If you like videogames, you’ll be happy to know that today, August 8, is Ken Kutaragi’s birthday; he’s 73. He was working for Sony in their digital research labs in 1989 when he noticed how much his daughter loved playing games on her Nintendo. He tried to get Sony interested in video games, but they were oblivious. He kept working at Sony, but in his spare time designed a new 16-bit sound chip for Nintendo. Sony found out, but thanks to the personal intervention of the CEO, Kutaragi kept his job.
Kutaragi, it turned out, got along pretty well with Nokio Ohga, the Sony CEO, and persuaded him to back a new project — a CD-ROM accessory for the Nintendo game system, as well as a Sony-branded game system. The Sony system only played Nintendo games, but it was a start, and also started a well-known name: PlayStation.
Kutaragi kept working on Sony game hardware, even though everyone at Sony except the CEO thought it was a dead end. When the licensing deal between Nintendo and Sony fell apart a few years later, Kutaragi was just about ready with the next PlayStation console, which played games in a new, proprietary format. The new PlayStation had to compete against established products from Nintendo and Sega, but quickly became the most popular of the consoles of the time. By the time the PlayStation 2 came along, it had a 65% market share, and the Sony video gaming division was becoming the most profitable part of the company, and by the late 1990s Kutaragi was expected to become the next head of Sony. By 2004, Time Magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and called him the Gutenberg of Video Games (whatever that means).
Kutaragi didn’t become the CEO of the entire Sony company, but did lead their Computer Entertainment division, which is now the biggest part of the company. He retired from his daily roles at Sony in 2007, but seems to be keeping busy as the CEO of Cyber AI Entertainment, the CEO of Ascent Robotics, a visiting professor at Ritsumeikan University, and serving on several corporate boards. But not with Nintendo, which still doesn’t have a new licensing deal with Sony.
