The Consumer Electronics Association or CEA has decided to award Ken Kutaragi among others with the CE Hall of Fame award. The ceremony is scheduled to take place this coming October in Las Vegas. Alongside the PlayStation father are 11 others who were trailblazers in the electronics industry. Know more after the jump!

DICE Summit 08 had much to offer with the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, and games such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, BioShock, and The Orange Box came home as big winners, garnering four awards each.

Individual achievements by Mike Morhaime and Ken Kutaragi were also recognized by The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Details in the full article.

It was revealed today that Sony Computer Entertainment Honorary Chairman Ken Kutaragi will be receiving the lifetime achievement award on February next year from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences or AIAS.

Ken Kutaragi needs no further introduction, having been dubbed as the "Father of the PlayStation brand". He directly supervised and designed the creation of all known PS consoles to date. The full story after the jump!

Izumi Kawanishi, Sony Computer Entertainment's Chief Technical Officer, has moved out of the division and has settled into the mothership Sony Corporation. This is according to one of Kotaku's sources who explains that he and Kazuo Hirai had an internal dispute.

The source continues that the fight was Hirai wanting to push the PlayStation 3 only as a game console. Perhaps Kawanishi still wanted to push the console as an all-in-one media hub?

Sony Computer Entertainment President Kazuo Hirai will do the honors of opening this year's Tokyo Game Show with an address titled "The Expanding PlayStation World, Business Strategy For New Growth."

This marks the first time that the man more commonly known as "Kaz" will do a keynote for one of the world's biggest gaming events. Ken Kutaragi, who has already left the Sony fold, did the previous keynote for the consumer electronics giant.

Sony, under Kutaragi's rule, has had a reputation for dropping big news at keynotes in past events. One can only speculate what Hirai has in store in his first TGS outing as SCE's top officer.

Today is the day Ken Kutaragi leaves the PlayStation family behind. Back in April, the gaming industry was shocked with the announcement that the Chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) will step down from his post to "pursue his dreams beyond PlayStation and to accelerate his network vision."

Kutaragi's previously held position will now be manned by SCE's former president and COO Kaz Hirai. The former's departure will also terminate his slot in the the company's board. Despite this, Kutaragi will act as an honorary SCEI Chairman and will be Senior Technology Adviser to Chairman and CEO of Sony Corporation Howard Stringer.

This development could have tremendous impact to Sony itself and more importantly, to its consumer base. Ken Kutaragi is the architect of every single PlayStation console (PSOne, PS2, PS3, and PSP). It would be interesting to watch what exact changes this will bring to Sony's future endeavors.

But for what it is worth, we all know that Kutaragi did his job well throughout these years. We just hope and pray that he finds contentment in what he decides to do next.

A few hours ago, we reported that Ken Kutaragi, the mind behind Sony's PlayStation consoles, will be stepping down from his post as Sony Computer Entertainment CEO on June 19. A lot of speculation and analysis have surrounded the news, so here's a look at what some analysts have to say about it.

The reason. Both Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson and IDC analyst Billy Pidgeon seem to believe that Kutaragi's resignation is due to the PS3's less-than-stellar initial showing. Speaking to Bloomberg, Wilson said that it's "likely an indication Sony corporate isn't satisfied with the initial success of the PS3." Pidgeon, meanwhile, told the Associated Press that "Sony had too much hype and not enough delivery."

Other analysts, though, believe otherwise. "It can't be his fault that the cost of the box was so high, and I have a tough time believing he insisted on Blu-ray," Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter told GameDaily. "They probably just all agreed it was time to move on. Sony didn't have a great lineup of first party software for the PS3 or the PSP, and didn't get as much third party support this time around.

The replacement. The general concensus among analysts is that Kaz Hirai's move into Kutaragi's old position is a good thing overall for SCE. "I think Kaz Hirai is great, and the company probably doesn't need a visionary for another 10 years," said Pachter. "They need an operations guy, need to drive costs down, and need to develop more software support (internal and external). Hirai will be great at that."

John Taylor of Arcadia Research echoes Pachter's opinion, noting that with Hirai at the helm, Sony might redouble its efforts to make the PS3 - along with future products - more net-centric. "Kaz brings a new level of awareness of Western preferences and technology trends to SCE. He has firsthand experience with dealing with Microsoft's online momentum in the U.S. competitive environment."

SCEI, now chairman">Ken Kutaragi is synonymous with the brand PlayStation. after all, he is the brilliant mind behind consoles PlayStation 1 (PSOne), PlayStation 2 (PS2), PlayStation 3 (PS3), and even handheld PlayStation Portable (PSP). So we were shocked after hearing that Kutaragi will step down from his post effective June 19.

While Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) didn't give any reasons why Kutaragi is leaving the PS family behind, it did say that the official will remain as an honorary SCEI Chairman and will be Senior Technology Adviser to Chairman and CEO of Sony Corporation Howard Stringer.

Well, Sony actually did say something about Kutaragi's departure. According to them, Ken Kutaragi decided to "pursue his dreams beyond PlayStation and to accelerate his network vision" right after the worldwide launch of the new console. But you know how things go whenever a top executive leaves. It's always been "to pursue other dreams" so we don't know for certain if that's the real score.

When asked about this development, on the other hand, Kutaragi explained,

I am happy to graduate from Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. after introducing four platforms to the PlayStation family. It has been an exciting experience to change the world of computer entertainment by marrying cutting edge technologies with creative minds from all over the world. I'm looking forward to building on this vision in my next endeavour.

SCEI's new CEO is going to be Kaz Hirai who used to man the Group Chief Operating Officer. He will also retain his position as SCEI president. We wonder if David Karraker will still say that this is actually no big deal...

A recent Wall Street Journal report describes Ken Kutaragi as a "stumbling block" to Sony CEO Howard Stringer's success. The Wall Street Journal report by Roger Ehrenberg says that Kutaragi was known for his "reluctance" to keep lines of communication open with his bosses or other departments of the company - most notably, with the Sony Electronics Division.

This bit of news is relevant to all of you console war spectators since it is the Sony Electronics Division that provides the parts for Sony PlayStation products. Not a group you'd want to upset if you're banking on the PSP or the PS3. Ehrenberg notes:

In developing the PlayStation 3 console, the device's latest iteration, Mr. Kutaragi went over budget on development costs without informing Mr. Stringer, according to a person familiar with the situation. When Mr. Stringer urged Mr. Kutaragi to have dinner with the heads of the electronics division, he did so just once a year, this person said. A spokeswoman for Mr. Kutaragi declined to comment.

Ehrenberg also cites other instances where Sony's Electronics Division, as some other bloggers so eloquently puts it, got "snubbed" by Kutaragi. We'll skip over them for now, since you're all probably sick of "negative" PS3/PSP news right now. Ehrenberg's criticism of Sony top brass though, all boils down to this:

I don't care how legendary or historically successful a manager might be - if they are unable or unwilling to adapt to the culture, the vision you, as leader, have clearly communicated, they have to go. But not two years later, after the corrosive effect of doing things "their way" has already sunk in. Having a senior manager blame other groups for his group's woes? Raising concerns of investors, suppliers and customers alike? Unacceptable everywhere and at any time in any culture.

If we are to go with this Wall Street Journal report, should we take this as a sign that Sony is going through a whole lot more than just image problems with its audience? Moreover, does this mean that Mr. Stringer is messing up with running Sony? Well, the second question can't really be answered easily, but one's thing for sure though: Stringer's got a lot of work ahead of him.

When the PSP was first released, Ken Kutaragi announced that it would be the Walkman of this century. While this sounded a bit questionable, it made people wonder if it could be possible. The handheld market was for a long time Nintendo's domain, and all previous challengers have been put down. So now, a good three years after the PSPs release, BBC took a bold step to analyze how the handheld's doing.

While its jump from shipping half a million units in 2004 to a whopping 24.7 million as off December 2006 may sound impressive, Nintendo still has the majority of the market share. Nintendo has shipped 35m units of the DS and DS Lite within that same timespan.

These numbers tell only half the story. It seems that the PSP sales have dropped by 72% this holiday season, although software sales increased by 24% according to PGR. This could be a sign that the market is already saturated. In terms of games, the Nintendo DS has a larger library with more games being released for it as well as large libraries of GBA and GB games.

So what are the future plans for the PSP? The people at Sony are envisioning the PSP and its PS3 connectivity to be the next big thing. The Remote Play feature will allow the PSP to wirelessly access pictures, videos, and audio content stored on the PS3 up to a range of around 25-30 meters. In addition to this, access to the MP3 Walkman, iPods, and even digital cameras connected to the PS3 will be enabled.

The PSP becoming the Walkman of the 21st century might be a tall order, and judging from the numbers... We better wait and see what else Sony has in store to realize Kutaragi's vision for the PSP.