Sony, Toshiba And IBM To Develop New OS

gaijin writes: "According to this article in the English version of the Japanese newspaper 'Daily Yomirui', Sony will use its experience developing the PS2 OS (hey, wasn't it Linux based?) and work with Toshiba and IBM at the hardware side to create a new OS that 'would allow personal computers and home appliances to exchange huge volumes of data, including the high-resolution graphics of a television screen, through a broadband connection.'"

Comments

Doomed from the start?

[Phil Wherry]

While nothing's 100% certain, history suggests that efforts like this might have difficulty achieving success.

There have been a number of fairly spectacular failures in this arena. Consider, for example:

• Taligent. This was an Apple-HP-IBM joint venture aimed at developing operating system software. Four years passed, and much money was spent. Much hype was produced, but I don't think they ever shipped a product.
  
• Kaleida. This was an Apple-IBM joint venture aimed at developing (yep!) operating system software. No product resulted.
  
• OS/2. This one's a little different since a product (and, for that matter, a pretty good one) resulted. But pride-of-ownership and internal competition issues killed the product anyway.
  

Software development successes seem to start with a small team who understand the position and purpose of the product. Once that's achieved, then the team can scale up. I'd be concerned that the three companies behind this announcement are likely to have difficulty assembling an appropriately small and well-focused core team.

There will be no such thing!

[MadMirko]

Check Gamefront Magazine (German). Sony denied the claims of that Japanese newspaper, calling them a misunderstanding. Sony, IBM and Toshiba are developing a shared broadband network, no OS.