Sony To Hold Hour And A Half Investor/Analyst Meeting On November 19th

patsu

Legend
Sony has notified its stockholders that its new management team will hold a investor/analyst meeting on November 19th at 17:30 – 19:00 JST. A company spokeswoman declined to give further details on what the briefing will entail. The new team, set up in April, includes CEO Howard Stringer, Executive Deputy President Hiroshi Yoshioka, and Executive Vice President Kazuo Hirai.

Source: http://www.sonyinsider.com/2009/11/...alyst-meeting-on-november-19th/#disqus_thread

Meeting Details:
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/info/strategy/index.html
 
Shock announcement to come at the meeting: Sony is pulling out of the hardware business!

Remember boys and girls, you heard it here first... :)
 
Ha ha, they might not be all positive announcements though. The top Sony management has been pretty quick in rectifying organizational issues in recent years.

I'm just wondering what they are targeting next, and whether there's any (new) joint effort that we don't know about.
 
Event is over. Slides available in the sony.net link in the OP. video to come 3-4 hours later.

I've not watched or read any yet. Playing R&C now.
 
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/info/strategy/pdf/200911pressE.pdf

Seems Sony will remain aggressive in subsidizing the PS3 for some time.

Strengthen profitability of game business
  • Target returning to profitability in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2011.
  • Increase revenues by expanding hardware/software sales and enrichment of
  • PlayStation®Network services.
  • Improve profitability in the game business by cost reduction and other measures

Expect a serious 3D push next fall.

Expand 3D-related product businesses in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2011
  • Engage Sony’s group-wide assets from content production to display devices and game to make available a wide variety of attractive content and hardware, and drive the creation of new 3D markets.
  • Launch 3D-related products for the home, including TV, Blu-ray DiscTM players/recorders
  • and 3D gaming on PlayStation®3 in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2011.
  • Provide solutions for 3D content production, distribution and theatrical projection to lead the field in broadcast and professional businesses.
  • Target revenue from 3D-related products of more than 1 trillion yen (excluding content) in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013.

Interesting tidbits from this presentation:
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/info/strategy/pdf/200911presen.pdf

Playstation Network
  • Rich lineup of content: Game, Non-game (video, comic etc)
  • Q2 Fy2010: release non-game software development kit
  • New revenue stream from subscription !!!???

3D
  • Release 3D games in line with Sony´s 3D strategy
  • All PS3 units will be firmware upgradeable to 3D
 
So they are still loosing a sizable amount per console it woudl seem.


Also I knew it was only a matter of time before sony went subscription based for psn. It was only to catch up and make up for a lack of features that it was free. Though i'm sure we will stlil see a free tier i' msure they will charge for certian things . hosted servers perhaps ?
 
So they are still loosing a sizable amount per console it woudl seem.
Really hard to tell, it could also be in combination with substantial investments in infrastructure and marketing.

Also I knew it was only a matter of time before sony went subscription based for psn. It was only to catch up and make up for a lack of features that it was free. Though i'm sure we will stlil see a free tier i' msure they will charge for certian things . hosted servers perhaps ?

There is already the Qore subscription service in the US, maybe it has been successful so they are expanding that effort. They have also talked about animated comics, there is a lot of possibilities. Hosted servers is one of them.
 
Really hard to tell, it could also be in combination with substantial investments in infrastructure and marketing.



There is already the Qore subscription service in the US, maybe it has been successful so they are expanding that effort. They have also talked about animated comics, there is a lot of possibilities. Hosted servers is one of them.

Animated comics would rule beyond ruling :)
 
So they are still loosing a sizable amount per console it woudl seem.


Also I knew it was only a matter of time before sony went subscription based for psn.

I think we should not speculate on what subscription service they are speaking of. Qore is a subscription based service. They even surveyed about a PSP subscription service.

I am very interested in the non-game sdk they are planning to release. Maybe more services and apps such as Digital Comics.
 
I think we should not speculate on what subscription service they are speaking of. Qore is a subscription based service. They even surveyed about a PSP subscription service.

Hard to tell right now, I agree, though it's not impossible. But we do know they've discussed a discription service format that means you get to download or rent games, and everything seems to be in place for this. Maybe we'll see some kind of netflix-style service for games?

I am very interested in the non-game sdk they are planning to release. Maybe more services and apps such as Digital Comics.

It will definitely be interesting. Could be used for, again, developers who want to do something like a Netflix style application, foto and movie editing software, etc. Some of these have after all already been released as separate applications. Maybe we'll also see something like that for non-game apps for the playstation store.

I do really hope it won't just be pay for online gaming though. Anything but that. ;)
 
Really hard to tell, it could also be in combination with substantial investments in infrastructure and marketing.

The console costs on a global level were indicated at around ~10% higher than what they presently sell them for, at least as of the last conference call from the quarter just reported.
 
The console costs on a global level were indicated at around ~10% higher than what they presently sell them for, at least as of the last conference call from the quarter just reported.

Pardon my ignorance, but i dont quite understand this, I recall Sony losing ~600 million dollars in the division gaming is in last quarter...

So since they shipped 3.2m PS3's IIRC, if they were losing 10%, =$30 per, that is only 96 million dollars. Not even accounting for the fact, I'd expect PSP and PS2 to be profitable, leading to "true" losses minus those two platforms to be even higher. So where are the other 500 million in losses from? Employee costs? Other parts of the division? Or are true PS3 hardware losses possibly much greater as I suspect?

As far as losses in the other parts of the division, wasn't the rest of Sony besides gaming division profitable last quarter? So it would seem less likely the rest of their divisions outside gaming are losing money, though of course it's 100% possible if more of their losing segments are in the game division (forgot it's name)

And how many times have Sony moved back their game division profitability forecast now? Seems every year the same story, "we target profitability next fiscal year". I guess they apparently dont mind losing all that money to prop up the P3 though, because they keep doing it.
 
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Pardon my ignorance, but i dont quite understand this, I recall Sony losing ~600 million dollars in the division gaming is in last quarter...

I'm talking about the console hardware costs, not the costs to run the business, since this was what I thought Crossbar was interested in. Also don't put it in dollars (10% of $300), and I wouldn't even assume that retail pricing is even the number Sony is basing it off of... could be some other ore-retail figure.

To correct myself though, Sony indicated in a range of ~10-20% spread on the manufacturing costs, rather than a fixed 10%.
 

And by clarified, you mean muddied even more
irai told CVG: "SCE will further increase sales by offering users new entertainment through the combination of hardware, software, peripheral and PlayStation Network. Especially in the on-line area, we are studying the possibility of introducing a subscription model, offering premium content and services, in addition to the current free services."

Sounds like a slippery slope to me..

This is a big deal imo.

I'd always thought from the beginning, that either Live would go free or PSN would go pay. I didn't think they could coexist. I actually figured Live would have to go free early on. Well, they did coexist for a long time, but it looks like that may be ending, with PSN actually going pay in some fashion.

It's not surprising, if you think about how profitable Live is for MS. Leaked documents in the past have shown a 50-60% Live Gold subscription rate, meaning with 33m consoles shipped, at the very very least 10m, and probably 15m, are paying $50 a year for Live. That is 750 million per year in revenue.

To put it another way, since MS typically ships around 10m consoles per year, it's $75 per console. That's a pretty staggering figure, and probably helps explain why MS gaming division made 300m last quarter while Sony gaming division lost 600m. Although, Sony may make up some of the difference by charging publishers bandwidth fees.

Edit: eh, perhaps I'm overstating things a bit, since I didn't clearly read that Kaz stated it would be in addition to the current free services. Still, even a tiered service would be...interesting. Wonder what they'll charge for? Maybe the same stuff as Qore, like early access to demos?
 
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