Today's the day that Ken Kutaragi, father of the PlayStationKen Kutaragi, former SCE Chairman and CEO, has been revealed as the winner of this year’s AIAS Lifetime Achievement Award. He joins former Nintendo execs Howard Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa who received the award last year in receiving the prestigious accolade. He will be receiving his award on February 7th at the D.I.C.E Summit 2008 in Las Vegas.

"Ken Kutaragi's passion, innovative thinking and business savvy sparked a monumental movement that was unstoppable. If it wasn't for Ken and his concept of the original PlayStation, there wouldn't be the billion dollar industry there is today,” said AIAS president Joseph Olin.

Ken Kutaragi earned his title as ‘Father of the PlayStation’ after an abortive attempt between Sony and Nintendo to team up and make CD version of the SNES. As the deal fell through, Sony then took the bold step of developing its own console, the PlayStation, which eventually went on to successfully challenge both Nintendo and Sega for dominance in the console market.

However, despite the success of the original PlayStation and the ongoing dominance of its successor, the PS2, Kutaragi had a bit of roller coaster ride in Sony’s ranks.

Although once tipped to be the next Sony President, Kutaragi was demoted after a management shake-up in 2005. This year, in the wake of a difficult and highly criticised launch of the PlayStation 3, the Father of PlayStation’s career crashed to a surprising halt as Sony announced that he would be retiring to take on the title of honorary chairman at SCEI and a senior technology advisor to Sony Corporation CEO Sir Howard Stringer.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it feels even more like Kutaragi was shunted out of the door prematurely – the PS3 did not turn into the instant success that Sony seemed to anticipate. But what did it really expect? At launch, the PS3 was taking on two consoles already performing incredibly well; it used advanced but difficult-to-manufacture Blu-ray technology, which in turn caused stock shortages and severe delays in getting the console to all its regions; and it arrived with a crippling high price tag. Not to mention that all the decent games were already arriving on the rival consoles.

Now, just a few months after Kutaragi’s retirement, things are looking decidedly better – the price tag has been squeezed down to something much more manageable, Blu-ray is just on the cusp of actually looking useful, sales are up in the US and for the first time, the PS3 has been consecutively outsell its cheaper Nintendo rival for two consecutive weeks. Plus, there are actually some games out for it that are really worth buying.

The AIAS award should serve as a reminder that Ken Kutaragi made a huge difference to the games industry and that despite Sony’s seeming lack of faith in him, his PlayStation legacy is still one that could serve the company exceptionally well in the years to come. Now, let’s hope he can come up with another one of his trademark quotes in time for his acceptance speech. Remember guys, “the PS3 is not a game machine”.

Source
GameSpot

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