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PlayStation is the hottest video-game platform going, and its $7 billion in annual sales now accounts for 23 percent of parent Sony's profits. In
Revolutionaries at Sony, Reiji Asakura describes how this came about despite long odds and naysayers both within and without. Asakura gives all credit to Ken Kutaragi, a visionary executive engineer who recognized the possibilities when he first viewed Sony's revolutionary "System G" 3-D technology in 1984 and who still believes it has achieved only a fraction of its potential for launching "an entire world of computerized home entertainment." Asakura attributes much of the ongoing success to Kutaragi's reliance on more than "an engineer's point of view," noting that whenever he "came across an interesting idea, his thoughts quickly turned to how (it) could be successfully commercialized." Asakura, an economic and technology journalist based in Tokyo, is an unabashed cheerleader of the PlayStation and the people who created it, calling the product "a modern miracle" and Kutaragi "the hero of this book." But anyone curious about these incredibly popular games, which increasingly hook middle managers along with their children, should find the tale an interesting one. --
Howard Rothman
Book Description
"I wanted to prove that even regular company employeesno, especially regular company employeescould build a venture of this scale with superb technology, superb concepts, and superb colleagues."Ken Kutaragi, "The Father of the Sony PlayStation".
Here, for the first time ever, is the authorized story of Ken Kutaragi, the vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment whose successful campaign to dominate the gaming industry with 1994's PlayStation has become the stuff of modern business and technological legend.
A priceless analysis of technical, marketing, and over-all business strategies and a riveting saga of ambition, determination, and extraordinary vision, Revolutionaries at Sony is a rare and enthralling true-life account that reads like a work of masterful suspense fiction.
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