PlayStation creator heads to Marvelous AQL

Former Sony chairman and the man widely described as the ‘father of the PlayStation’, Ken Kutaragi, has been named as an external director at Japanese game publisher Marvelous AQL, according to a report by Nikkei.

The news site (translated by SGCafe), reports that Kutaragi will be bringing his years of experience to help speed up developments in the company’s business at home and overseas.

Marvelous AQL has been building its business gradually since the merger of separate games firms, Marvelous Entertainment, AQ Interactive and Livewire in October 2011.

In 2012, the Harvest Moon and Rune Factory publisher formed a European subsidiary and, earlier this week, renamed its US publishing arm, XSeed, as Marvelous USA.

Kutaragi was instrumental in the creation of the original PlayStation, leading the hardware that designed the system architecture and pushing his vision to get Sony into the games business.

After stepping down from Sony, following the troubled PlayStation 3 launch, Kutaragi went on to found Cyber AI Entertainment, which specialises in networking technology, in 2009. He is currently founder, president and CEO of the company, and is likely to remain so, even with his duties at Marvelous, as, generally, external directors are not required to leave their current jobs.

He has also served on the boards of Kadokawa Group Holdings, Nojima Corporation and Rakuten.

Kutaragi will officially begin his new position at Marvelous in June.