Ken Kutaragi, recognized worldwide as the father of PlayStation, led the PlayStation division for many years before retiring in 2007, and in an extensive interview with the Japanese outlet 4Gamer, after an academic event in Japan, delivered a pointed critique of what happened to the brand since his departure, asserting that “once people from the PC gaming world came in, PlayStation became just like a PC” and that, since then, technological evolution had stagnated.
From his perspective, PlayStation lost the distinctive identity that had characterized it, and while he acknowledges that the bridging of consoles and computers helped to expand the market, he believes that this shift did not bring the innovation that defined the early generations of the console, when the aim was to push the boundaries of technology.
Technological stagnation and the gap with artificial intelligence
To understand the impact of this transformation, it is useful to recall that the early PlayStation generations sought to break technical barriers with unique architectures, such as the famous Cell processor of PS3, developed together with IBM and Toshiba, or the partnerships forged to create dedicated graphics chips.
At that time, the main goal was not to assemble common off-the-shelf parts, but to invent entirely new entertainment experiences, and as he reflected on the path the platform took after his departure, the father of PlayStation was blunt in stating that “once people from the PC world arrived, PlayStation became just like a PC.”
Moreover, he acknowledged that this approach allowed reaching a much larger audience, but he firmly questioned the real technological progress, adding “¿But did that actually lead to technological advancement? The answer is no,” and one of the pillars of his analysis is the contrast between the speed of artificial intelligence and the technical sluggishness of current games.
Companies like NVIDIA, which collaborated with PlayStation on the PS3 graphics chip, and AMD, which now manufactures PS5 technology, have strongly bet on artificial intelligence, and although consoles such as the PS5 Pro already employ AI-powered image upscaling tools, for Kutaragi the game industry is still far from fully harnessing that potential.
When comparing the pace at which computing evolves with what reaches players, the father of PlayStation was decisive in noting that “AI processing operates at a much higher technological level, but the video game industry has not yet put these technologies to use.”
This difficulty in adopting deeper advances means that generational leaps in consoles are becoming increasingly less surprising, causing current systems to rely on incremental improvements rather than delivering genuinely memorable changes.
The crisis of big developments and the need for reinvention
To illustrate this problem, Kutaragi compared the agility of development in the nineties with how large studios operate today, recalling that Battle Arena Toshinden was created in just three months with a team of fewer than ten people, and that even then it already incorporated advanced visual techniques for its time, such as 3D textures.
In stark contrast, contemporary projects require huge teams and years of work just to deliver minimal details, such as slightly more sophisticated lighting and shading or secondary characters with a couple of lines of extra dialogue.
By evaluating the lack of technical boldness that the industry suffers from, the father of PlayStation summed up his view by declaring that “it feels as though technological evolution has stagnated.”
Thus, and to conclude, in a scenario where consoles, computers, and phones compete for players’ free time, the industry’s challenge will be to regain the ability to reinvent itself and to wow once again, just as PlayStation did in its early years.
