When Sony Computer Entertainment first established its flagship brand PlayStation in 1993, the CEO’s main focus was to make sure the company’s first offices were located in an area with late-night bars. At least that’s the story Ken Kutaragi, widely known as the father of the PlayStation, told Katsuhiro Harada of Bandai Namco in the latter’s new YouTube program, Harada’s Bar.
“We started in Aoyama-Itchōme,” Kutaragi explained to Harada, filling in the Tekken director in some video game history. “The reason we chose it as an office was because we wanted to drink together.”
According to Kutaragi, at the time the head office in Sony was in a Shinagawa branch in Tokyo, where the waterholes closed at 20:00. When it came time to open the first Sony Computer Entertainment site, he and his associates thought it might be best to find a “sleepless city” where they could take people from other companies for drinks. Aoyoma, a neighborhood in the nearby Minato division, was eventually that place.
In addition to Sony, Sony Computer Entertainment had another parent company in Sony Music Entertainment Japan. According to Kutaragi, the subsidiary would regularly hold large, festive parties with recording artists that stretched over midnight. As such, the executives of the video games liked the tradition a lot and wanted to pass it on to their new business.
Harada even remembers that Kutaragi the Tekken team up with an expensive bottle of business every time they ship a game. He apparently got so used to the treatment that he was surprised when they did not receive any liquor from Microsoft after the 2007 launch. Tekken 6, the first game in the series to feature an Xbox platform.
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Harada’s conversation with Kutaragi also covers neat moments in their shared history, as well as discussion of current trends in technology such as artificial intelligence and robotics. Check it out if you are interested in two game legends who can chat in a bar.