When Sony Computer Entertainment first founded its flagship PlayStation brand in 1993, executives’ primary concern was to ensure that the company’s first offices were in an area of nighttime bars. At least that’s the story that Ken Kutaragi, who is widely known as the father of the PlayStation, told Bandai Namco’s Katsuhiro Harada in Bandai Namco’s new YouTube show, Harada’s Bar
‘We started in Aoyama-Itchōme,’ Kutaragi explained to Harada and completed Tekken director in some video game history. “The reason we chose that as an office was because we wanted to drink together.”
The main Sony office at the time, Kutaragi said, was in an area of Tokyo’s Shinagawa neighborhood where the water holes all closed at 8 p.m. So when it came time to open the first Sony Computer Entertainment location, he and his associates thought the best thing to do is to find a ‘sleepless city’ where they can take people from other companies for a drink. Aoyoma, a neighborhood in the nearby neighborhood of Minato, became that place.
In addition to Sony, Sony Computer Entertainment also had a parent company in Sony Music Entertainment Japan. According to Kutaragi, the subsidiary often hosted large, festive parties with performers that stretched past midnight. As such, video game executives became fond of the tradition and wanted to transfer it to their fledgling company.
Harada even remembers that Kutaragi de Tekken team with an expensive bottle of sake every time they ship a game. He apparently got so used to the treatment that he was surprised when they didn’t get a drink from Microsoft after the 2007 launch. Tekken 6, the first game in the series to grace an Xbox platform.
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Harada’s conversation with Kutaragi also covers some beautiful moments in their shared history, as well as the discussion of current trends in technology such as artificial intelligence and robotics. Check it out if you’re interested in two gaming legends having a nice chat in a bar.