Ken Kutaragi to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award at GDC

The 14th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards will be honoring Ken Kutaragi, former CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment and the “Father of the PlayStation,” with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the world of gaming. The Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony takes place on March 19th at the Moscone Convention Center during the 2014 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

As a Sony engineer, Ken Kutaragi’s first contribution to the world of videogames was the creation of the SPC700, the sound chip within Nintendo’s Super NES console. After the success of the SPC700, Kutaragi began an ambitious project to create Sony’s first videogame console, and by 1994, Sony’s PlayStation console was released to the public. As the lead engineer of the PlayStation, Ken Kutaragi helped usher in an era of unprecedented growth in the world of videogames. With powerful hardware and the successful adoption of optical storage, the PlayStation became the first system to sell over 100 million units. Its successor, the PlayStation 2, went on to become the best-selling console system of all time with 155 million units sold.