So Ken Kutaragi, the "father of the Playstation", was forced to step down. By now, you all have heard the news in some form or another. Some of you (and by some of you I mean the rabid PS3 fanboys sending me hate mail) don't think it's a big deal at all. Just a normal day of operations at Sony. Well not so fast there bucko, this is VERY significant, and I'm about to tell you why.

Ken Kutaragi has been the driving force behind Sony's foray into gaming since the start. Known worldwide as the father of the Paystation, he has had a hand in all of Sony's gaming consoles, including PSP. He has also been the face and mouthpiece of the Playstation, but none moreso than the PS3 and PSP.

In short, he is the man who talked all the shit and couldn't back it up. He is the man that made all the promises that he couldn't keep. Sony finds him responsible not only for the failure of the PSP, but the imminent failure of the PS3.

Now before you go get your panties into a bunch, the PS3 hasn't failed yet, and it still has potential. However, there are some things you need to factor into this equation.

A.) Kutaragi hyped the PSP as the GameBoy killer, when obviously it wasn't. It was pretty, but cost way more than gamers wanted to pay. Even now, the core system itself struggles to sell in the face of Nintendo's juggernaut, the DS.

B.) Again, Kutaragi hyped the PS3 to be Jesus Christ walking on water, there is nothing else. Also pretty and overpriced, the system has failed to live up to the hype created for it.

C.) Then comes the defects. Let's forget that the PS2 laser fiasco never happened. Forget that it took 4 years and a class action lawsuit to fix it. What about the thousands of PS3's beginning to crash worldwide? Well the majority of them are due to the same thing that happened at TGS. The system is overheating in the small space afforded to it in the kiosks. People who walk into GameStop usually walk in to find the PS3 froze up. bad publicity.

This is all the latest in a string of fuck ups from Kutaragi, from the defective PS2's to the millions spent on crappy advertising for the PSP (like the racist ads here in the states calling mexicans dustballs, and the black vs. white ads overseas), to the millions spent on faulty kiosks that are causing false impressions in potential buyers.

3rd Party developers are taking once exclusive titles to the competition, and day by day, things look worse and worse for Sony.

So it's still not a big deal? Well what if Nintendo had fired Miyamoto-san, the father of almost every single popular Nintendo IP? Or what if Microsoft suddenly canned Peter Moore? Well considering that the Playstation is primarily Kutaragi's brainchild, we feel this is a big deal.

Will Sony pull out of this slump and reposition themselves? Or is it simply over for them before it even began? We will just have to wait and see. We here at Rated-M don't have high hopes, though we hope that 1st party games like Lair and Heavenly Sword can restore people's faith in this arrogant company.

Stay tuned for more.

We all know the sad truth behind the PS3. It costs too much to make, and there have been so many technical issues with it even after it's rather unseuccessful launch, that Sony was obviously headed into a downward spiral.

Following the failure of the PSP, and the imminent failure of the overhyped PS3, Sony has shelved Ken Kutaragi, the face of the PS3.

Reputable site Financial Times reports the following:

"Ken Kutaragi, the maverick Sony engineer behind all three generations of PlayStation games consoles, will on Friday become chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment in a management reshuffle that could foreshadow the company’s exit from video games hardware.

The surprise move, though technically a promotion, removes Mr Kutaragi from the day-to-day running of Sony’s games division at a critical moment.

With the PlayStation3 only just past its difficult launches in Japan and the US, Sony is desperate to ensure that its complicated machine triumphs in the holiday shopping season. The company described the changes as “strengthening” its management line-up.

In the longer-term, the PS3 faces stiff competition from Microsoft and Nintnedo and a European launch next March for which some analysts fear it is not fully prepared.

Replacing Mr Kutaragi as Sony Computer Entertainment’s global president and chief operating officer will be Kazuo Hirai, a veteran of SCE’s US division, who prematurely claimed four years ago that the era of console wars was over.

Investors know Mr Hirai as a slicker, more confident presenter than Mr Kutaragi. He is also understood to have stronger working relationships with American, European and Japanese games makers.

Analysts said that Mr Hirai’s promotion to a global role at SCE could mark a critical shift in management thinking, with Sony changing its emphasis so that the current generation of games console will be its last as a hardware manufacturer.

“The appointment of Hirai could be the start of a shift from hardware to software,” said Yuta Sakurai, an analyst at Nomura. “I cannot now imagine a PlayStation4.”"

So in a nutshell, financial advisors are now predicting that Sony will go the way of Sega, and just make software, which has always been their stronger point. I can't say we didn't see this coming. Sony has been in the red for years, hardly ever turning a profit in the videogame industry. Mark our words, this is the end.

For the full report from Financial Times, please visit the source link below!

SOURCE: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f6728ed8-8095-11db-9096-0000779e2340.html

G4TV made this parody commercial which pits PS3 vs. Wii in the style of the stupid, lame, retarded, misinformed Mac commercials.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9136575504838642038

I laughed out loud at this one. I really, truly did.