All of that said, I think the verdict is still out on how good of a hardware designer he actually is. That might sound strange given how many years he already has under his belt at Sony-- but consider:
- He was a consultant on the PlayStation 3's design.
- The PlayStation 4 was the most mundane black box imaginable-- but it won by default after Microsoft shot themselves in the foot. Tough to draw conclusions from that experience.
- He missed the mark almost completely with the Vita.
- There are tons of red flags regarding the PlayStation 5 so far.
The PlayStation 5 will seal his hardware reputation for all posterity I think.
There are questions for me even on the software side: for starters, while his "method" technique really caught on, I later learned that Ed Logg actually employed that concept way back in the late 70s-- and Cerny got his start in the industry working directly under the very same Ed Logg. Undoubtedly that's from where the idea originated.
Some of his game design track record is spotted as well. I still really like "Kid Chameleon", but the game is unplayable without save support. I've heard that the "Knack" titles were pretty mediocre too. He did "consult" on a bunch of good games-- it's not clear to me what that means exactly.
Criticisms aside, I'm still a big fan: I do think he's the smartest guy in pretty much every room, and he is a walking fact book on game and hardware design for sure. We'll see how the PlayStation 5 winds up doing.
In other gaming news, I reinstalled "Gears 5" from scratch, and that took care of my previous issues. I had a number of conversations on Reddit and elsewhere, and apparently the problems I saw are quite commonplace on Microsoft's store. Yikes.
Finally, my hand is almost fully healed from the ridiculous bruising it took via H's and my first-ever skate park visit-- the palm was swollen up like a sausage! This progress means visit two is in the cards in the coming days.