Father Of Playstation Retires

Ken Kutaragi, the Father of Playstation, will retire from his executive position at SCEI effective June 19, 2007, when SCEI annual shareholders meeting will take place. Mr. Kutaragi will pass on the torch to the next generation, stepping back from his executive management responsibility of the company to serve as Honorary Chairman of SCEI.

After completing the launch of PLAYSTATION 3 worldwide, Mr. Kutaragi has decided to pursue his dreams beyond PlayStation and to accelerate his network vision."I am happy to graduate from Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. after introducing four platforms to the PlayStation family," said Ken Kutaragi, Chairman and Group CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "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 endeavors."

While I may not always agree with everything he said. There is no question he has been an important figure in the game industry. Without him, we'd all still be stuck with expensive and limiting cartage based console, and playing Mario 25. Playstation ended Nintendo's iron fist rule in the 90s, and has brought us 3d gaming for console, as well as pushing console gaming to the generall mass. PS2 is the first console to ever sell 100 million units worldwide. I think it's unfair to blame all the PS3 problem on him. There are many decisions that I believe was forced by Sony Electronics and Sony Pictures. It's terrible that he's being made as the sole party that's responsible for everything that is wrong with PS3.

RIM Introduce GSM+CDMA BlackBerry, Verizon Miss The Point

RIM decide to do something clever with their BlackBerry. They made a CDMA BlackBerry that is loaded with features. It's 0.55 inches thick, has the four-way trackball navigation, and a microSD memory card slot. The 8830 provides EVDO high-speed data on CDMA networks and GPRS data on GSM 900 / 1800 networks overseas. It also supports Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, media player, and a large QVGA display. It has a sim card slot, the idea is, when in US, you use it as a CDMA phone. (both Sprint and Verizon will offer this phone.), when you are over seas, you buy a sim card, slide it in, it disables the CDMA and turns into GSM world phone, so your blackberry continue to work, a totally lovely idea.

Leave it to Verizon to mess it up, Sprint of course leaves the sim card slot unlocked. and didn't temper with the blue tooth. On the other hand, Verizon LOCKS the sim card slot to vodaphone only, and cripple bluetooth. What a way to ruin a good phone.

Verizon Can't Do Math

Apparently people at Verizon failed simple math. Their unlimited data plan is in fact capped at 5GB per month. So to Verizon, as number approaches 5GB, it's the same thing as approaching infinity. Wait, what?!

Yet another reason I left Vz years ago and wouldn't go back.

PSP Price Drop To $170.

PSP Core Pack has dropped from $200 to $170. While it's a good move, I wish this happened back in Nov 2006 instead of now. Sony has also added Daxter and Syphon Filter to the PSP "Greatest Hits" list. So you can pick those two titles up for $20 a piece now.