Engineer & Executive · Sony Computer Entertainment · b. 1950 · 1990s
The "Father of the PlayStation" — an engineer who secretly built a sound chip for Nintendo, was very nearly fired for it, and then built the console that destroyed Nintendo's dominance.
Ken Kutaragi was born on 2 August 1950 in Tokyo, took a degree in electronics engineering from Denki Tsushin University, and joined Sony's digital research labs immediately upon graduating in 1975. He built a reputation there as a formidable problem-solver across LCDs and digital cameras — none of which had anything to do with games. The turn came in 1983, when he watched his two-year-old daughter playing a Famicom and recognised what the medium was going to become. When Nintendo let it be known that it needed a sound chip for a forthcoming 16-bit machine, Kutaragi took the job — and did it in secret, because Sony's executives had no interest whatsoever in video games. He designed the SPC700, the chip that would give the Super Nintendo its extraordinary audio. When Sony's management discovered what he had been doing on company time, they were furious. The Sony–Nintendo partnership subsequently collapsed over licensing terms, and Sony, now possessing both a humiliated engineer and a half-built CD console, let him continue alone. The PlayStation launched in 1994 and was an immediate success. Kutaragi became president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment in 1999; the PlayStation 2 followed in 2000 and sold 40 million units in its first thirty months. He remained chairman and CEO until departing in 2007, shortly after the PlayStation 3's release.