'Sony Needs a Fresh Hit' (bloomberg.com) 123
Even as Sony's CEO Kazuo Hirai has done a remarkable job over the past five years -- taking bold decisions on the areas the company should be focusing on, and cutting efforts on those that aren't working -- his company desperately needs a fresh hit to boost its revenue and to become relevant in the mind of most, writes columnist Tim Culpan for Bloomberg. An except from his article: According to a company statement Tuesday for investors' day, the key will be to "remain the 'last one inch' that delivers a sense of 'wow' to customers," expand recurring revenue, and pursue new businesses.Those three strategies are closely linked. With TV sales in decline, its Vaio PC business spun off, and its smartphones barely a blip on the radar, Sony's last inch is heavily dependent on the PlayStation. Sony's Game & Network Services business has grown at both the top and bottom lines over the past five years, but the games console business is stuck in time. [...] Sony needs to build a device that will be far more ubiquitous and can appeal to consumers beyond the current male-skewed slowly aging hard-core gamer base. Amazon and Alphabet, with Echo and Home, are two such examples, and Apple will probably follow suit. With its background in audio, video, sensors and entertainment, Sony has all the right parts to make it happen. For the company that invented the Walkman, dreaming up another hit shouldn't be so hard.
Re:A new mobile OS (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll grant that they've come a long way from the rootkit scandal [wikipedia.org], such as when they responded to the Xbox One's original, draconian policy of tying discs to consoles so friends couldn't loan games to each other with their own, much better policy for sharing games [youtube.com], but that rootkit debacle destroyed a lot of trust.
I consider myself to be one of the more lenient ones around here, in that I'm fine with owning other products of theirs, provided they're sandboxed or disconnected from anything important, but the notion of running a Sony-developed OS that has the ability to tell them everything about my life? Not until I'm convinced their interests align with mine, which is to say, not a chance in hell as long as they are one of the major players in the media industry.
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The Rootkit scandal wasn't even Sony. It was BMG, a company that was later acquired by Sony. There were no Sony executives involved. There were no meetings in Sony headquarters about including a rootkit. Furthermore, there were no computer viruses that used the rootkit as an attack vector, as like nobody listened to CDs in their CD-ROM drive. Plus, this all happened like 15 years ago. I think it's time to let it go.
A "fresh hit" -- that's a TOTAL drug reference (Score:1)
Fresh hit [reddit.com] usually refers to something like smack or coke or poppers. Msmash, are you dim?
Re: A "fresh hit" -- that's a TOTAL drug reference (Score:1)
Well, only two industries refer to their customers as "users".
Re: A "fresh hit" -- that's a TOTAL drug reference (Score:2)
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We all knew Sony was smoking some powerful shit.
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Sony can't do software. Every single piece of software they've ever distributed has been an unmitigated disaster.
Dream up another hit (Score:1)
You could say the same thing to Apple and its stagnating product lineup
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You could say the same thing to Apple and its stagnating product lineup
Yea Apple needs to invent iResurrect. Love him or hate him, Jobs had a talent for finding and marketing that "next big thing" and he had the influence to make it happen. I don't think Apple is going to die off tomorrow but I don't see any really big, new products coming from them. I don't think they are going to have another Mac, or iPod, or iPhone moment again.
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They may not have one of those moments again, but I think it's too early to say, since those sorts of revolutionary shifts only occur once every decade or two at best.
Thinking back over the last 50 years or so, we've had three biggest revolutions in our everyday approach to technology: PCs, the Internet, and smartphones. Apple was able to ride or contribute to each of those waves, first with the original Mac, then with the iMac (the "i" stood for Internet, as you'll recall), and then with the iPhone. Those
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If they make another hit, I'd bet on AR/VR. Its close enough to be reasonable (unlike self driving cars which are at least a decade out of commercial), and the nerd stigma is the perfect thing for them to overcome- smartphones existed before the iphone (windows mobile, symbian), but were considered a nerd toy ay best.
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Wow, I really should re-read what I write before clicking submit.
"we've had three biggest revolutions" should have been "we've had three big revolutions".
"It's may be" obviously should have been "It may be".
Ugh.
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Not mentioning the iPod was an intentional omission, actually. While the iPod helped the company take the next step in its recovery from near-bankruptcy, and also demonstrated that they had the ability to move into markets outside of computers, it didn't have a massive cultural impact. Sure, it had an impact, but not on the scale of the other revolutions being discussed.
If they launched something "as successful as" the iPod today, it'd likely be viewed as little more than a blip in their product lineup, muc
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I don't disagree with any of the facts you've said. Where I differ is that I think most of that stuff was more important to Apple than to society, particularly with regards to the influence they were able to exert, hence my leaving it out.
As for changing the music industry, the change to digital was already happening. iTunes and the iPod helped give it a significant push, to be sure, but digital was already established as the successor to CDs at that point, just as CDs had been the successor to cassettes.
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Also, the iPod itself was a bit of a status symbol and sold over 368 million units during from 2006 to 2014. No where near iPhone numb
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Specifically, it was the iTunes Music Store. That was the big winner. iTunes as a music organizer and player was merely ok, (and on non-Apple platforms it's always been terrible) but it was its integration with purchasing and seamless integration with the iPod that made all of that a big win.
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They have to get with the times. (Score:1)
Sony had a great hit with the Walkman back in the day. It's a new century and they have to get with the time:
I only have one word for them. (Score:1)
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Years later, I still refuse to buy any Sony products. They deserve all the misfortune they receive.
The path is open; the hiker is blind. (Score:3)
My shelves are replete with PS1 and PS2 games, a few PS3 games. All Sony needs to do to get my money is:
1) Make sure the next console can play them, and
2) Make sure that I can buy game disks that can sit on the shelves next to them that will never, ever require "the cloud" or "authorization" to run.
They're not going to do that, though, because greed has blinded them. And consequently, they're not going to get my money.
Also: Eventually, emulators will appear that can run those games on general purpose hardwa
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Number 1. Is hard because Sony is dealing with 3 architectures: MIPS, Cell/PPC, and X86_64. Sony made PS2's compatible by including the PSones CPU
Early model PS3's have PS2 CPU'S and GPU's
Sony already does number 2.
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To be fair it's not just Sony at fault here. Game developers demand the ability to release unfinished games on physical media that are basically a key to activate the tens of gigabytes of day 1 patch and subsequent updates until the game leaves beta six months later.
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Emulation is hard. It's just a hard problem to solve. Downloading PSXe and having it crash trying to play a game can be ok, but if Sony was to include an emulator in the PS... 5(?) it has to WORK. Work reliably. And that's hard, because "close enough" isn't "good enough." The architecture of the PS2 and PS3 was difficult enough to program for game developers on the actual platforms.
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This may have been a result of being sued for creating a video tape recorder that could (gasp!) record copyrighted television shows! And even worse (horrors!) - - play them back later - OMG!
It may have seemed like a good idea to decide to own a movie studio that owned content. But the content part of the business came to dominate everything. DRM everywhere. In everything. The rootkit was just a symptom of thi
Dream up another rootkit (Score:1)
Sure, let's encourage Sony to dream up new ways to screw over customers.
Sony is floundering because their phones were terrible, their TVs were overpriced, and the PS4 is just an underpowered PC with added DRM. With the release of Project Scorpio, the Xbox One is going to be the clearly superior console. The PS4 Pro doesn't even support true 4K!
As far as I'm concerned, Sony can just fade away. Nothing of value would be lost.
Re:Dream up another rootkit (Score:4, Interesting)
Somewhat ironically, their Android phones are relatively open - the failing there is likely that the devices are bland compared to an iPhone, and sit somewhere between a pure Android (a la Nexus/Fi) and a fully vendor customized setup a la Samsung. They haven't managed to establish a market niche with them, let alone dominate.
As for consoles, I'm not holding my breath on expectations that the Scorpio will be as dominant as you think. 4k gaming takes serious horsepower, and it's not cheap, even today. Past history shows that 'best hardware' doesn't always win, because there's a lot of other factors involved (price being one of them). That's not to say that the PS4 is going to 'win', though it's currently outsold the Xbox1 by about a 2:1 ratio. I find it ironic though that you slam the PS4 over something that is EXACTLY true of the Xbox1 though - they're both (an) "underpowered PC with added DRM".
Now, what would make me look at Sony products again? It doesn't have to be a world-breaking innovation, but there are definitely a few things that they could do, just off the top of my head:
1) Improve quality back to premium level. Sony products today are pretty much the same mediocre quality as everyone else's, because they're largely made in the same Chinese/etc factories, and use the same Chinese/etc parts. I'd pay slightly more for better quality, but I have to know I'm going to get it.
2) Strive for openness. Sony has a bad history, but they can do a lot to get past that. You don't need to choke the market to be a leader, and the downside of a failed proprietary format is way worse than an open one. They need to do more things the way they handled the game-sharing aspects in the runup to PS4 vs Xbox1, where Microsoft started talking about restrictions on sharing games, reselling etc, and Sony came out and mocked them for it (brilliantly), causing Microsoft to have to ditch those plans.
3) Get rid of the film division. Following in part with 2, get rid of the film division so that you're not tied into the entertainment side of things, because the studios/etc are always pushing for anti-consumer things.
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> The problem often has been that they've had a long history towards pushing proprietary formats and devices. Some of those have been successful, many have failed to catch on, and some were spectacular failures (Betamax).
I mentioned [slashdot.org] Sony's long line of failures back in 2014.
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There's a difference between Sony being a small player in big field, vs a wholly in-house design.
The DVD comes from Toshiba/Panasonic's Super Density disc.
Sony and Phillips's competing disc format (MMCD) did not become DVD.
Sony's role in the DVD is largely in deciding they would never win that particular format war, and dropping their own format. They did allow DVD to use a couple of technologies that came from MMCD, to strengthen the format.
The DVD is not Sony format. That fact is why Sony spent over half
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That's like saying Apple created MPEG because they're in the patent pool, and MPEG uses the QuickTime container.
The reality is quite different. Nobody claims MPEG is an Apple format, and in the same way, it's disingenuous to claim Sony created the DVD.
Then Blu-ray also needs to come off that list, since it was a joint collaboration between Phillips, Sony, Pioneer, with the founding org and patent pool also including Panasonic, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp, and Samsung Electronics.
Re:Dream up another rootkit (Score:5, Interesting)
The worst part about that list is that many of the items on it were superior in many ways to their competitor, but due to Sony's greed failed to catch on.
Sony has come up with some great products, they just need to realize that nobody wants hardware that isn't compatible with anyone else's, and none of the competitors are willing to pay the kind of royalties Sony wants, even if the end product is better.
Beyond that though, Sony did at one point in the past stand for quality. There's a reason people wanted a real Walkman and not a rip-off. The Walkman was simply a better machine. Same with many of their products. Now though the quality of Sony stuff isn't "bad", but it's also no better than any of their competitors, but they often try to charge a premium for the brand. The brand just isn't worth a premium any more.
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The worst part about that list is that many of the items on it were superior in many ways to their competitor, but due to Sony's greed failed to catch on. Sony has come up with some great products, they just need to realize that nobody wants hardware that isn't compatible with anyone else's, and none of the competitors are willing to pay the kind of royalties Sony wants, even if the end product is better.
Beyond that though, Sony did at one point in the past stand for quality. There's a reason people wanted a real Walkman and not a rip-off. The Walkman was simply a better machine. Same with many of their products. Now though the quality of Sony stuff isn't "bad", but it's also no better than any of their competitors, but they often try to charge a premium for the brand. The brand just isn't worth a premium any more.
Yes, exactly. Sony kept trying to get a locked-in market, or to charge royalties for their competitors to use their format, and it failed far more often than not. The few successful cases were less closed than others, and tended to have more partners from day 1. Trying to establish a format lock in, or a closed ecosystem, just isn't going to work (the sole exception being consoles, which are all closed by design). I'd say the only exception to that sort of rule is Apple, and there's no way Sony could do wha
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I think Sony's failure to understand or anticipate the digital music market may have had a lot to do with the fact that they owned a recording company. Worse, rather than use that to leverage themselves into dominance of the market by building a digital store with their entire catalogue, and offering to let others sell there for a reasonable cut (the way Apple operates), they clung to the outdated model. Why? Because it was the Recording division calling th
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Depends how you define "failure"... Minidisc was never a rival for mass distribution of pre-recorded music, but it sold reasonably well for people who wanted to record their own stuff.
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MiniDisc was a huge success in Europe and Asia for over a decade, but Sony let the format stagnate. It could have completely replaced the cassette tape, the CD, the floppy disk and the CD-R(W) and dominated the market, at least until flash memory became cheap and plentiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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the 3.5" micro-floppy is also Sony.
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Sony (Electronics) has had a long history of being innovative. The problem often has been that they've had a long history towards pushing proprietary formats and devices. Some of those have been successful, many have failed to catch on, and some were spectacular failures (Betamax).
The old Sony, pre 1990s had a long history of being innovative. Sometime around the late 80s, Sony started playing the MBA game - maximize profits with minimal investment. They cashed in on their patent portfolio and fully abused their name as they reset their innovation into how to create adequate hardware as cheaply as possible. The current Sony is no more innovative than a crack-head looking for some way to pay for their next fix.
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They disappointed me badly with the "smart" tv which they decided to leave with a bad slow O/S, even tho it has an update function and is able to receive upgrades.
They made some strange proprietary O/S and required app developers to make one-off apps for this tv, then later on it appears that they realized they should have just used a standard Android system instead. Now the app providers don't care about putting out updates to the strange one-off apps, the whole product range available for this model is s
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The PS4 Pro DOES support true 4K. Albeit with a limited number of games, but some excellent titles amongst them, like The Last of Us Remastered, and Skyrim.
The need for true 4K seems overdone. Games like Horizon Zero Dawn have proven that a good rendering technique produces an image that is effectively indiscernible from true 4K, and without the performance requirements.
The superiority of a console is subjective. The truly superior console will have the games that
That seems unlikely (Score:3, Insightful)
Sony lacks the organizational cohesion to deliver on any product line or strategy that crosses business unit boundaries, and an obsession with proprietary formats that makes economies of scale impossible to achieve. The Playstation brand is succeeding in spite of Sony, not because of them.
Re:That seems unlikely (Score:5, Informative)
They're only proprietary formats until everyone else adopts them
No, they're still proprietary at that point too. They may no longer be considered "non-standard" if everyone adopts them as standard, but that doesn't make them any less proprietary.
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The loftier goal is expanding beyond dedicated male gamers. Nintendo has been trying to for years, with only moderate success.
Mobile seems to be where most of the casual gamers are. Maybe because phones are not consoles, and consoles are seen as a "boy's toy" and can't shake that image. But what can you make that isn't a phone and isn't a console/handheld and still appeals?
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Yeah, fuck those evil male gamers. Sexism like this will surely win people over.
Save the manufactured outrage, noting demographic trends is hardly sexist. Animojo was referring to the summary which mentioned that Sony needs to move beyond the "male-skewed aging hardcore gamer base." Older male gamers is a market that has been shrinking, and just focusing on that one market is ignoring the much larger market you can have, along with all the pitfalls you'd get with a shrinking customer base.
Spiderman 4? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe Sony can produce a new Spiderman movie, it would sure to be a hit.
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Maybe Sony can produce a new Spiderman movie, it would sure to be a hit.
They did. It comes out July 7, 2017 . Well they sorta did. They outsourced writing and making it back to Marvel. So yea, it probably will be a hit now if they kept out of Marvel's way and let them do their thing.
Debacle of Sony : from engineers to marketeers. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty stupid to cite the Walkman when trying to guess where the future of Sony lies. The Walkman was the vision of one man, the co-founder of Sony who was an engineer and a tinkerer at heart. He was also the man responsable for having pushed Sony to produced the smallest world band radio receiver ever. He didn't care wether it was financially feaseble or not, he said do it and his underlings said ok. Sony of the past (ie pre- Columbia acquisition) was a company that had vision. It was a company made by engineers pushing the envelope. Today Sony is competely different. It's a company driven along by marketing people and other pencil pushers. The engineers are relegated to the dark corners of the room. Seriously, the engineers at Sony are top rate, it's just the that every project they work on is sabotaged by their "entertainment aka Mr-DRM division" all the time. So you end up with crappy overpriced products. It's no wonder the Koreans ate Sony's lunch.
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Sony of the past (ie pre- Columbia acquisition) was a company that had vision.
Not just vision but also quality. That era of Sony equipment was excellent, well made, it stood for something. Back then you said "It's a Sony" and people nodded in agreement. These days you say that same former tag line for the company and people roll their eyes and walk away.
You can still be a great company without innovation and vision. But Sony has nothing at the moment.
Missing the wave (Score:1)
The PS4 and Xbox One are a stone's throw away from being purpose-built HTPCs. The more generic they go, the smaller their value proposition gets.
Which Sony needs the hit? (Score:3)
Need a product without vendor lock in (Score:4, Insightful)
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New A9 camera body is no slouch (Score:3, Interesting)
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MemoryStick.
Oh, look, where did all the pro photographers go?
Canon and Nikon have nothing to worry about.
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MEMORY CARD SLOT SLOT1ï¼sSlot for SD(UHS-I/II compliant) memory card,
SLOT2ï¼sMulti slot for Memory Stick Duo/SD(UHS-I compliant) memory card
Even my original Sony Alpha A1 supported Compact Flash, which was pretty much the standard at the time, as well as Memory Stick. The problem Sony had was not memory format, it was the same problem ANY camera system has when trying to woo pro photographers: lenses, and to a lesser extent accessories. A pro may have ten
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Oh, is that all? (Score:3)
For the company that invented the Walkman, dreaming up another hit shouldn't be so hard.
That's oversimplifying just a smidge, methinks. The Walkman was the evolution of the handheld transistor radio, and depended upon the existence of the audio cassette tape; nobody was carrying around a 'portable' 8-track player.
What the author fails to differentiate is the fact that Sony owned the portable media playback market with the Walkman (and largely the Discman) at a time when things were primarily hardware. Everything is software now - games, apps, music, movies...it's all files/programs on a storage medium somewhere, and at the hardware level,it's basically "things that play software and read files" in one shape or another. Competing in that world is rather difficult as differentiating is almost invariably a detriment to the product.
I'm certain there are niche areas being ignored where Sony could own a few very small markets, but having 80% marketshare of a dozen 20,000 unit markets isn't going to make the accountants happy if their metric of success is the Walkman or the Playstation.
I'm not saying that Sony *can't* do it, but blockbuster products have a whole lot of ingredients, not the least of which are both luck and mass appeal. Finding the new thing everyone wants, and introducing it the right way, at the right time, at the right price, is not something that can be decided in Excel. After all, every company is trying to do it.
Sony has amazing products, bad decisions (Score:3)
Sony actually had a prototype MP3 Walkman at some point but was forced to give up on the project due to fighting with their audio division over concerns of consumer copyright issues which resulted in Apple pretty much stealing their lunch in this area. Otherwise I wouldn't be surprised if mp3 walkmans would have existed instead of Ipods. Sony had an amazing line of VPC-Z series laptops which were actually assembled in the US or Japan. I own one that's almost a decade old and it's still on par with modern laptops in performance, weight and size. (Think Razor like laptop) Sadly after I believe a tsunami wiped out their manufacturing facilities and problems with their overall company forced them to sell away their Vaio line. They were one of the first companies also to experiment with hybrid graphics and external gpu cards on their laptops. They also sold one of the first consumer OLED displays that cost more than common sense too. So it's not that their products were bad, it's a lot of bad execution and decisions.
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Friend was a VP of Sony back in the Walkman days. Lots of fun stories, but the takeaway was that the Japanese and American culture mix doesn't work well for Sony. It was common for the brass back in Tokyo to be completely out of touch with what was actually happening with their customers in America packing around Walkmans. So I vote +1 for bad management. It's in their DNA.
Do you even game, Bro? (Score:2)
Echo and home arr garbage, destined for the "why the hell did I buy that" bin in the back closet.
As for being stuck in time? The consoles and their PC master race cousins have been pushing tech forward faster than anything else. With the ps3 you had a multiprocessor architecture that was complex as hell, but worked very well. With the ps4, you have in home consumer VR. It streams movies, both from services and one's own network. Integrated live streaming.
I don't know about others, but my ps4s are the entert
Seems obvious! (Score:2)
The just need to start manufacturing the Plumbus! [wikia.com]
A Plumbus is an all purpose home device. Everyone knows what it does, so there is no reason to explain it.
You're welcome, Sony! ;)
Re: You have to realize (Score:2)
They are among the companies that make the highest quality electronics products in the world
Not even close, Shill, but thanks for playing.
Sony needs a big hit (Score:2)
dreaming up another hit shouldn't be so hard. (Score:1)
For the company that invented the Walkman, dreaming up another hit shouldn't be so hard.
What a stupid thing to say. With all of the money Apple has, and a string of products that were amazing sellers, they haven't done much exciting in recent times.
Microsoft did extremely well for itself with it desktop OS and office products. I couldn't even guess how many companies they took over or put under. But I stopped counting how many times they've failed in the mobile phone market. How's Zune selling these days?
How may patents and products did Kodak bring to market over the years? Where are they now
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How's Zune selling these days?
If you are going to praise Microsoft, at least spell XBox properly.
The chain of invention (Score:2)
Sony came to the Walkman (TPS-L2) from the BM-11 [radiomuseum.org]. But it was not a home market product.
Japanese business used multipart memos back in the 70s for several reasons:
- Even Kanji is too difficult to write for trivial reasons.
- Japanese efficiency was offended by the concept of telling someone to write or even type for you, unless your time was incredibly valuable. Executives might have a dictating secretary, but not their subordinates, and certainly not salarymen.
But Sony did make a variety of tape recorders, a
Sony (Score:2)
I have a PS4 and it's decent, but their obsession pushing "partner" apps on it that I can't remove aggravates me. It leaves a bad impression and I just don't use it much. I used to use my PS3 for Netflix and such, but I've mostly switched to the Apple TV since it has a better UI.
I was in the market for an Android phone, but I never even considered Sony. I figured I'd get one and they'd drop the whole line next month. Nothing seemed compelling. I am sort of considering a mirrorless camera, and they do make
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What partner apps? Those things you are seeing in the Video section are just “links“, they're not actually installed. For example a just out of the box PS4 will have those icons for netflix or Hulu but you can't actually use netflix or hulu untill you click on the icon and install the app.
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That's just a nit-picky detail. There are still icons there that I'll never use and can't remove. They clutter up the UI and make it hard to do what I want.
Consumer electronics are dead (Score:4, Interesting)
Today smart phones are the media consumption device of choice for a growing number of consumers and between Samsung and Apple, that market is locked up tight on the high end, and Sony can't compete on the crowded middle and low end segments. Everything Sony was know for is being consumed by smart phones.
If it wasn't for the PS4 being a success, mainly due to Microsoft fumbling the XBox One and spending less on exclusive titles, Sony as a brand would be practically invisible to consumers. This generation has worked out well for them so far, but they can not count on out-maneuvering Microsoft forever. Microsoft is already fighting back on pricing and their upcoming Scorpio looks ready to trounce the PS4 Pro performance wise. If Microsoft decides to start throwing money at good exclusives again, they can claw back quite a bit of market.
Their only other bright spot they have is their camera division which is doing some really cool stuff in the mirrorless camera market. However that is mostly a niche pro market. Most consumers are perfectly happy to use their smart phone camera.
Honestly in a decade or so I can see them spinning off their consumer electronics business or outright selling it, keeping the gaming and media companies. I just can't see where they can go from here in the electronics business. Of course they still have commercial business units like their camera sensor business. I have no insight there, but again we're really looking at the consumer facing Sony here.
*They have reason to worry here too. Sony makes a number of TV shows for various networks, however due to the new realities of network TV (lower ratings, dropping viewers, and ad rate pushback from buyers) show ownership is playing a bigger and bigger part in what shows get picked up or renewed. Sony doesn't have its own network to fall back on so their only choice is to either field fewer and fewer shows, cut ludicrous first-run fee deals, or (and this is starting to happen now) give up a slice of their back end syndication and foreign rights money. Sony Television makes all their money on syndication deals, this is why you see shows like "The Rules of Engagement" stay on the air for 100 episodes despite poor ratings and odd timeslots. They practically give those final seasons to the networks to get it over the 88 or 100 episodes they need to create a syndication package.
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I was searching for a comment that might say that. I agree. To that I would add, I wonder if we have peaked with entertainment. With the screens everywhere we seem to have reached a saturation point *and* the habits have solidified. Our brains are stimulated in a radically different way minute by minute now compared to the 70s. Mario for iPhone having failed is an example. VR which is the most radical form of (asocial) entertainment is barely making a dent in people's lifestyles. Even just reading political
Sony needs to learn to be loyal and stop lying... (Score:2)
...that's what Sony needs to do to repair their image.
There are some of us that are still bitter after the PS3 lie (We won't touch your Linux partition, a month later - we'll you better erase that if you want to continue enjoying updates). And the CD rom malware scandal, not to forget the numerous times they've chosen to be proprietary with every thing they create, make and do - leaving the users forced to pay premium prices for stuff they could get for a 1/3rd of the price with better performance.
Yes, Sony
I'm glad Sony's struggling (Score:4)
Haven't forgotten.
Remix Culture (Score:2)
An easy hit Sony could make is to willingly throw away their obsession with DRM and control. Remember that much of the appeal of tape players (and the Walkman by extension) was mixtapes; not just 'a custom mix of stuff I like' but 'stuff I like that I didn't necessarily buy.' They've never had another consumer electronics win on the level of the Walkman because they locked it all down as much as possible, since it conflicted with their film/music production divisions. Looking at the numbers today, the music
Oh, I have an idea! Maybe release more PS4 models! (Score:1)
After all, if a little hype helps a little, then a ridiculous amount of hype will help a whole lot, right?? Kids just love when you obsolete their brand new 700$ toy before summer is even over.
Fresh hit? Holograms (Score:1)
And sell it at a decent price.
Sell Controllers for Steam! (Score:1)
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This is easy (Score:2)
Or make me an awesome mouse, or an awesome monitor, or something for my car, or pretty much anything.
But make it awesome for me, not awesome for Sony. For instance I got the Xperia phone with the 6 inch screen. In so many ways that phone was potentially great. Pictures in good light were great, screen was great, OS was responsive. B