Ken Kutaragi has finally been demoted out of Sony. Kazuo Hirai is taking his responsibilities. Kutaragi is now an “honorary chairman and senior technology adviser.” His role as an official mouthpiece of the PS3 and Sony is finally over. This follows up recent news when he lost his title as CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment (a sub-division of Sony Corp). The current CEO of Sony Corp., Stringer, might have seriously demoted him, but Kutaragi, was seriously an idiot:
According to an interview with Stringer in the Wall Street Journal, Kutaragi surprised his boss by exceeding production budgets. In one particularly illustrative moment, Kutaragi startled management with an impromptu 20% price cut for the Japanese 20GB PlayStation 3 model.
Wow? I would have fired him right there! Anybody who takes a brand from loved #1 to a loathed #3 overnight should be fired.
Kutaragi was long known for his emphasis on hardware. But Stringer has been pushing for a software reform. If executed properly, this could significantly threaten Microsoft in everything but the OS – from digital media, home entertainment, to gaming. This is because Stringer wants to integrate the many isolated divisions in the company into one cohesive operation. I mean, you have no idea how much time my roommate wasted trying to get a DVD to play in his PS3 on his Sony flat screen — apparently they weren’t fully compatible!
Finally, someone who understands the value of software. Hardware is nothing without great software, and it was Kutaragi’s thinking that made IBM overlook an opportunity to buy out Microsoft.
Now Sony has to clean up Kutaragi’s mess. With all of the piss-poor decisions Kutaragi made, let’s hope Sony can recover their gaming division before it’s too late. Right now they are #3 and it doesn’t look to be changing any time soon.