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Father of PlayStation Admits Sony Mistakes
News for nerds writes "Following the news of Sony slashing its profit forecast due to the underperforming AV & PC divisions, Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) known by the PlayStation brand, admitted he and other Sony employees have been frustrated for years with management's reluctance to introduce products like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, mainly because Sony had music and movie units that were worried about content rights. The PSP by SCEI is one of the first Sony products that support non-proprietary standards such as MP3 or H.264, and now SCEI considers opening up the UMD disc format employed in the PSP."
This is completely expectable - every time Sony electronics produces a gadget which plays a non-DRM music format (MP3 etc), someone in Sony Music starts screaming bloody murder. I know I saw a specific reference to this in an interview some time ago but it's lost to me now.
However, Sony has been producing MP3 players (walkman brand CD portables and also car stereos) for a number of years now - it's just that they are marketing them primarily as "ATRAC Walkman" which also happens to play MP3 as a side feature. The bundled crappy software produces ATRAC discs which suck large asteroids through thin straws (it has no ID3 for starters) and has no support for MP3 whatsoever. However, feed the discman with an MP3 data disc and it will play happily. The in-car stereo I have (a Sony CDX-R3300) is actually marketed as an MP3 car audio player.