Ken Kutaragi

Ken Kutaragi, or commonly known as the Father of PlayStation, was a creative visionary and technically skilled engineer at Sony who changed the gaming world. Kutaragi was born on August 2, 1950, in Tokyo, Japan and graduated with a degree in electronics, from the University of Electro-Communications. He entered Sony in 1975, where he first engaged in digital signal processing as background to his future work.

In the late 1980s, Kutaragi fell in love with the idea of gaming, and this acted as the turning point. He was assigned to work on a sound chip of the Super Famicom, which was what Nintendo produced, and he realized there was the possibility of the new high level of graphics and processing in gaming platforms. Sony had been reluctant to move into the gaming industry as the top management perceived gaming as a risky venture but through Kutaragi, the SPC-700 sound chip was secretly developed that made a mark on the Nintendo company finally drawing the attention of Sony towards hardware gaming. This resulted in the development of the PlayStation where Kutaragi obsessively pushed on it.

The PlayStation, which had been released in 1994, came to surprise the industry, where Nintendo and Sega dominated. The adoption of 3D graphics, CD-ROM, and developer-friendly tools by Kutaragi drew many kinds of game-makers, which guaranteed a well-developed selection of assets. It sold more than 100 million units, which confirmed the position of Sony in the history of games. Kutaragi also planned the PlayStation 2 (2000) that was the best-selling playing device with more than 155 million + units, and the PlayStation 3 (2006) that has brought complex multimedia functions.

Kutaragi, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment, drove the industry to change because of his decisive approaches and advanced technical skills. His legacy however persists through the worldwide dominance of PlayStation even after he left Sony in 2007. He later became a cofounder of Ascent Robotics, which is into AI and robotics manufacturing, and he took another streak at innovation. This history and leadership of Kutaragi as an engineer who became a gaming legend define his contribution that will remain in the technology and entertainment sector.