Sony is bleeding money - business strategy discussion

[gongo]

I dont get the luv' for Ken....the CELL failed because...for not a more suitable phrase...it sucks. Ken hardware wins were nothing great...so was his drive to take Sony from a legacy devices company to a more computing one(he tried to sell BTO PS3/Cell "PC" from his factories)...because once again....his vision and execution sucks. Thus even if he comes back to manage Sony and Hirai/Stringer both gets the boot..i doubt Sony can do better, no i think Sony will die faster with King Kenny uncontrolled spendings vis-a-vis poor returns.

Kutaragi technological insights are old and unattractive, i have no confidence they can lift off ground....before to say how many people will like it. The engineers in Sony are out-dated today... lacks top direction... keeps making boring me-second-am-late products....stupid products that looks "nice" but useless. We know Ken for long time and to me he is just some big ego geek...who once found a wad of cash waiting for him...and decides to build an unorthodox processor ecosystem he read about during his phd years....in the seventies...

I mean c'mon....you see where Apple is going with the recent Macbook Air line-up, you know this is a company worth investing....each new step Apple takes links back to the past and future....they'r great, Sony'r not....Ken is no savor. Sony is doom3d.

 

[Platon]

That pretty much mirrors my experience with the included software for the Sony Reader. Agonizingly slow when going through the software, but predictable USB speeds when accessing the storage on the reader directly.

And as an added bonus, it will somehow lock/disable your USB port if you do not first properly close the Sony Reader software. Using the Windows remove device applet which is used when removing all removable media while the Sony Reader is running will result in a locked USB port that cannot be use by any device until you run through some hoops.

Very unpleasant experience. Hence I stopped using the included Sony software over a year ago.

Regards,
SB

I have to say that from the limited experience I have with some devices, like mobile phones, cameras and so on, for most of the time any accompanied softwarefor PC connection is usually quite bad/useless. I have stopped using that quite some time ago. Direct usb connection and using the device as general memory card and similar works the best...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I dont get the luv' for Ken....the CELL failed because...for not a more suitable phrase...it sucks.

I take umbridge at that. For what Cell is and did, it's a very good processor IMO. The vision for it was good, but the practicalities of mainstreaming it into other devices didn't pan out. Perhaps if Kutaragi was in charge of all Sony at that point, Cell would have featured in CE devices and given them added value? Whether or not Cell was the right choice for PS3, as a piece of performance engineering, Cell is a good design with no equal for some years, so Kutaragi deserves credit for promoting it and IBM and Toshiba for designing it. Where he definitely has gone wrong is presenting hardware to devs and just expecting them to write for it. Like pretty much all engineers, he was never thinking about the end users during design.

I have to say that from the limited experience I have with some devices, like mobile phones, cameras and so on, for most of the time any accompanied softwarefor PC connection is usually quite bad/useless. I have stopped using that quite some time ago. Direct usb connection and using the device as general memory card and similar works the best...

It depends on the company. Canon's stuff is typically very good. As is Sammy's. The take-home point is that no CE company can get by now without a decent software arm. Perhaps the lack of software reviews when scoring CE devices shows how the mentality for the whole industry hasn't caught up? And as said many a time before, the reason Apple have shot to success is the software and experience. Which TBH I think is pretty crap in a lot of cases; iTunes is hideous IMHO. But it's better than other offerings. It really is surprising as good, simple software seems so hard for people to design!

Sony's future depends on their software and services, which I have little faith in at moment. I'm not seeing them invest or develop in this area. They had XMB for a while ahead of the game, but they don't have a unified Sony experience any more, and Vita isn't part of a new family of unified experiences.

 

[tritosine5G]

I don't think they are doomed ,I rather think they are under a conglomerate umbrella along with those korean guys and with Panasonic,Toshiba. If those guys want something then they'll use the Sony brand and we'll see this rebadged namedropping action going on for a good long while yet. Maybe they aren't even loosely aligned now either.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'll add another Sony software mess, again related to my new toy. The camcorder comes with recommendation you use the Filmy app on PS3 to browse and play videos. Firstly this software doesn't use the same video controls of the system, so you can't use the thumbsticks as speed throttles or L/R2 as fast forward/rewind. Why the inconsistency? Secondly, it doesn't render the films with the proper colour range. Blacks are mid grey, and no amount of chaning settings can fix this. Yet on PC the blacks are properly black.

A video player is a dirt simple application, yet sony can't even get that right in two different attempts on two platforms!

 

[NavNucST3]

I'll add another Sony software mess, again related to my new toy. The camcorder comes with recommendation you use the Filmy app on PS3 to browse and play videos. Firstly this software doesn't use the same video controls of the system, so you can't use the thumbsticks as speed throttles or L/R2 as fast forward/rewind. Why the inconsistency? Secondly, it doesn't render the films with the proper colour range. Blacks are mid grey, and no amount of chaning settings can fix this. Yet on PC the blacks are properly black.

A video player is a dirt simple application, yet sony can't even get that right in two different attempts on two platforms!

If it makes you feel better, I grabbed my sons 3DS to see if there was any notification about the ambassador program. Tap into the e-shop and I get an error message that the wireless isn't on, ok, not a problem, I turn it on I look closer at the error message and think to myself..."you're shitting me right?". The 3DS needs a restart of the system if the wireless wasn't on during your first attempt of accessing the e-shop. me: that can't be right let me just hit the Home button and try again...yeah...no...restart it is.

Seriously? This is what is considered good design? There are so many things that I absolutely abhor about the 3DS software design, e-shop, streetpass, online, DS wireless connection settings that differ from 3DS wireless connection settings - I can't use wireless when playing in DS "mode" because of my router config but no problems in 3DS "mode"...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I can carry on! The recent 3.70 FW update changes the way the TV services are handled. Firstly iPlayer didn't update for sdome of us. Now it has for me. For my friend it just disappeared. For another, he has a new icon under which all the available TV players have appeared. I don't have this icon, and so have lost access to the ITV and 4OD players. Another friend maanged to get this icon to appear somehow.

Same OS, same hardware, different results. the mind boggles!

 

[Antan]

Heavily rumoured (within the industry) PS3 price drop tommorow.

 

[deathindustrial]

Same OS, same hardware, different results. the mind boggles!

I have an unsubstantiated theory that this is a theme related issue. I have had similar behaviour on my two PS3s and the only obvious difference is the installed themes, dynamic ones on particular. Try changing your theme and see if that makes a difference.

Cheers

 

[BoardBonobo]

I have an unsubstantiated theory that this is a theme related issue. I have had similar behaviour on my two PS3s and the only obvious difference is the installed themes, dynamic ones on particular. Try changing your theme and see if that makes a difference.

Cheers

I logged into Home and back out again and the new category appeared as was suggested on the blog. It worked. Don't see why they have their own category in the menu when their icons appear in the list anyway. Doh!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I have an unsubstantiated theory that this is a theme related issue. I have had similar behaviour on my two PS3s and the only obvious difference is the installed themes, dynamic ones on particular. Try changing your theme and see if that makes a difference.

Cheers

Good theory, but no joy. Changing theme, chaning user, and rebooting with default theme, did not change the icons.

 

[patsu]

I have read that entering and exiting Playstation Home will fix the problem. Some people mentioned that downloading stuff from Playstation Store also restored the icon for them.

Sounds like some sort of XMB disk cache got messed up.

EDIT: I also noticed something odd about firmware 3.70 and R3.

But let's wait for their Gamescom event to see if my guess is correct.

R3 is supposed to launch with Sony's Online Pass program.

 

[patsu]

Also, I thought PS3 can only support up to 500Gb internal HDD since it was gimped in one of the earliest firmware updates.

According to here:
http://community.us.playstation.com/thread/2202631?start=45&tstart=0

We can use up to 1Tb HDD in our PS3 [strike]now[/strike] for a while now.

 

[boommoob1]

Heavily rumoured (within the industry) PS3 price drop tommorow.

$50 i think. With the continued surging Yen, Earthquake losses, US credit rating degrade i'd imagine playing safe is there only logical conclusion. Nonsensical chasing marketshare in this environment and so late in the day .

 

[boommoob1]

I can carry on! The recent 3.70 FW update changes the way the TV services are handled. Firstly iPlayer didn't update for sdome of us. Now it has for me. For my friend it just disappeared. For another, he has a new icon under which all the available TV players have appeared. I don't have this icon, and so have lost access to the ITV and 4OD players. Another friend maanged to get this icon to appear somehow.

Same OS, same hardware, different results. the mind boggles!

SCEI itself perfectly illustrates the fractured nature of Sony. SCEE, SCEA, SCEJ are separate entities.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I have read that entering and exiting Playstation Home will fix the problem. Some people mentioned that downloading stuff from Playstation Store also restored the icon for them.

I have to reinstall, download and run a program I don't want? Is this anew Sony trick to get people to try out Home again?!

 

[patsu]

I have to reinstall, download and run a program I don't want? Is this anew Sony trick to get people to try out Home again?!

[Hirai raises pinky to mouth]

Muahahaha ! Did it work ? Did it work ?

 

[NavNucST3]

Those of us who were in the $100 camp were "off" we'll have to wait and see if we were "wrong" though.

I can't at any time recall in the past few years fora proclaiming the PS3 was expensive in Japan so I don't expect much of an uptick, 2-3 weeks of greatly improved sales and then from flat to 3-5k improvement on weekly numbers. In the US...tricky...I expect flat YoY and then a marked increased in November (Black Friday) holiday bundles but a flat to minimal increase in December/January and then flat YoY starting in February/March. I have absolutely no gauge on EU.

 

[boommoob1]

Those of us who were in the $100 camp were "off" we'll have to wait and see if we were "wrong" though.

I can't at any time recall in the past few years fora proclaiming the PS3 was expensive in Japan so I don't expect much of an uptick, 2-3 weeks of greatly improved sales and then from flat to 3-5k improvement on weekly numbers. In the US...tricky...I expect flat YoY and then a marked increased in November (Black Friday) holiday bundles but a flat to minimal increase in December/January and then flat YoY starting in February/March. I have absolutely no gauge on EU.

I think Sonys 15 million predicted sales signposted a $50 drop.

 

[NavNucST3]

I think Sonys 15 million predicted sales signposted a $50 drop.

Right, but some of us posited that $50 gets them to flat from last years numbers which as we've talked about, missed. They are already down for the FY both in sell-in and sell-through for the countries we get numbers and if you go by Nintendo slides they are just barely above last year but still hovering around the 50k/week mark. You believe that there are enough people in waiting where $50 gets Sony not only back to flat but above last years numbers, my opinion was the opposite. We will get some % increases from retailers in different regions I'm sure.