Ken Kutaragi never considered Nintendo or Sega to be a competitor of the PlayStation.
PlayStation
Sony worked with Nintendo on a CD-ROM drive for the Super Famicom before the project was axed and the company switched its attention towards the PlayStation console, and the 70-year-old engineer has now reflected on that relationship during a recent visit to the bar of Bandai Namco's Katsuhiro Harada.
Ken - the former chairman and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment - reflected: "Prior to PlayStation, I worked on Super Famicom with Nintendo, and I liked Mr. Uemura very much and his team very much, I was often with them and got along with them. But from the outside, we were regarded to be fighting. We were not fighting at all."
Ken insisted that rather than seeing the likes of Nintendo and Sega as competitors, he actually viewed them as workmates.
He explained: "I’ve been asked only such kind of questions, 'Is [PlayStation’s] competitor Sega or Nintendo?' they asked me, but we’d never thought who the competitor was because we were all workmates. However, people outside didn’t think so … they didn’t know the truth …They made our industry liven up."
The original PlayStation console was released in 1994 and, at the time, it was pitted against the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn.
The iconic console proved to be a major landmark for the sector, signalling Sony's rise to power in the video game industry.