is never in the cards from a business perspective which is why they pressured Ken into retiring, when the company restructured they really didn't know what parts the heads of Sony had planned to cut and any branch that was losing money was in danger.

As for anything else, people have brought site attacks into this, Wii attacks, or attacks against other camps... there is no need for any of that, if you truly wanted to prove your point people should discuss with facts, with a grounded argument, and be civil about it, Jacob has been nothing but civil, the sarcasm pissed a few people off, but the content of the argument was grounded in the fact that the PS3 has hurt Sony and his opinion that hurting them so badly can't qualify Ken as a genius, he was a smart man that did bring in new freedom for developers that was needed, and that point Jacob has pointed out over and over but people are going nuts still.

And Jneul I don't know why you're afraid of being banned, you didn't do anything wrong with that post, I do feel you should reread some of The Sources longer posts and do it without the feeling he's trying to "attack Sony/Playstation" and rather he's trying to debate Ken's importance/brilliance from a business perspective, which is what's being said, he said nothing bad about Sony and or Playstation and people are acting like he did... and then they're attacking him/others for it, for such an over reaction they do get moderated cause there is no call for it, but you however have NOT attacked anyone so why worry?

Ah, good old fashioned PS3-bashing. Why, as an anonymous Vampire Squid (a.k.a. Goldman Sachs) financier gushed after last year's record Federal-Reserve-subsidized bankster bonuses, it's like 2007 all over again!

1. Kutaragi was not an investment banker, and the videogame industry is not the CDO market. All consoles lose money at launch, then make up the money later. That's just the nature of the beast.

2. Sony lost $3 billion on launching the PS3, but will make back four times that from games, downloads, peripheral hardware, and BluRay sales.

3. The PS2 never had 70% market share. It had 55% at its peak, at a time when the game industry was smaller and less developed than it is today. Mature markets = lots of competition.

4. The biggest market expansion over the next 10 years won't be consoles, but handhelds and portable gaming, and that's where Nintendo and Sony will shine.

5. Kutaragi does deserve credit for pushing the multicore processing market forwards -- the PS3 was the first consumer device to use this technology effectively.

PS2 shipments are nearly 145m to date against fewer than 50m GCs and Xboxs combined. Thats over 70% market share. It was 22m vs. 11m for hw if you comare the peak years for hw. 55% is only legit if you throw in portables and older systems. Software was 1.5 billion PS2 games vs  400m GC Xbox games. Also over 70%. Whether you guys like it or not creating an empire and destroying it means you're not a genius. Moments of genius are different from genius - Napoleon and other men who do amazing things only to see it all crumble deserve to get knocked and validated

Its all theory and of course we'll never be able to know for sure.  But I definitely believe that the PS3 would have been much more successful as a less powerful, less costly system that appealed to all markets (aka what PS2 was) than a supercharged expensive machine targeting the 'Mature, core' gamer.  Of course, it didn't have to even be as weak as the Wii.  Look at what the XBOX360 is at an initial price tag of $400.  Now think what Sony could have done with the exact same hardware as the 360, but the previous hype and third parties ready to jump on the PS3.

Remember, its not just the factor of the systems power.  Its the lower price tag and wider appeal the system would have had out of the gate.

Apple and Nintendo have proven you don't need to lose money on systems to be successful. In fact, considering their substantial profits it seems like a much better business model to not use a loss leader strategy.

I concur.

Off topic, but what the hell.  This site's new layout hurts my eyes.  Green text on white and grey backgrounds.  Who in the hell came up with that?  Not somebody who ever had a degree in website design I assume.  Should I expect a ban with that comment?  People can't even check ban reasons anymore, so I guess I should assume a ban for straying off comment or something.

Now back on topic.

Regardless of rather you consider Kutaragi a genius or not, he's had a huge influence on gaming as we know it, so he'll go down in history. He is, rather you like it or not, a part of what shaped gaming as we know it today, so he is important.  

And by the way, the PS3 is hardly a failure.  To give up the market share Sony did might make it seem like it is, but it still is the best selling third place console of all time.  And it helped blu-ray conquer the high defintion movie market.

Ken Kutaragi is the father of Playstation, and over 200 million sold will solidify him in that position. Love whatever system you want to, He'll go down as a genious.

And once again, to stray off topic.  Seriously, what is up with this new layout?

Ken is basically the founder of the Playstation brand, in some stories about how everything came about, Ken was said to have seen his daughter playing the SNES and thought he needed to make a product like that and then worked with both SEGA and Nintendo to make disc formats for their systems.  As such he was allowed to view how they constructed their consoles, what went into engineering them, and the like so he found out a lot of inside secrets from the best of the best at the time, which is why the PS1 used to be the Nintendo Playstation, but some really effed up contracts with Sony owning the format and royalties made Nintendo pull out of the deal cause they couldn't trust Sony for a joint business venture and owning the royalties to the format meant most of the money from making the console would go to Sony.

Anyway yeah Ken is a shrewd businessman, he's smart, but genius is a bit of a stretch.  His initial visions were great but he lost sight of the consumer and developer when planning the PSP and PS3, he really and truly believed the Sony name brand was so powerful and the consumer base was so loyal that he could start to focus on furthering, Sony and SCE with the playstation brand, UMDs were supposed to be a new format for handheld devices to put DVD quality movies in portable devices, a lot of money was spent to put UMD movies out there, the consumers just didn't buy into it, especially with portable DVD players and huge amounts of portable flash memory around the corner.

PS3 had much the same idea, compete with what Microsoft had in the works, while furthering the company as a whole with the Playstation brand name, it didn't matter the cost of the product because consumers would buy it and infamously work two jobs to pay for it.  Blu-ray would be good for Sony's royalties and had to compete with HD DVD, and the cell processor would help Sony advance it's computer technology, you can tell their message in their ads for the PS3, it really was marketed towards people in the know about the tech and less to the average consumer.

I don't know if he truly lost sight of why the Playstation brand was a success, I think he and the company got too caught up with trying to further the company with a game console, I think they really wanted to prove how awesome SCE was/is by using a console to not only dominate the game market but the format wars and CPU technology.  Just overshooting things by a large margin and not the smartest of choices.