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'Father of the PlayStation' Ken Kutaragi sides with Sony on the physical discs debate

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'Father of the PlayStation' Ken Kutaragi sides with Sony on the physical discs debate

The debate about Sony's plan to stop making physical PS5 discs has raged since this summer.

Ken Kutaragi, the engineer who led Sony's development of the original PlayStation, PS2 and PS3, says he understands why players are angry about Sony ending disc production, but doesn't think keeping discs around is economically reasonable.

Speaking to VGC at the Game Republic New Horizons conference in Middlesbrough, England, on October 15, the former Sony Computer Entertainment chairman and group CEO said physical discs had come to stand for owning a game, and that the resistance to a disc-free PlayStation might be "a mentality issue." Given that he left Sony in 2007 and now runs his own companies, this is very much his own view rather than the official position of Sony, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Kutaragi told VGC that the PS2 and PS3 had network features which weren't as widely used as they are in today's consoles. He compared consoles to smartphones, saying that now most people are online, nobody expects physical media because people trust that their content will stay with them. Meanwhile, Sony's official position appears to be at odds with that. Responding to a class action in a California federal court in August, the company said reasonable consumers know they don't own digital downloads, only a license to play them (which can be revoked.)

Kutaragi also suggested that current PlayStation leadership sees the platform differently from the company he ran, commenting that Sony Interactive Entertainment has hired many people from Gaikai and other streaming businesses.


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