Ken Kutaragi, the visionary behind the PlayStation, delivered an opening keynote at the Tokyo Game Show where he expressed his belief that the game industry has the potential to grow exponentially as it enters the era of real-time computing.
Kutaragi engaged in a fireside chat with Katsuhiko Hayashi of Kadokawa Game Linkage, sharing his long-standing dream of seeing games evolve in the direction he has envisioned for decades. His insights, conveyed in Japanese, were later translated on YouTube.
Prior to his influential role at Sony, where he introduced the original PlayStation in 1995 and its successor, the PlayStation 2 in 2000, Kutaragi had foreseen the transition of games from toys to video games. With the computing power of the PS2, he anticipated consoles surpassing PCs in volume production.
Although his earlier predictions did not fully materialize, Kutaragi now foresees games entering an era of real-time computing with advancements in AI and other cutting-edge technologies.
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At 74 years old, Kutaragi continues his contributions to the industry as part of Ascent, a Tokyo-based AI and robotics company. He also serves as a professor of informatics at Kindai University.
Reflecting on the launch of PlayStation in the mid-90s, Kutaragi recounted the initial skepticism from game developers and even within Sony itself. Despite the doubts, Sony’s unique vision and cost-reduction strategies propelled the PlayStation to success, dominating the market against competitors like Nintendo and Xbox.
