Katuragi forced to retire from Sony : Looks like 'Ol Ken is stepping down from Sony

I think it's a great shame. I don't know what happened internally in Sony but didn't Ken champion the whole Playstation concept? He always seemed very enthusiastic and passionate about what he did. I didn't keep up with why the public at large turned against him. (maybe they purchased 360s?) It just seems a shame.

 

Are we talking about the same Kutaragi here? The one who said that playing PS2 would be like jacking into the Matrix? Anyone who says that about their video game console is a jackass as far as I'm concerned.

Purchasing a 360 (or any other console) shouldn't prevent you from liking the competition, by the way.

 

Eurogamer has a pretty good article on Kens career. I think his positive contributions out weigh his hyperbole.

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=75805

 

Off topic but I must say that I love your Avatar, ASSEMbler ! :lol:

Yakumo

 

That eurogamer article is nice, if not a bit crap...

Trying not to be a fanboy here, but why do they feel the need to over exaggerate the success of the PS1 and PS2 and completely downplay every other player...

Oh and it mentions that the early SNES-CD had a production run of 200. Where did that come from?

 

I was going to say the exact same thing. :thumbsup:

 

That's being a bit hard on the man. I still think Phil Harrison should have been fired first as he has talked the most arse before the PS3 launched.

 

*edit
Oh crap sorry Pikkon

 

Went something like this.

Ohga: Your tape recorders are ass
Sony: oh well you think you could do better??
Ohga: yeah I do
Sony: Ok here's the keys to the company, have fun owning the place.

There seem to be quite a few things about that article that are biased and questionable at best.

 

Nintendo wants Ken!!

http://www.qj.net/Satoru-Iwata-We-d-love-to-have-Kutaragi/pg/49/aid/90758

 

They did the same thing transitioning from psone to ps2. They make far too much money from selling the pstwo's compared with what they cost to make. I'd even expect a price drop on them at some point. To bring out the final customers from the wood worm & to try to reposition it as an old system. The price it's still selling for in the UK makes it look like a current system to potential customers. They are going to have to drop the price of the PS3 though, in the same way they dropped the price of the PS2 and PSX before it.

It's also something that Commodore used to do, keep selling whatever the customers want to buy. Bring in something better and more expensive at the same time. The C64 managed to survive for years after the Amiga was introduced.

smf

 

i know.. i bought one! :lol:

 

on the other hand, nintendo always milk their consoles to death usually before releasing the next.

@ Dr_Slump:

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/784/784665p1.html

 

on related news:

http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/784/784583p1.html

Somehow I doubt there will be a PS V (five)

I m looking forward to the next megalomaniac statemetent from this man

 

I don't really understand all the hatred and cruel remarks about the man. He was outspoken, often comically so, but he was good at what he did best. Engineering consoles.

I had no idea the PS2 'cost' Sony $2.5 Billion though!

 

@Taucias:

Indeed! The ps2's processor was an innovation that took place entirely for the needs of the PS2.

Unlike the CELL technology, which will be hosted in numerous other high-end solutions, the Emotion Engine was the result of Sony and Toshiba's commitment in order to make a small wonder.

The processor carries in its design a lot of academic backbone, especially in the field of Vector processing and it's a beast.

Unfortunately, the rest of the PS2's design was an after-thought compared to the extremely powerful processor it hosts (EET can do ALOT of MACs!), and the poor decision of limiting VRAM to 4MBs shows.

If one studies the PS2's architecture, it is facinating in that it is the exact opposite of a personal computer!

Where computers offer large cache spaces and small pipes, the PS2 opts for large pipes and small buckets, bringing the concept of 'streaming' to a whole new level - Unfortunately this is easier said than done, as we have seen.

The Emotion Engine is one of those processing experiments that will never repeat itself, and it will never be used in another device - despite the rich libraries now available for it.

It's an excellent exercise in "thinking out of the box", but that's what it is, an experimental design , not quite fit for the balanced needs of a game console.


What I have noticed in every design by Kutaragi, is that he pays too much attention to ONE and only aspect of a console, often neglecting the overall balance.

This can be seen with the PS1, a machine that was geared to push polygones

The PS2, following the foot-prints of the N64 and establishing real vector processing capabilities

and the PS3, with its odd selection of multi-cores that aim at monstrous FPU calculations.

One can understand a great deal about the man behind these designs, just by studying his architectures. His personality is reflected in the single-sided way his designs function, often to the detriment of other areas.

 

Sony 0 : Big N 1
:lol:

that's almosto nothing!

 

Kammedo, 4MB are indeed very little for the PC-trained programmer. Sony's intention however was to make sure that the 4MBs were constantly feeding to the rest of the system in a streaming manner, making it act more like a buffer than a quasi-permanent pool of assets.

The first generation of games suffered greatly because of this , making them look inferior to the DC's graphics in color depth and texture variety.

Other odd choices are the fact that the PS2 can't do 640x480, only 640x400 effectively, for some reason;p