Ken Kutaragi: Everyone at Sony Thought PlayStation Would Fail - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 October 2024 / 1,915 Views
Ken Kuturagi, known as "the father of the PlayStation," speaking at Tokyo Game Show 2024 stated that everyone at Sony thought the original PlayStation would fail.
"We wanted to share the passion," said Kuturagi (via VideoGamesChronicle). "We wanted to hear their expectations and what they did not expect, so we wanted to hear from them. So we visited dozens of companies if not hundreds, we visited a lot of game makers. It was a great memory. They were not interested.
"They just said, 'Don't do it. There were multiple companies and none of them were successful. You are going to fail.' That’s what they told us."
Kutaragi oversaw the development of the original PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and PSP. He would leave Sony in 2007.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Misquote from VGC?
They visited dozens (or hundreds) of companies, and they (not Sony) said Playstation would fail.
I remember when I first got a PS1 I thought it was very clunky and slow because of how long it took for games to load due to the disc compared to how fast SNES games loaded back then. But once I was in the game (my first game being Assault Riggs, I was blown away! Also Battle Arena Toshida (sp?) was my first fighting game and I couldn't put the controller down even though I've never been big on fighting games.
Thanks Ken for fighting to get PS off the grounds. It's been an invaluable addition to gaming since the PS1.
Nintendo prolly thought it would fail too. That's why N64 was so difficult to develop for: Nintendo didn't expect any true competitors to emerge. (They also had to lower the price of hardware pre-launch when they realized that actually yeah, PlayStation is taking the market by storm.)
Pride before the fall.
In all fairness it took a long while to pay off. Profit margins for PlayStation have been slim for a long time. So much so that the PS3 era basically ate up all profits of PS1 and a good chunk of the PS2 era. The PS4 and PS5 have made Sony a good chunk of money though.
They had low profit margins at first because they priced the consoles low to be competitive in the industry. It's part of why they're so successful today. It's not a failure of the first systems, it was just a long term business strategy
I am not saying it was wrong I am just saying the rewards where low for a long time and that the PS3 was financially a massive failure (great system with great games though). So that a lot of businessman weren't to positive about that strategy is nothing new.
PS4 and even more so PS5 have high profits and PS is definitely paying off now. Still Playstation is profits cannot hold a candle to Nintendo's profits.
The weak Yen is going to force Nintendo to price Switch 2 much higher than Switch 1. Adoption could be very low and those profits could plummet
Thus is about how nobody thought PS1 would be successful and dominated and here you talking about the PS3
I said the profits where razor thin. The PS one era made 3 billion in profits, the PS2 era only 2 billion. Considering the amount of revenue I wouldn't say either are a massive business succes. Nintendo makes as much profits in a good year as PlayStation did in an entire gen (and lost most of it too). So I can understand the guys at Sony for not believing in it.
The PS5 already made over 10 billion in profits. The first 2 years PS1 did not make profit, even the PS2 had one year with a net loss.
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/ps5-is-sonys-most-profitable-console-gen-ever-after-just-3-years-beating-ps4-by-over-dollar36-billion-in-sales/
3 billion back then was a huge success especially for a 1st console and going against Nintendo. Nintendo was a major force before the PS1
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