Sony Responds to Merrill Lynch Report

nelg said:
Sony is under obligation to make available to its investors material financial information. Yes, this is a grey area, so it could be argued either way. What muddles the issue though is that this is not a typical product. The very nature of consoles, whereas the software subsidises the hardware for a period of time, makes the issue of cash flow and conservation related. Furthermore is the issue of Blu-Ray's success is also tied into the PS3. Sony has a lot more riding on the PS3 than is typical in the CE business.

I would argue that someone like Eliot Spitzer could make a compelling case that such estimates should be made available or if incorrect information was disseminated that a response would be warranted.
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So are you saying every CE company in the world just has to spill the beans of their price to manufacture if ML aims to high? What if ML decides to go after Nintendo next and say that the Revolution costs $500 to make? What if ML decided to redo their estimate of the Xbox 360 2 weeks before release last year and wanted to guess that it cost $700 to make?

Should any of those companies quickly have a press conference and tell the world, "NO our console will only cost $450 to make no worries"? Wouldn't that give the competitior an unfair advantage?
 
mckmas8808 said:
So are you saying every CE company in the world just has to spill the beans of their price to manufacture if ML aims to high? What if ML decides to go after Nintendo next and say that the Revolution costs $500 to make? What if ML decided to redo their estimate of the Xbox 360 2 weeks before release last year and wanted to guess that it cost $700 to make?

Should any of those companies quickly have a press conference and tell the world, "NO our console will only cost $450 to make no worries"? Wouldn't that give the competitior an unfair advantage?
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If Merrill went wild with speculation without even believing what they were saying any longer, they could certainly be sued by Sony - just as if Sony was found to be knowingly deceptive in it's estimates for PS3 release and it was considered an item of material significance in terms of investment decisions, Sony likewise could be sued in a shareholders class-action.

Obviously this is all hypothetical, and it's not going to come to that. I don't think ML's anything other than a bunch of fools that really believe themselves, and I don't think Sony is aiming for anything other than their claimed Spring launch - even though they readily admit they could be delayed. But as long as they are still internally aiming for spring and not actively aiming for - say winter '07 - they're ok in what they've said to the public so far in terms of the Spitzers.
 
Shifty Geezer:
On an off-topic but important point, I have to pull up the use of the phrase 'I could care less' on this board. It's been bothering me for a while, though I didn't say anything because it's rather mute.
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What do you mean by "mute"?
 
mckmas8808 said:
So are you saying every CE company in the world just has to spill the beans of their price to manufacture if ML aims to high?
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No that is not what I am saying. To reiterate, consoles are not typical of CE devices. They are knowingly sold for a gross loss. The implications are similar (though not as drastic in Sony's case) to the cash burn rate for start up companies. MS has the cash to play this game. Nintendo has to be more prudent. Sony is somewhere in the middle but they are also using the PS3 to entrench BD as the next generation HD format so they have presumably (IMHO) been willing to spend more on hardware with the potential for a bigger payback. Of course they are leveraging this on the strength of the PS franchise so it will most likely be a smart bet. That being said if it does fail it will do so spectacularly.
 
Yep, typo. Normally it's best to just ignore grammatical and spelling mistakes (this isnt an English Language forum!), but this 'could care less' thing seems to be a miseducation rather than a once off typing error as I first thought it was.
 
nelg said:
Sony is under obligation to make available to its investors material financial information.
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PS3 is not on sales yet, so it's not public info. All Sony needs to report is just its overall R&D spending.

So far they chose to release launch date as public info. Even feature set is not official yet.
:(

I would think they will annonce pricing and availability very close to launch, region by region ( just like PS2 ? ).
 
london-boy said:
Heh, if only it were that easy!! Speaking of which, i LOVE Lik-Sang. Great services, always.
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ebay is almost guaranteed to have some PS3s at launch. it's one of the few places you can buy an X360, as long as you dont mind paying >$1000...
 
Shifty Geezer said:
On an off-topic but important point, I have to pull up the use of the phrase 'I could care less' on this board. It's been bothering me for a while, though I didn't say anything because it's rather mute. But use seems to be increasing. The phrase is 'I couldn't care less', not 'I could care less'.

'I couldn't care less' means your interest is non-existent. 'It is not possible for me to care any less about this subject than I currently do.'

'I could care less' means you have some interest by which it is possible for you to care less, but it doesn't quantify your interest. It doesn't say 'I'm quite interested', 'very interested', 'slightly interested'. It could be any of those things. 'I could care less' is thus pretty meaningless, and the use of the term by people meaning to say they don't care has got to stop or I'll go spare! :p
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I couldn't care less about this . :D
 
dukmahsik said:
very interesting that they replied to ML report at all, musta hit a sore spot
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Yeah, some sore spot. A report comes out claiming "Important Company A will be sigificantly delayed in releasing their most anticipated product, here's the unsubstantiated reasons why" and you dont expect a response reaffirming the course?
 
not really, they have an obligation to respond to damaging and probably incorrect speculation.
They don't really care what a bunch of fanboi's thnks, their shareholders rule.

MLs guesses have been disputed by others apart from Sony, gamesindustry.biz is openly derisive of the prices quoted for Cell and the BRD. (as am i, a top line intel processor costs intel $40 and given the maturity of optical drives i'm guessing $300 for a laser in a drive is fanciful)
 
mckmas8808 said:
This is getting out of hand. These news reports....
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How so? The ML report highlighted a potential issue with getting PS3 out the door, which Sony confirmed was ineed a potential issue. Stock holders would understandably be nervous, and have reacted in line with that.

IMO this all points to a delayed launch. Sony are typically more bullish about these type of things. If we do see a launch in Spring I imagine it will be extremely limited.
 
mckmas8808 said:
This is getting out of hand. These news reports....
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Not really. Sony wants hype, but hype goes both ways. If it's really so bad, then Sony can rectify the situation right away. It's their decision to keep so quiet about everything.
 
Hmm... I doubt a large company on the verge of releasing its promising next-gen platform/product would spend more time to clarify. Does Sony really need to manage by stock price ? GDC is only 4 weeks away anyway.

Might as well nail all the outstanding issues (HDMI specs, game development, simplifying messaging, etc. ...) and vindicate itself according to its original plans.

If the ML report is really off, Sony comes out even better and the actual result should hopefully force ML to release higher quality reports next time (ha ha). Otherwise, ML is really doing all of us a favor by giving us a heads up.
 
patsu said:
Hmm... I doubt a large company on the verge of releasing its promising next-gen platform/product would spend more time to clarify. Does Sony really need to manage by stock price ? GDC is only 4 weeks away anyway.

Might as well nail all the outstanding issues (HDMI specs, game development, simplifying messaging, etc. ...) and vindicate itself according to its original plans.

If the ML report is really off, Sony comes out even better and the actual result should hopefully force ML to release higher quality reports next time (ha ha). Otherwise, ML is really doing all of us a favor by giving us a heads up.
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Well if the ML report is wrong SNE should get a nice stock boost. When you are a publicly traded company stock prices tend be a pretty important thing IMO. SNE's stock prices should change too drastically though, assuming they are a blue chip co.
 
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