The Kraziness of Ken Kutaragi

Guess who's going to be bleeding the most next generation?

 

Not if PS3 costs 500 quid like you also predicted. Choose one PC, either Sony lose money, or PS3 is overpriced. Can't have both.

 

Exactly. They'll bleed for a year or so and then turn then profit. But other than things directly related to the PlayStation brand, I haven't seen Sony benefit from any Halo effect. Does anyone buy a Sony TV because it "works best" the PS2? And is anyone going to buy a Sony Blu-ray drive after buying a PS3? Perhaps Sony should market a home theater package containing speakers, tv, receivers, and a PS3...

In fact, MS is probably in a better position in this regards. It'll be interesting to see if they get a spike in media center PCs after the Xbox 360 launch.

.Sis

 

I never predicted anything being 500 quid so stop making things up.

What I'll say is that SONY will bleed a whole lot if they try to match Xbox 360's price. If they price it at $400 they'll still bleed, but at the cost of fewer sales.

 

I don't think the idea is for PS to attract customer to the Sony brand, for the PS to be centralin the mdedia sales which is where all the money is. They won't sell more BRD players because of PS brand, but they'll make money from BR discs played on PS3 = more BRD discs = more BRD players sold. They won't sell more MP3 players because of PS brand, but they'll sell more MP3's over Connect on PS3 and the data will be transfered to whatever device. At least, that's the idea.

The fact that for the first time Sony are turning away from proprietary (profitable) media in providing different memory card options on PS3 shows it's content, not hardware, that they're more interested in; same as MS. They don't care if music or pictures is played on a non-Sony device, as long as it's through the Sony system that new media is acquired.

The only big flaw with this plan at the moment is the absence of any visible infrastructure to support all this media! They've talked about it, hired programmers to implement it, but as of yet the content isn't available or looking to be advancing.

 

MS lost billions on bad contracting in the hardware space and paying up front costs to build a great online service. Those costs are now sunk and formed the basis of pretty good hardware contracts this time around and great foundation for the next generation of online gaming.


Sony invested billions trying to stay ahead of competitors in the ps 2 and ps3 generations-the cost may not be worth it based on the console space but may reap many benefits when cell tech is licensed for use in other devices... technically MS is still onpar with them...

We have yet to see if Sony's investment in the online space (the level of which is unknown but would have to be considerable to match MS' effort if the same model is used) will payoff.

Everyone thinks online services are easy and they know how to make it work... the really smart folks at Valve are STILL trying get it right.

 

The PSP destroyed the competition? nope
He forced MS to enter the console market? nope
Made a bigger and richer market? bigger is arguable since games were becoming more mainstream anyways but sony helped. Richer in what terms?

 

when playstation was out it offered something significantly different from what the snes and even the nintendo 64 offered.

essentially the CD support that, even if you discount the technical advantage of a massive storage support, made the cartridge-based consolse "has been".

if only becase it was cd-based i was been perceived as a superior product, and sony setted a new standard.

i think that, in order to overcome the playstation legacy, another console manufacturer would something like that, and i see nothing like that for the xbox 360 or nintendo revolution.

it's not a price thing, PS2 had no problem overselling xbox with a more expensive product despite being technically inferior.

 

Sorry I was not as good as jvd in clinically dissecting those baseless caims.

 

The CD-ROM for a home game console was established long before the Playstation...ie PC Engine, SEGA CD, Saturn. Nintendo was late to the CD-ROM party. Heck SNK's NEO GEO CD even came out before Saturn.

 

Corrected

 

I guess you are not aware of the size of the PC Engine's CDROM game library long before 3d CD based consoles.

 

Heh, the thing was hardly released properly worldwide, can you blame me? Hence the "tried". As in never successfully.

 

Please! Don't give PC-Engine any recognition. He shouldn't be allowed in this forum but as there's no per forum bannings he's able to. Let's follow the Mods advice and ostracise him utterly. Not a single reply. Let him type into the void and leave his accursed smilies drifting in the abyss of the non-conscious...

 

This is where your conjecture interferes with reality.

Please do that. Consider this a thank you in advance post.

 

Kutaragi was basically "fired" from his old position in Japanese style - demoted, 95% of his responsibility taken away from him, now he manages very little.

He sucked at the business aspect and was loathed by everyone under him. That the PlayStation business was profitable under him was nearly a miracle, and with him having so much control over PS3 it was looking like PS3 would be a disaster, so they fired him.

He was also about the sole reason that hundreds of top engineers fled the company to Samsung, who are now completely beating the crap out of Sony in the TV market.

With him gone from power, we will basically see a toned down PS3, cut back and rushed to compete with MS's release, and forget about his "Crazy" ideas for making it a grandoise central home machine.

Sony in general is currently very disorganized and I wouldn't be surprised if they don't get their act together in time to respond to MS's aggressive moves in the console market.

 

Well, we still have yet to see if an online service is even worth it. So far, the only company proving this is Apple with their iPod--this device has had a huge effect on the company, both in terms of public perception and the company's bottom line. But even here, it's arguable whether Apple's iTune software is driving anything at all. By most accounts, people are just ripping their CD collection.

AOL at one point was another example, but they've turned into a counter example.

The point being that I find it completely unfair to say that Sony invested billions "just to stay ahead". In fact, they invested billions exactly where they felt they should be investing billions, and more than likely exactly where it's always proved to work best for them.

The biggest problem facing Sony was also the biggest problem facing MS 5 years ago. How do you switch perspectives? How do you switch from being a hardware company to a software company? (Or, conversely for MS, how do you do hardware if you're a software company?)

MS did indeed bleed a alot figuring this out but by all accounts they have figured it out. The question for Sony is twofold: have they figured out how to do software? And, does it even matter?

.Sis

 

This is the demotion article, but doesn't really give you an idea of just how much of a jack ass this guy has been over the years:

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050404/ap/d898ol5o2.html

 

Excellent points. I'll have to think this over some more.

The biggest question in my mind is: how does a company shift from hardware, a physical medium, to software, an intagible medium, without destroying the company? (The problem is that, true, they don't need to sell blu-ray drives in order to achieve their end-goal for selling content--but the hardware side of the company definitely needs to sell blu-ray drives, tvs, recievers, laptops, etc.)

.Sis

 

Many great leaders of companies are jack asses. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs come to mind. It should not detract from their abilities or successes.

.Sis