Why Sony is going to hell

[G.Irish]

I used to really like Sony products. They tended to be well designed, innovative, performed well, and lasted a long time. Sure the stuff tended to be more expensive but I don't remember ever being dissapointed. Who can forget all of those fond memories with PS1 and PS2?

But over time Sony has turned into a bastard company that I loathe and despise. I think a lot of the trouble began when they got into the music, TV, and movie business. As an electronic company you'd think that owning the media would be a great asset, but it has turned into a fundamental conflict of interest.

Basically, Sony cripples its electronic products because it doesn't want people to violate the copyright of any of the media they own. They've jealously created a bunch of closed, propietary standards so that they and they alone could control all of the content. And of course consumers have promptly ignored them.

Exhibit A: MiniDisc
How long were these on the market? Exactly.

Exhibit B: Memory Sticks
These have actually stuck around because Sony's cameras were good enough that people didn't care that they couldn't buy some of the cheaper flash memory like CompactFlash.

Still, one has to wonder if they could've sold even more cameras, PSP's, Clie's and other devices by just subscribing to the industry standard rather than reinventing the wheel.

Exhibit C: NetWalkman
Sony really should have been the ones to come up with the market redefining music player (the iPod). But instead they dragged their feet and when they did come up with something it was dead on arrival

Exhibit D: PSP
The Playstation Portable could have been a killer app. Here you have a handheld gaming device that you could surf the internet on, run homebrew games and applications on, and watch music and movies.

But what did they do? They make it stupid difficult to upload video, they charge $20 for the MD movies, and they purposefully break homebrew applications with every firmware upgrade. I would have bought a PSP if not for all of this foolishness.

Playstation 3
So now we have the PS3 on the horizon and Sony thinks that they can charge $500 and $600 for it when Microsoft is charging $300-400 for the XBox360 and Nintendo is charging $199 for the Wii.

Sony in their delusional hubris believes that they won't have a problem selling their system because it will have native Blu Ray DVD playback. Their reasoning is that it will be the cheapest Blu Ray DVD player on the market, which is true.

However I think they will fail because people don't care about nor want Blu Ray DVD players. The major consumer benefit of the Blu Ray DVD's is simply that they play movies at a higher resolution. Who cares, DVD's are already enough to satisfy all but the ultra media geek. Not to mention the fact that HDTV's have very poor market penetration so most people wouldn't see the difference anyway.

It's a shame because Sony used to be such a good company but now they are on a precipitous slide that has no sign of ending, unless they get rid of their content divisions

Thoughts?

[.RJ]

Thoughts?

Reason for sale: I live on a boat in mexico

[CaptainHenreh]

It really is sad to see. Sony *knows* how to make innovative products. What they have yet to learn is how to get the market to accept them.

Case-in-point: The MiniDisc. I had a minidisk deck and portable player. I got what basically amounted to "last year's model" on hella clearance at Wards. It was *awesome*. Used few batteries, never skipped, couldn't scratch it, and the downgrade in audio quality was negligable with a good optical input from source.

So I took all the CD's I listened to on a regular basis, copied them to minidisc (at a fairly reasonable cost, if I remember correctly) and then listened the crap out of that thing. It was an awesome product. Then it broke. So I went to buy a new one.

Whoa Nelly! 200 bucks! Holy shit! Granted, the new "minidiscmen" also recorded, an from an optical input should you be so lucky but I had a deck already! What did I need that for? Well, no "cheapie" model for those of us who shelled out the extra cash for a shelf unit. And for 200 bucks, I'll just buy an MP3 player and cut out the minidisc crap altogether.

And that's just one example. Sony needs to learn that the industry is very good at out-Sony'ing sony's good ideas.

[PDenbigh]

I Guess the antithesis of this would for arguments sake be that they are a great company, supported by the following (unresarched) comments:

1. They sell huge quantities of consumer electronics beyond what is publicly known, such as batteries (that are exploding, yay!), internal components, computers, computer parts, DVD's, CD's, car audio, home audio (both cheap and crappy and high fidelity and expensive), etc.

2. They are good at testing markets and trying new things. I once had a little gadget from Sony that you clicked when you heard a good song on the radio. You then plugged it into a USB port on your PC and it searched a database of songs that were played at that time on the station you were listening to. Didn't work, failed miserably, but a pretty cool idea. (Just as an example).

3. Microsoft has excelled by establishing the "industry standard" and I think Sony has aspired to do that same.

As I think of more I'll post...


But I agree that they have messed up in a lot of ways. However, I think they have succeeded in a lot of ways too, and it might not be fair to criticize them for being balsy enough to try ideas out that are a high-risk situation. I think they balance high risk/high return with low risk/low (but guaranteed) return pretty well.

[G.Irish]

Sony is not all bad, but they've certainly lost their way on several fronts. They don't do bad on video camcorders or cameras and their professional grade stuff still does well. But on their big consumer products they are in trouble.

The PS2 by far was their biggest selling and most profitable product, they are going to take a big hit if they don't do well this time around.

Samsung is actually more profitable at this point than Sony, by a quick glance Samsung had $9.77 billion in profit in 2005 to Sony's $1.07 billion. Still profitable but Samsung used to be a junk brand compared to Sony.

I don't think Sony has trouble innovating, its that they are choosing to make inferior consumer products to protect their media. They also lost out big on LCD screens to Samsung.

Don't get me started on the rootkit thing...

[ViPER1313]

I think their quality has gone down hill in recent years as well. I bought a Sony Discman back in the 3rd grade that lasted me all the way through high school. Even with 3 second ESP the thing skipped less than my friends players with 40+ second memory buffers. The bass boost on it sounded great, it cranked, and it was indestructible, so when it finally gave up the ghost after 8 years I bought another Sony. This one likes to skip on poor quality CDs, the presets on the EQ sound fake and it just feels flimsy overall. I bought a Sony head unit for my car a year ago, it has problems tracking with all but the cleanest CDs and the audio quality is lacking. On top of that, they have horrible reliability ratings on their laptops, their PS2 PS units liked to catch on fire, and now their batteries are causing one of the largest recalls in history. Just too bad.

[Mike]

I would have bought a PSP if not for all of this foolishness.

no need, we have one at home... just ask if you wanna dick around with it. it pretty much sucks

you know how i feel about all this... i feel your posting has stemmed from some ranting we've had at our house

[Apoc]

What no option for maybe?

I'll prolly get the Xb360 at price drop and that's it.

[Dave]

I bought a PS2 at a good price a few years ago. I probably play it a maximum of 20 hours a year, so there is absolutely no way I would buy a PS3 at $600 unless it provided sexual favors and could be used to generate some form of income.

[G.Irish]

I thought about the maybe option after the fact but I can't add it now (software won't let me).

[ViPER1313]

I'll get one a couple years after it launches and gets down to the $200 range - I have always done this.

[CaptainHenreh]

No way I'm buying a PS3...ever. I'm seriously considering a Wii (stupid name nonwithstanding), and if I can get broken XBox 360's as cheap as I've been getting broken x-boxes, I'll get one of those, too.

Frankly, I think that Sony has completely lost it. From outsourcing most of their design, to this awful Blu-Ray debacle. (50 dollars for a Blu-Ray Recordable disc? FUCK YOU!)

Sony just isn't who they were 10 years ago.

But wait, you'll see. They'll make a comeback in a big way. They just have to suffer a little, first. Do some corporate shakedowns.

[Sijray21]

i'll just wait to see which one of you fools buys it so i can play it

i used to play ps2 a lot back in the day, but now i just lost interest and don't have time (or don't want to make time) to play as much as i should for how much i would pay for it.

[BLINGMW]

I'm certianly not a marketing guru, but I agree that Sony's in for a big awakening if they expect people to pay that much for a dedicated gaming machine when you could get a nice, up-to-date gaming PC for the same $. How are they even convincing developers that anyone's going to buy the thing? Unless it has just some incredible and innovative games that you just can't get on a PC (or xBox), then I think the market for it is going to be VERY small. And yes, I agree, the "it's also a cheap blu-ray player" arguement is so weak... again, a VERY small group of people will care at all. The only way you can convince people to get into proprietary equipment is if it does something nothing else can do or does something significantly better. I hate to say it, but IMHO Microsoft already won this round before Sony even got out of the gates. Sad. I hope they can recover someday so we don't have to hail Microsoft in yet another market segment.

[G.Irish]

Yeah this is turning into a lesser of evils thing for me. I hate Microsoft but I'm beginning to hate them less than I hate Sony. Still, overall Microsoft is a much more hated company overall. How do I know? My incredibly, verifiably, unscientific hate measurement device: Googlefight.com. I typed in "I hate" and then the names of different companies to come up with a list.
(results in millions)
I hate JVC: .45
I hate Toshiba: 1.33
I hate Panasonic: 1.75
I hate Samsung: 2.26
I hate Nintendo: 5.75
I hate Sony: 13.5
I hate Microsoft: 27.3
I hate Apple: 31.4

[Feersty]

I play my XBox only because I am unemployed, that should end soon, so I see no need to purchase a PS3.

[Mike]

I play my XBox only because I am unemployed, that should end soon, so I see no need to purchase a PS3.

good one.

i'm pick up a 360 when the price drops a hundred and they work out the bugs... i don't think i'll be getting a ps3.

[Goodspeed]

They're going to sell a ton of PS3's in Japan for rediculous prices...they won't even touch the Xbox over there. I'm sure the US market is still very important, but for me, 360>all

[Mike]

They're going to sell a ton of PS3's in Japan for rediculous prices...

what is your reasoning?

[G.Irish]

I think Japan has more technophiles on the whole but I think they'd probably turn to the Nintendo Wii before they bought even the $500 PS3. After all, you can get a Wii and 6 games for the cost of the PS3.

I honestly thought the PSP would do better in Japan but there the Nintendo DS utterly annihilates it in sales.