He may be crazy, but I for one won't ever forget what the PSX and the PS2 did for home gaming, and I won't forget the man responsible. Ken's made mistakes, but I there's a difference between brand loyalty and blind loyalty, and I believe in the PS brand because of Ken Kutagari's brilliance. He's earned this.

~

Addendum (a recent habit of mine):

That said, I can't wait to add a Wii and 360 to my lineup in the coming months. The gaming world is full of great minds.

~

The disrespect is astounding! Oh, wait - Sony blacklisting.

...Nevermind.

@pixelator: Disrespect? I miss Ken. You miss Ken. We ALL miss Ken.

SONY SUCKS SHIT!

ok... now that's out of the way, can we all get on and enjoy games and life in general? Please?

That picture's awesome - it looks like he's inhaling souls and breathing out fire made out of lasers, which is the best you could hope for out of any video game icon.

People forget that despite being a walking PR nightmare, he is also a genius when it comes to electronics. He designed the sound chip for the SNES (without which all those classic tunes would have been so much poorer) as well as pretty much designing all three of Sony's consoles, and helping to turn around Sony's fortunes in the HDTV market. I think that being acknowledged by the ESA is a good thing.

@Plunkett: Indeed we do. He supplied us with so much entertainment.

@Chef: Oh yes...

Ahhh....the DEMON RETURNS!

*throws* holy water.

Seriously, congratulations. The man deserves it, even if he called handheld gaming before the PSP, "Ghetto".

@Plunkett:

I agree he was wacky and full of it - but you know, the guy made contributions. Maybe he'd have garnered more respect from you guys if he was more milfy?

@Chef: Hes actualy using an early Sixaxis prototype to steal peoples souls, they later based a game on his amusment park soul stealing, Folklore or something

@Gian:
Jeez people, can't we simply just say he was a great man, made a lot of contributions to the gaming industry, and deserve this recognition. Really disrespectful to do this to a great man when he's being honoured, at least wait until the next Sony/PS3 post before you start spewing your aimless hate. Sad...

wow...what a crazy/awesome man....it looks like he wants to burn 360's village down...and eat Wii's children....(i got that from somewhere but i dont know where..) newayz congratulations u brilliant/entertaining nut!!!...the countless hours i have sat on my ass using your products shall not be forgotten

Actually, Ken's responsible for the way games are today.

Most people attribute the Famicom/NES to be the super duper second coming for the revival of consoles, while that is in fact, not true.

It is the riddance of the cartridge that came with the Playstation, and utilizing CD's, that are easily and cheaply quantified, plus pushing the tech boundary out of the silly types of games (best game arguably for the NES is Super Mario 3, which is beyond silly game wise today) to the shit we knew Metal Gear Solid and Syphon Filter to have been.

Truth is, without the Playstation, god knows what kind of cartridge hell we'd be in today.

He deserves all the awards given to him. It's the reason you have your Xbox, PS, Gamecube, Wii, etc. today.

so THAT'S how you get rumble on SIXAXIS!!!

you play it on a rollercoaster....

see!!! rumble = happiness!!

@BD:
Yeah, um... no.

Last I checked something had to be dead before you could revive it. Consoles weren't dead and brought back by the Playstation, they were dead and brought back by the NES. How the hell can that be attributed to the Playstation? Heck, before the Playstation we had the freaking Golden Age of Gaming, how do you consider that dead?

On top of that, several other companies worked with CDs before SONY, and even if they took longer, we still wouldn't be in a "cartridge hell" today.

Also, Super Mario Bros. 3 was great, is great, and shall forever be great.

---

Ah, Krazy Ken, truly a visionary. Had you not taken down Nintendo back in the day, we'd face a terror far worse than you when you finally lost it. For that, you have my thanks.

hey luke, you seem to hate this guy... i wonder why? on one hand, pay respect to whom is due and that is ken. and luke, without ken, you will not have your 360 red ringed on you and you don't play your wii today. you see, because of this man, nintendo might kill the game industry and microsoft would not have entered the arena. and luke, because of ken, nintendo finally thought of innovation rather that continuing to milk mario and zelda with endless sequels. and finally luke, because of this man that there are a lot more developers making games for you (and us) and gaming suddenly became more than mainstream. hey luke, in case you didn't know, halo3 is now the all-time biggest selling entertainment on its weekend, due mainly to bungie (and microsoft) and partly because of this crazy man.

@Volcan:

It's only the "golden age of gaming" because most of us were brought up during that era.

Those games are great, but there are plenty of games made past that era that are wonderful too.

@Providence:
I didn't mean that it was the end-all be-all age of gaming, heck, the golden age of science is incredibly outdated. I was simply saying that the Playstation didn't revive consoles like someone seems to believe.

@Volcan:
Crud, wrong choice of words. I didn't mean "outdated" as in useless, I meant it was improved upon since then.

Playstation did not revive consoles, that would be silly and foolish to think so. It expanded them, more PS2 than PS1.

PS3 though...no comment. XD

@atomicstrawberry: Im glad you pointed this out, I was about to do the same thing, because I love that tiny chip isnide my SNES, and he made it behind Sony's back.

i dont he made it behind sonys back, i believe nintendo and sony had somewhat a partnership back then.

Well most geniuses are insane, and this dOOd is a genius!

Hell, he is BAT SHIT crazy, but I dig that about him...LOL

Why the hell IS he holding a controller on a rollercoaster? Or is this some wacky strap yourself into this dangerous arcade machine that could easily kill you if you weren't careful?

The man is a genius! Congrats to Mr. Kutaragi and thanks for the great systems you designed.

That said, while the article may sound disrespectful, I think its meant to be snarky for the readers sake. Nowadays all bloggers feel the need to be edgy and sarcastic so that they get a lot of reads and comments. It was cool when one or a few do it but now it seems to have become the norm and Mr. Plunkett is just going with the flow. I doubt he really feels that way.

C'mon, that's not even a giant face. Try harder, Plunkett.