Ken Kutaragi

Ken Kutaragi joined Sony in 1975 as an engineer in the digital research group and spent the following decade doing largely conventional work. What changed the trajectory was a personal observation with no corporate mandate behind it: watching his daughter play a Nintendo Famicom, he concluded that the machine's sound was primitive and that Sony's audio expertise could fix it.

He then did something that should have ended his career. He negotiated with Nintendo, essentially unilaterally, to design the SPC700 sound processor for the Super Famicom — work performed for a competitor in a consumer category Sony's board considered beneath the company. When the arrangement became known internally, senior executives wanted him dismissed. Norio Ohga, Sony's president, backed him instead. That single act of protection is why PlayStation exists.

The second hinge came in 1991. Sony and Nintendo had jointly developed a CD-ROM add-on; at the Consumer Electronics Show, Nintendo announced a partnership with Philips instead — publicly, with no warning to Sony. Ohga's response was to authorise Kutaragi to build a console outright. The PlayStation shipped in Japan in December 1994, aimed squarely at developers with cheap CD production against expensive cartridges, and at consumers at $299 against Sega's $399.

Kutaragi's later record is a genuine mixed verdict, and the case is better for saying so. The PS2 he shepherded became the best-selling home console ever made. The PS3 he championed — the exotic Cell processor, the $599 launch price, the conviction that developers would learn to love difficult hardware — cost Sony billions and a generational lead. He stepped back from the division in 2007. The same temperament produced both outcomes.