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It was emperor Kaz Hirai who said "he built an empire".
Not only did Kutaragi build SCE/SIE into an empire, he positioned it to achieve greatness in the present day before passing the scepter to Hirai. His risky decision to trade ease of development for the prospect of a chip faster than Moore's Law has rewarded today’s empire beyond measure, and his legacy provisions continue to sustain the empire’s vigor across various interests:
Hardware -- The popular opinion is that PS3 was a failure, but profit and market share aren't the only measures of success. Technological success can be a measure, but it isn't valued in quarterly/yearly financial reports and "console wars". Nonetheless, Kutaragi knowingly sacrificed PS3’s near-term profit and market share (he was “aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households”) for technological success, mid/long-term profit and maket share. It didn't go exactly as was hoped (didn't make bank and sell 100 million units), but in the end PS3's sacrificial fate made asynchronous compute engine architecture mainstay tech on PC and console. It's the most significant aspect of CELL that ranger Mark Cerny knows well, now marketed as 'ACE' for AMD GPUs. These GPUs closely mimic CELL's task submission/job execution (i.e., SPURS), but PS4, PS4 Pro and PS5’s GPUs mimic CELL the closest. They “replicate” CELL’s SPU Runtime System (SPURS) while being SPU task manager (STM)-style efficient. STM (entries [0012], [0015] and [0016] explain what and why; [0070], [0071] and [0072] touch on non-CELL implementations and STM results) allows an SPU to load portions of task queues into its local store (i.e., memory) used as “cache”, select the tasks that match its current program code and return the ones that don't to main memory to minimize costly context switching/"cache" flushing. PS4/PS4 Pro's GPUs imitate this process by means of a "volatile bit" that selectively invalidates cache lines to reduce cache flushing when L2 is used for compute and graphics at the same time. PS5 keeps with PS4/PS4 Pro’s volatile bit process and has a similar process for its I/O complex. Coherency engines in the complex tell cache scrubbers on the GPU which address ranges to scrub away so as to avoid full cache flushes when the SSD is read. Without these STM-inspired efficiency measures, PS4 Pro and PS5 are easy marks for One X and Series X with no way to effectively counter their brute-force asynchronous GPU compute or outduel SX’s Velocity architecture. That despite D3D12’s Multi-engine Resource/Enhanced Barrier hobbling both Xbox GPUs by requiring full cache flushes after they complete their work. The unpopular fact is that CELL’s system architecture is the saving grace of post-PS3 era PS consoles. They and future PS consoles are Kutaragi's standard-bearers. His due honor for attempting to make CELL a fixture in the world of computing, which unintentionally yet consequently gave Cerny/SIE the privilege of putting certain CELL related features on AMD's GPU roadmap for the benefit of AMD, SIE and industry. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. 'The Road to' begins with CELL tech/PS3.
Software -- Kutaragi's crucible (i.e., a precursor CPU that's GPU-like) tested the mettle of PS Studios' ranks and steeled them for battle in the age of asynchronous GPU compute programming years before the dawn. For two generations, Redmond's assaults have been repelled by happy warriors (e.g., the ICE Team) highly skilled in the art of PS3. Mastery of Packing fp16 shader operations on SPUs and checkerboard MLAA on SPUs were trials for fp16 'Rapid Packed Math' usage and checkerboard rendering on PS4 Pro. PS3 pushed PS Studios’ elite to be the most cunning at their craft. The evidence of history bears witness to the claim. Kutaragi is the only CEO (or system architect for that matter) to ever assure SIE's hardware and programmer competence ahead of future trends. The grateful warriors salute him.
Network -- Emperor Jim Ryan recollected, "I think he foresaw the network era and was talking about the network era many, many years before it became reality"... "he talked about this before we could really comprehend what he was saying". As SCEI’s emperor with broad authority inside Sony Group Corp.’s empire, Kutaragi the Great prepared SCE/SIE for future expansion when he commissioned the PSNP’s construction. His visionary leadership and persistence (he tried with PS BB in Japan, but it failed to gain traction; then he tried with PSN) are the reasons for PSN appearing on SIE's timeline when it did. Absent his leadership, SIE are left aimless until Xbox Live points the way. Kutaragi's previous network effort and timing of PSN changed the arc of SIE's history in ways that can’t be fully appraised. Partially though, PSN has been vital to most growth vectors. All of which his successors have reaped/will reap the rewards of. The platform has generated billions in profit since operation, and is the enabler of a broader P2P networking, cloud, PC and mobile vision that will generate billions more in perpetuity. In the area of P2P networking, the day is coming when PSN manages an interoperable distributed ledger (i.e., an interoperable blockchain). An inevitability that Kutaragi didn't foresee, yet somehow he still conceived CELL to be "a bus for peer-to-peer computing" (translated by DeepL); which a scribe worded as 'a peer-to-peer web that would transform every home into a kind of domestic (and legal) Napster'. Decades later, he still speaks of the P2P model; but in the context of it being at the core of blockchain technology.
Multimedia-as-a-Service/Transmedia -- 'games and other services for PlayStation. His goal is to establish the PlayStation as a separate brand, not part of a dedicated Sony network for the online distribution of music, movies, and TV shows', is how a scribe noted Kutaragi’s endeavor to redefine 'PlayStation' as a service that delivers popular game and non-game content. Wielding entertainment as a weapon with which to spread the brand's influence was the vision that spurred him to declare: PS is entertainment, not just games. PS Music with Spotify, PS Video (now Sony Pictures Core on Plus) and his global aspiration for what emerged as PS Vue are/were testaments to the declaration. SIE's proposal to transition PS Plus into “Services 3.0” and scale it out in partnership with leading subscription service providers is the latest testament. It’s also part of a larger aim to transform SIE into a transmedia superpower through collaboration with other Sony Group divisions. The empire's renewed focus on collaborative transformation is the execution of a timeless '21 Century Entertainment' strategy that he devised, later adjoined by Ryan to include theme park attractions and toys.
GaaS/Live Service -- Is dead without PSN to support it; and GaaS was always an objective of Kutaragi's network services ambition, per the scribe.
GaaS/Game Streaming -- Kutaragi saw 'the Cloud' gathering from afar and readied PS3 for a ubiquitous game streaming future before it made sense to the masses. Prior to PS2’s US launch, he riddled that PS3 would "totally disappear as a console, as a shape". At 9:51 - 9:52 Tokyo time (2:51 - 2:52 BST if Tokyo time isn’t shown) of his final keynote as emperor, he predicted that networks would become fast enough to reliably stream video for services by 2016. He then justified PS3's gaming hardware as being necessary to take advantage of a speedier network in the future. PS Now launched in major territories from 2014 - 2016 as a nebulous PS3 requiring a 5mbps connection speed for 720p streaming. As it turns out, one SPU can encode a 720p stream at 5mbps. Every initial PS Now subscriber and every PS3 game that’s ever been or will be streamed via Plus Premium is a credit to him. The PS streaming platform itself is as much a credit to him as it is to David Perry, Steve Perlman and the noble scout, Eric Lempel. SIE was first to act on Gaikai (stream to any webpage/browser) and OnLive (perceptual science, furthered by iSIZE's acquisition and acquired perceptual precoder) because Kutaragi was first to know: "In the future, broadband will connect all appliances - console, TV, phone, PC, everything. Then exclusivity means nothing".
PC -- A platform that Kutaragi was indifferent towards, but his notion that exclusives would find their way onto PC in the then-future via streaming means that he knew PC would have a role in the empire’s scheme at some point. The eventuality of letting Plus Premium members stream first-party titles they purchase for PC (e.g., Helldivers 2 via Steam Cloud Play developer opt-in) to a TV, phone, tablet or PS Portal also follows his logic; and can't be enabled without his legacy provision, PSN.
Mobile -- Emperor Andrew House recalled, "I remember him talking about there was going to be a convergence between all forms of media and entertainment into a single communications device". iPhone's emergence proved Kutaragi's intuition was correct, and validated his concern that mobile phones would eventually be an enemy of future PS consoles. With the threat of mobile's march into gaming looming large on the horizon, he began work to better position PS consoles for the fight ahead. Ancient scrolls reveal that before he relinquished the throne, a PSP DualShock dock and a remote play controller (his idea) that served up music, shows, mini games (possibly PS Mobile games, too) and emails were contemplated. The DualShock dock signaled a change in design philosophy (i.e., adopt a full DualShock layout and grips for handheld gaming) that his remote play controller was likely to reflect. The controller was forgotten in time, until it was publicized as a new USPTO filing in 2019. PS Portal is a pared-down derivative of the controller running Android. For now it’s touted as just a remote player, but despite its ~6GB storage (guessing here, I think it’s that small because SIE plans to update Portal with a ML downloader that does 'Cloud Delivery' and deletion of individual mobile game levels/areas when necessary so that players can have segments of multiple titles stored/ready to resume delivery once selected, hence Portal's rumored codename: 'Q' 'Lite') it’s only a few approved media and VoWifi apps away from also being the convergence/communications device he anticipated in the '90s. The head craftsman Hideaki Nishino and his smiths hammered out Portal’s design from a PS5/DualSense perspective, but Kutaragi detailed Portal’s invention from a home console/mobility perspective. An important distinction since it seems that SIE will use Portal to increase PS5's usage rate; while at the same time, as a wedge to steer mobile loot into its coffers via PS Store purchases (would only be fully downloadable to non-Portal Android and iOS devices) linked to PS Plus for Portal Cloud Delivery and cross-progression.
AI -- It was thought at the time that "one Cell or cluster of Cells can also function as a server; but whereas the present Internet mainly handles characters, applications on the Cell network will also handle semantics and reasoning". Training neural networks on CELL for natural language and autonomous applications was front of mind for Kutaragi, even back then. “Enormous applications that require image processing and large-volume computing” were other CELL use cases he considered. In fact, Toshiba used its SpursEngine variant for Super Resolution video up-conversion in the image processing domain. In light of the above, the PS5 Pro GPU leak (specifically, the 300 TOPS of 8-bit computation for PSML) makes for some interesting speculation. There's a good chance that PS5 Pro's AI accelerator is CELL-based since the SPU is already a SIMD dataflow unit with support for 8-bit operations and SRAM connected to a high-bandwidth on-chip network. These are attributes of dedicated AI accelerators from IBM, Graphcore and others (last paragraph). A CELL AI accelerator integrated with PS5 Pro’s GPU shouldn’t even be a legit possibility, but hey it's Kutaragi I'm talking about. He always thought ahead and occasionally did more than necessary for the glory of the empire. He once proclaimed that “Cell will evoke the appearance of graphics LSIs". If PS5 Pro’s GPU is a Large-Scale-Integration with a revised CELL as its AI accelerator, then God bless him. PSSR legacy backwards compatibility may be at hand. If it isn’t, then God bless him. At minimum, the GPU will have an AI accelerator that resembles SPU architecture like the Tempest Engine. That would do wonders for PS5 games. In any event, he envisioned a chip for the ages full of new age thinking. It continues to prove itself a valuable resource and wise expenditure of the empire’s treasure.
Metaverse -- Ryan saw PS Home as "a very early manifestation of a platform metaverse". Kutaragi saw it as "only the beginning of what will come”. The end he saw coming was a realm of make.believe-as-a-service illusions and spectacles to enchant the people. This realm wasn't going to be a metaverse experience. It was going to be a blended 'Cyber Society' experience; a mixed realm that “combines the real and the imaginary” with movies, games and other entertainment. Imagery and text from the period make plain that his intent was for a CELL network to muster the alchemy in cyberspace (likely a network of petaFLOP class CELL supercomputers running ML, MR and other applications, in communication with CELL based consoles distributed across the land running similar apps locally). The imagery used to convey what Kutaragi thought possible in the MR realm of cyberspace, also illustrates emperor Kenichiro Yoshida’s perception of the so-called “metaverse” and Sony’s approach to it (Q2., Q3. and Q4). Kutaragi wasn’t "kRaZy", he was clairvoyant and well-versed in matters. One of his earliest insights into a MR cyberverse was recorded by a scribe who wrote that while he was waving his arm, he said: "This, this is the real broadband interface" (last sentence of the article Onslaught posted). Reality interfaces and the alchemy of reality synthesis have come in phases throughout the empire's existence. Phase 1 was Play, Groove, Chat and Kinetic for EyeToy, PS Eye with EyePet in S3D, PS Move and the PS3 Reality Synthesis (i.e. end-to-end 3D viewed in Stereoscopic 3D, driven by SPUs and the RSX GPU) VR experiments that gave rise to PS VR. Social VR experimentation, PS Camera and its associated Asobi/AR Bots, PS HD Camera and PS VR2/Sense controllers were Phase 2. Phase 3 is in follow ups to these experiences and peripherals; in particular the next PS HMD (to be named PS XR…?), which the upcoming Sony XR HMD already solves for. In that day, Kutaragi's Cyber Society will no longer be a concept of his imagination; rather a reality that his consoles (PS2/PS3) encouraged Magic Lab's magicians and Sony Corp.'s wizards to formulate.
Frankly, Kutaragi was wise beyond his years on the throne. The passage of time, brand/IP maturation and tech advancement across industries affirm his sweeping vision; and have allowed his successors to see what he saw decades earlier as they look to further build on the foundation he laid, while moving to extend the empire’s reach into areas of interest he identified beyond the traditional pillars he set in place during his rule.
His greatest success is that he made the success of every SCE/SIE emperor before (Toshio Ozawa, Shigeo Maruyama and Teruhisa Tokunaka were largely titular heads, Kutaragi ran SCEI as a manager) and after him possible. Those who came before are beneficiaries of his gamble to build an empire. Those who came/come after are inheritors of provisions he made to ensure the empire's survival and competitiveness.
Here’s to Ken Kutaragi, the man, the myth, the legend, 'the Oracle', THE G.O.A.T. May he continue to live long.
Long live the empire.
Not only did Kutaragi build SCE/SIE into an empire, he positioned it to achieve greatness in the present day before passing the scepter to Hirai. His risky decision to trade ease of development for the prospect of a chip faster than Moore's Law has rewarded today’s empire beyond measure, and his legacy provisions continue to sustain the empire’s vigor across various interests:
Hardware -- The popular opinion is that PS3 was a failure, but profit and market share aren't the only measures of success. Technological success can be a measure, but it isn't valued in quarterly/yearly financial reports and "console wars". Nonetheless, Kutaragi knowingly sacrificed PS3’s near-term profit and market share (he was “aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households”) for technological success, mid/long-term profit and maket share. It didn't go exactly as was hoped (didn't make bank and sell 100 million units), but in the end PS3's sacrificial fate made asynchronous compute engine architecture mainstay tech on PC and console. It's the most significant aspect of CELL that ranger Mark Cerny knows well, now marketed as 'ACE' for AMD GPUs. These GPUs closely mimic CELL's task submission/job execution (i.e., SPURS), but PS4, PS4 Pro and PS5’s GPUs mimic CELL the closest. They “replicate” CELL’s SPU Runtime System (SPURS) while being SPU task manager (STM)-style efficient. STM (entries [0012], [0015] and [0016] explain what and why; [0070], [0071] and [0072] touch on non-CELL implementations and STM results) allows an SPU to load portions of task queues into its local store (i.e., memory) used as “cache”, select the tasks that match its current program code and return the ones that don't to main memory to minimize costly context switching/"cache" flushing. PS4/PS4 Pro's GPUs imitate this process by means of a "volatile bit" that selectively invalidates cache lines to reduce cache flushing when L2 is used for compute and graphics at the same time. PS5 keeps with PS4/PS4 Pro’s volatile bit process and has a similar process for its I/O complex. Coherency engines in the complex tell cache scrubbers on the GPU which address ranges to scrub away so as to avoid full cache flushes when the SSD is read. Without these STM-inspired efficiency measures, PS4 Pro and PS5 are easy marks for One X and Series X with no way to effectively counter their brute-force asynchronous GPU compute or outduel SX’s Velocity architecture. That despite D3D12’s Multi-engine Resource/Enhanced Barrier hobbling both Xbox GPUs by requiring full cache flushes after they complete their work. The unpopular fact is that CELL’s system architecture is the saving grace of post-PS3 era PS consoles. They and future PS consoles are Kutaragi's standard-bearers. His due honor for attempting to make CELL a fixture in the world of computing, which unintentionally yet consequently gave Cerny/SIE the privilege of putting certain CELL related features on AMD's GPU roadmap for the benefit of AMD, SIE and industry. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. 'The Road to' begins with CELL tech/PS3.
Software -- Kutaragi's crucible (i.e., a precursor CPU that's GPU-like) tested the mettle of PS Studios' ranks and steeled them for battle in the age of asynchronous GPU compute programming years before the dawn. For two generations, Redmond's assaults have been repelled by happy warriors (e.g., the ICE Team) highly skilled in the art of PS3. Mastery of Packing fp16 shader operations on SPUs and checkerboard MLAA on SPUs were trials for fp16 'Rapid Packed Math' usage and checkerboard rendering on PS4 Pro. PS3 pushed PS Studios’ elite to be the most cunning at their craft. The evidence of history bears witness to the claim. Kutaragi is the only CEO (or system architect for that matter) to ever assure SIE's hardware and programmer competence ahead of future trends. The grateful warriors salute him.
Network -- Emperor Jim Ryan recollected, "I think he foresaw the network era and was talking about the network era many, many years before it became reality"... "he talked about this before we could really comprehend what he was saying". As SCEI’s emperor with broad authority inside Sony Group Corp.’s empire, Kutaragi the Great prepared SCE/SIE for future expansion when he commissioned the PSNP’s construction. His visionary leadership and persistence (he tried with PS BB in Japan, but it failed to gain traction; then he tried with PSN) are the reasons for PSN appearing on SIE's timeline when it did. Absent his leadership, SIE are left aimless until Xbox Live points the way. Kutaragi's previous network effort and timing of PSN changed the arc of SIE's history in ways that can’t be fully appraised. Partially though, PSN has been vital to most growth vectors. All of which his successors have reaped/will reap the rewards of. The platform has generated billions in profit since operation, and is the enabler of a broader P2P networking, cloud, PC and mobile vision that will generate billions more in perpetuity. In the area of P2P networking, the day is coming when PSN manages an interoperable distributed ledger (i.e., an interoperable blockchain). An inevitability that Kutaragi didn't foresee, yet somehow he still conceived CELL to be "a bus for peer-to-peer computing" (translated by DeepL); which a scribe worded as 'a peer-to-peer web that would transform every home into a kind of domestic (and legal) Napster'. Decades later, he still speaks of the P2P model; but in the context of it being at the core of blockchain technology.
Multimedia-as-a-Service/Transmedia -- 'games and other services for PlayStation. His goal is to establish the PlayStation as a separate brand, not part of a dedicated Sony network for the online distribution of music, movies, and TV shows', is how a scribe noted Kutaragi’s endeavor to redefine 'PlayStation' as a service that delivers popular game and non-game content. Wielding entertainment as a weapon with which to spread the brand's influence was the vision that spurred him to declare: PS is entertainment, not just games. PS Music with Spotify, PS Video (now Sony Pictures Core on Plus) and his global aspiration for what emerged as PS Vue are/were testaments to the declaration. SIE's proposal to transition PS Plus into “Services 3.0” and scale it out in partnership with leading subscription service providers is the latest testament. It’s also part of a larger aim to transform SIE into a transmedia superpower through collaboration with other Sony Group divisions. The empire's renewed focus on collaborative transformation is the execution of a timeless '21 Century Entertainment' strategy that he devised, later adjoined by Ryan to include theme park attractions and toys.
GaaS/Live Service -- Is dead without PSN to support it; and GaaS was always an objective of Kutaragi's network services ambition, per the scribe.
GaaS/Game Streaming -- Kutaragi saw 'the Cloud' gathering from afar and readied PS3 for a ubiquitous game streaming future before it made sense to the masses. Prior to PS2’s US launch, he riddled that PS3 would "totally disappear as a console, as a shape". At 9:51 - 9:52 Tokyo time (2:51 - 2:52 BST if Tokyo time isn’t shown) of his final keynote as emperor, he predicted that networks would become fast enough to reliably stream video for services by 2016. He then justified PS3's gaming hardware as being necessary to take advantage of a speedier network in the future. PS Now launched in major territories from 2014 - 2016 as a nebulous PS3 requiring a 5mbps connection speed for 720p streaming. As it turns out, one SPU can encode a 720p stream at 5mbps. Every initial PS Now subscriber and every PS3 game that’s ever been or will be streamed via Plus Premium is a credit to him. The PS streaming platform itself is as much a credit to him as it is to David Perry, Steve Perlman and the noble scout, Eric Lempel. SIE was first to act on Gaikai (stream to any webpage/browser) and OnLive (perceptual science, furthered by iSIZE's acquisition and acquired perceptual precoder) because Kutaragi was first to know: "In the future, broadband will connect all appliances - console, TV, phone, PC, everything. Then exclusivity means nothing".
PC -- A platform that Kutaragi was indifferent towards, but his notion that exclusives would find their way onto PC in the then-future via streaming means that he knew PC would have a role in the empire’s scheme at some point. The eventuality of letting Plus Premium members stream first-party titles they purchase for PC (e.g., Helldivers 2 via Steam Cloud Play developer opt-in) to a TV, phone, tablet or PS Portal also follows his logic; and can't be enabled without his legacy provision, PSN.
Mobile -- Emperor Andrew House recalled, "I remember him talking about there was going to be a convergence between all forms of media and entertainment into a single communications device". iPhone's emergence proved Kutaragi's intuition was correct, and validated his concern that mobile phones would eventually be an enemy of future PS consoles. With the threat of mobile's march into gaming looming large on the horizon, he began work to better position PS consoles for the fight ahead. Ancient scrolls reveal that before he relinquished the throne, a PSP DualShock dock and a remote play controller (his idea) that served up music, shows, mini games (possibly PS Mobile games, too) and emails were contemplated. The DualShock dock signaled a change in design philosophy (i.e., adopt a full DualShock layout and grips for handheld gaming) that his remote play controller was likely to reflect. The controller was forgotten in time, until it was publicized as a new USPTO filing in 2019. PS Portal is a pared-down derivative of the controller running Android. For now it’s touted as just a remote player, but despite its ~6GB storage (guessing here, I think it’s that small because SIE plans to update Portal with a ML downloader that does 'Cloud Delivery' and deletion of individual mobile game levels/areas when necessary so that players can have segments of multiple titles stored/ready to resume delivery once selected, hence Portal's rumored codename: 'Q' 'Lite') it’s only a few approved media and VoWifi apps away from also being the convergence/communications device he anticipated in the '90s. The head craftsman Hideaki Nishino and his smiths hammered out Portal’s design from a PS5/DualSense perspective, but Kutaragi detailed Portal’s invention from a home console/mobility perspective. An important distinction since it seems that SIE will use Portal to increase PS5's usage rate; while at the same time, as a wedge to steer mobile loot into its coffers via PS Store purchases (would only be fully downloadable to non-Portal Android and iOS devices) linked to PS Plus for Portal Cloud Delivery and cross-progression.
AI -- It was thought at the time that "one Cell or cluster of Cells can also function as a server; but whereas the present Internet mainly handles characters, applications on the Cell network will also handle semantics and reasoning". Training neural networks on CELL for natural language and autonomous applications was front of mind for Kutaragi, even back then. “Enormous applications that require image processing and large-volume computing” were other CELL use cases he considered. In fact, Toshiba used its SpursEngine variant for Super Resolution video up-conversion in the image processing domain. In light of the above, the PS5 Pro GPU leak (specifically, the 300 TOPS of 8-bit computation for PSML) makes for some interesting speculation. There's a good chance that PS5 Pro's AI accelerator is CELL-based since the SPU is already a SIMD dataflow unit with support for 8-bit operations and SRAM connected to a high-bandwidth on-chip network. These are attributes of dedicated AI accelerators from IBM, Graphcore and others (last paragraph). A CELL AI accelerator integrated with PS5 Pro’s GPU shouldn’t even be a legit possibility, but hey it's Kutaragi I'm talking about. He always thought ahead and occasionally did more than necessary for the glory of the empire. He once proclaimed that “Cell will evoke the appearance of graphics LSIs". If PS5 Pro’s GPU is a Large-Scale-Integration with a revised CELL as its AI accelerator, then God bless him. PSSR legacy backwards compatibility may be at hand. If it isn’t, then God bless him. At minimum, the GPU will have an AI accelerator that resembles SPU architecture like the Tempest Engine. That would do wonders for PS5 games. In any event, he envisioned a chip for the ages full of new age thinking. It continues to prove itself a valuable resource and wise expenditure of the empire’s treasure.
Metaverse -- Ryan saw PS Home as "a very early manifestation of a platform metaverse". Kutaragi saw it as "only the beginning of what will come”. The end he saw coming was a realm of make.believe-as-a-service illusions and spectacles to enchant the people. This realm wasn't going to be a metaverse experience. It was going to be a blended 'Cyber Society' experience; a mixed realm that “combines the real and the imaginary” with movies, games and other entertainment. Imagery and text from the period make plain that his intent was for a CELL network to muster the alchemy in cyberspace (likely a network of petaFLOP class CELL supercomputers running ML, MR and other applications, in communication with CELL based consoles distributed across the land running similar apps locally). The imagery used to convey what Kutaragi thought possible in the MR realm of cyberspace, also illustrates emperor Kenichiro Yoshida’s perception of the so-called “metaverse” and Sony’s approach to it (Q2., Q3. and Q4). Kutaragi wasn’t "kRaZy", he was clairvoyant and well-versed in matters. One of his earliest insights into a MR cyberverse was recorded by a scribe who wrote that while he was waving his arm, he said: "This, this is the real broadband interface" (last sentence of the article Onslaught posted). Reality interfaces and the alchemy of reality synthesis have come in phases throughout the empire's existence. Phase 1 was Play, Groove, Chat and Kinetic for EyeToy, PS Eye with EyePet in S3D, PS Move and the PS3 Reality Synthesis (i.e. end-to-end 3D viewed in Stereoscopic 3D, driven by SPUs and the RSX GPU) VR experiments that gave rise to PS VR. Social VR experimentation, PS Camera and its associated Asobi/AR Bots, PS HD Camera and PS VR2/Sense controllers were Phase 2. Phase 3 is in follow ups to these experiences and peripherals; in particular the next PS HMD (to be named PS XR…?), which the upcoming Sony XR HMD already solves for. In that day, Kutaragi's Cyber Society will no longer be a concept of his imagination; rather a reality that his consoles (PS2/PS3) encouraged Magic Lab's magicians and Sony Corp.'s wizards to formulate.
Frankly, Kutaragi was wise beyond his years on the throne. The passage of time, brand/IP maturation and tech advancement across industries affirm his sweeping vision; and have allowed his successors to see what he saw decades earlier as they look to further build on the foundation he laid, while moving to extend the empire’s reach into areas of interest he identified beyond the traditional pillars he set in place during his rule.
His greatest success is that he made the success of every SCE/SIE emperor before (Toshio Ozawa, Shigeo Maruyama and Teruhisa Tokunaka were largely titular heads, Kutaragi ran SCEI as a manager) and after him possible. Those who came before are beneficiaries of his gamble to build an empire. Those who came/come after are inheritors of provisions he made to ensure the empire's survival and competitiveness.
Here’s to Ken Kutaragi, the man, the myth, the legend, 'the Oracle', THE G.O.A.T. May he continue to live long.
Long live the empire.
Past and present SCE/SIE emperors can say that they consolidated silos, improved communications, streamlined operations, cut costs, avoided pitfalls, made exclusive deals, forged partnerships, approved major acquisitions, pivoted to other areas for growth and led the empire through challenging circumstances on the way to greater wealth; but Kutaragi is the only one among them who can claim those deeds and credibly say that he:
- raised SCE/SIE up from nothing to become an empire that conquered the gaming world.
- took great risk in funding the R&D of a radical future-forward CPU that has since informed AMD GPU design/PS GPU, storage and audio customization at no risk to SIE.
- tested and honed the GPGPU programming skills of PS Studios' finest (and their willing brothers in arms outside SIE) on a CPU ahead of its time.
- built a network to commune PS users, traffic billions of dollars in commerce and provide a foothold in network services across platforms for generations to come.
- established SCE/SIE as an entertainment company and laid out a business strategy that draws from all corners of the Sony Group to widen PlayStation’s appeal beyond gaming.
- archived a remote play/mobility-focused gamepad on the suspicion that mobile phones posed a danger to PS consoles.
- foretold the application of AI to aide and the coming MR cyberverse to entertain, then left behind a CPU thoroughly suited for accelerating AI in parallel with computing networked MR at scale.
- defined SIE's past, present and future.
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