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."

Comments

DUPE!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

(Pink Panther Theme)

Dupe De-Dupe, De-Dupe-de-dupe-de Duuuuuuupe,
Dupe-eh de-Dupe!

Deja-vu

[voidptr]

So when do we get to see the article /. editor admits duplicate?

Re:Deja-vu

[pv2b]

Hey. You know that your comment is a dupe? (Original here.)

Re:Deja-vu

[GtKincaid]

Or perhaps a post about slashdot readers who admit to RTFA .
correct me if im wrong but the last story was about sony turning tails on the mp3 issue and this is about the "father" of the Playstation talking about being frustrated at the uper management refusing to take risks
it just hapens to include some info that is a also in other storys .
if the everyday press wern' to dupe parts of information in storys we would have some rather confusing bits of information

Big corporations

[cyriustek]

This is an example of what happens when companies turn into huge conglomerates. Eventually, you have competing interest and a piece of the business loses a major opporuntiy to grow further due to anoth business unit. Although I am not a proponent of government breaking up companies, I must say there are times it is actually good for the companies.

Re:Big corporations

[antifoidulus]

Heh, it's an even bigger problem in Japan. For years, Japan has had a torrid love affair with the big companies, the bigger it got, the better. The companies would develop relationships with other companies that even governed what kind of beer their employees should drink. However, the companies got(and still are) way too big for their own good, and made every product you can think of. The beucracy and red tape puts makes the US government look efficient by comparison. This led to a lot of stagnation and now Japan is finally coming to realize that small, focused companies aren't really that bad.
For example, Mitsubishi manufactures everything from LCD monitors to trains to escalators, to motor vehicles. Not surprisingly, one of the groups(Mistubishi Motors) is now in a lot of financial trouble.

Re:Big corporations

[dourk]

Good thing Mits is also a bank!

Re:Big corporations

[bigpat]

"Although I am not a proponent of government breaking up companies, I must say there are times it is actually good for the companies."

What says government has to be the one to break up companies? I did very well as a stockholder when Sears spun off Dean Witter, Discover Card and Allstate Insurance. More companies should take that lead and spin off big or unrelated business units. Sure the CEOs might end up with less power under one roof, but that can ultimately be the best thing for investors. GE and GM might be good candidates for that type of thing, especially GE. And everyone following technology knows that Xerox missed out big time by not wanting to introduce new technology to compete with itself.

Companies that become too big have more to lose so they often become risk averse, which is why it is important to find the right balance.

It's not the same articles

[Man in Spandex]

The one where Sony admitted the mp3 error was regarding their digital music players such as the minidiscs or hard-drive based. This is why their latest hdd players (and future) supports mp3 playback and maybe other formats that are more "universal" than lets say ATRAC.

This article mentions the UMD format to be opened
"We have already proposed UMD disc media as an open standard for everyone," he says. "The game profile will be unique for PlayStation Portable but movie and music should be a common application for everyone."

I enjoyed reading this on /. last week....

[Osrin]

... I'm sure I'll enjoy the comments as much this time around.

Thanks for reposting.

Re:I enjoyed reading this on /. last week....

[Osrin]

I think my willingness to subscribe more likely says the opposite about my IQ.

And when will they get back to quality?

[Realistic_Dragon]

Broken Sony junk:

Walkman.
PS.
PS One
PS 2.
Clie (which was a present for my brother).
Surround amp.

None of which was abused. I'll reconsider buying things from them when the stop making cheap shit that doesn't work. They have had, and squandered, plenty of chances from me.

Re:And when will they get back to quality?

[M3wThr33]

Price fixing lawsuits were brought against Sony in Japan last year. Sony wouldn't allow any stores to mark down ANY Sony products without approval. Sony's defense was that people wanted to pay a higher price to know they were getting something good. Too bad Sony's consumer-level goods are shit.

Double Dupe!

[XanC]

We've also managed to dupe this one: Sony to Standardize UMD Format

Japanese and "frustration"

[Anonymous Coward]

from what I read about japan when a japanese person describes themselves as "frustrated" with a situation what they mean is "I AM GOD DAMN FUCKING PISSED OFF AND YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!" ...

I was kind of amazed when the sony mp3 products suddenly turned up and now considering opening up the format for the drive?

Me thinks some corporate bloodletting has been going on.

I don't see how it's a mistake.

[glrotate]

The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the availability of terrabytes of stolen material being circulated. Is it in Sony's best interest to implicitly support this movement through the introduction of MP3 devices that will undoubtably be used to play, and encourag further dissemination of, pirated Sony content? I don't think it's an easy question to answer, and I can understand Sony's hesitancy.

Re:I don't see how it's a mistake.

[dmaxwell]

It's a huge mistake because Sony's consumer electronics business is much much larger than Sony's content business. Other posters have pointed that overly large conglomerates can have conflicts of interest with themselves. Realistically as the larger and more profitable business, Sony Electronics needs to tell Sony Content to go f*ck itself. Even better would be if Sony divested itself of the content arm at a profit and turned the electronics divisions loose to make products people actually want.

Re:I don't see how it's a mistake.

[pv2b]

Yes. Then imagine.

Sony Content sues Sony Electronics over facilitating copyright infringement... ... ... ... in Japan!

"It could happen!"

Now excuse me while I dodge the rotten tomatoes.

Re:I don't see how it's a mistake.

[antifoidulus]

Well, Sony did provide software to convert MP3s to UMD, so I don't see what your is. Not supporting MP3 on the device just made Sony's offerings a lot less convient if you are using MP3. Oh, and a lot of people did rip CDs they bought to MP3, it's a hell of a lot more convient that searching through your collection for the cd you want.

Re:I don't see how it's a mistake.

[illumin8]

The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the availability of terrabytes of stolen material being circulated. Is it in Sony's best interest to implicitly support this movement through the introduction of MP3 devices that will undoubtably be used to play, and encourag further dissemination of, pirated Sony content? I don't think it's an easy question to answer, and I can understand Sony's hesitancy.

That may or may not be true. I'm sure in some ways the popularity of the iPod has to do with filesharing, but in a lot of other ways, it's just about how people like to enjoy their music. A lot of people I know have an iPod that have never stolen any music or used Kazaa. They just like being able to rip their CDs, chuck them in a storage closet somewhere, and carry their whole music library in the palm of their hand.

If Sony wants to join the market, they will admit their mistakes and uncripple their devices. The marketplace has spoken. Crippled, proprietary formats do not sell and the more they try to cram them down our throats, the more people will just buy an iPod that plays MP3 and AAC.

Re:I don't see how it's a mistake.

[WolfWithoutAClause]

It's a massive mistake, because the evidence that increased piracy actually doesn't seem to affect sales at all, if at all, and may even improve sales.

It's not clear why this would be, but there are suggestions that essentially there has been piracy ever since home taping in general and cassettes in particular hit the market- people have been copying off of friends ever since.

Now, you could argue that this is wrong, and that the artists and music companies are worse off because of this. But music companies are making good money, and stopping the home copying would be a double-edged sword, since the home copying acts as free advertising. In addition, it's very unclear that the lack of home copying would increase sales- many people, particularly young people are on a budget, and simply wouldn't buy more music, they would just listen to less music and spend no more money.

Also, except for the most hardened copier listening to music usually creates a taste for music- so they end up buying more music in the long run.

So, home copying doesn't seem to reduce the market size for selling music. On the other hand, real pirates- people making copies of music and selling them for money, or even as legitimate forgeries, they really can reduce the market size.

Re:I don't see how it's a mistake.

[Sanity]

stolen material

Wow - stolen? That means the record companies don't have it any more - right? Can't they just get it off a P2P network like everyone else?

Re:I don't see how it's a mistake.

[I_redwolf]

This isn't interesting at all. The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the convience of having ones music collection at the tip of their fingers. Instead of walking about with tapes and cd's. You simply go from Bach to N.E.R.D with the touch of the Next button.

Sonys mishaps have been their own based on their contesting to own "media". To put everything in their own proprietary, undocumented and closed formats.

As for the "terrabytes of stolen material". Theives will be theives, it doesn't stop honest abiding customers from purchasing product and never has.

To date, the RIAA nor the MPAA has been able to prove this. Nor has anyone else for that matter. What happened when dvd's came to advent? The thieves just went from tape to dvd, before that it was 8 track and vinyl. So on and so on.

Technology is supposed to make an area in your life more convienent. For music it's been my ipod. Does Sony have an equivalent? No. Have they failed and lost business because of this? Yes.

It's up to them and their management to decide if they continue to fail or if they want to try something new. Something that doesn't fail.

Re:I don't see how it's a mistake.

[salesgeek]

The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the availability of terrabytes of stolen material being circulated.

This is bull. First, MP3 players were successful because they were simple and open. Convert audio to MP3, download, press play. Utilities are simple file level tools. No DRM validation that doesn't work right. No encryption. No chance that in 10 years I can't listen to my collection of fine Pantera music.

Sony made some of the most complicated uncompatible junk ever. SONY SHOULD KNOW BETTER: Beta, Minidisk, that bizarre DAT format they tried and memory stick have been dismal failures (unless you ask the marketing department for the product). Sony's open products such as 3.5" floppy drives (they were one of the original sources), Mavica Cameras (that used floppy disks when everyone else was using early and expensive flash cards), CD ROM, 8MM Video have all been wildly successful. Consumers like stuff that works.

Re:I don't see how it's a mistake.

[euxneks]

It's not stealing. It's Cultural Exchange.

MiniDisc Player having to replace

[failedlogic]

Dupe or not, I didn't comment last week so....

I have a NetMD Minidisc player. I can apprecaite that Sony wants to enforce copyright, etc for its music units. As far as the box advertised 2 years ago, their OpenMG or SonicStage software was supposed to be really easy to use. So I bought a MiniDisc player. Having a RIO PMP 300 previsously, it was an improvment in capacity, quality and battery usage (it lasts much longer on a AA battery).

Having lost my original software disc (2 years ago), I've tried upgrading to newer software (SonicStage 2.0). I've tried for 20 minutes to upload songs to it -- importing music libararies ... no go. The worst thing is, is that Real Player was the easiest sofrware to use to update the MiniDisc player. If it weren't for RP, I probably wouldn't have used it (and taken it back). RP update servers seem to be down now, so I can't get the drivers for it.

I warn everyone who thinks of buying Sony, that they use many proprietary formats (the memory stick in cameras, etc). Sony has probably lost many sales from my peers (business and friends alike) as a result. Unless they clean up their act, I cannot recommend them, good as their products might be.

Re:MiniDisc Player having to replace

[salesgeek]

I can apprecaite that Sony wants to enforce copyright, etc for its music units.

While I appreciate this, you don't have to buy a device that restricts your rights in order to protect their overbroad definition of their rights.

Dupe Spin

[Adrilla]

Hey /. editors. Do the PR thing and tell everyone it's not a dupe, It's the 'Best Of'. The Beatles and Elvis have been getting away with it for decades. Hell, that shithole of a network G4Techtv calls it 'retro'.

Re:Not that big

[nolife]

Sega had decent products. In fact the Dreamcast has features that the others did not at the time and some still do not, like built in modems, network capability, VGA monitor hookup, external KB, mouse, advanced memory cards[1], vibration packs etc.. The Dreamcast could also browse the internet similar to WebTV over your choice of standard dialup or via the ethernet cable. You still can not do this with the PS2 or Xbox which I think is very odd. Maybe they are afraid that ability would cut into game sales or existing competeing services those companies offer. Basically, the Dreamcast offered much more for the end user but was basically dropped like a rock. Maybe it was poor marketing, maybe a little inside pressure and a juicy conspiracy theory with the other vendors.

[1] The memory cards had LCD screens, hooked together to transfer files between them, you could carry around the cards and play small cheesy games on the cards, used as a small suplemental information screens while playing the game, example being Sega 2K series football, you could allow play selection via the memory card screen preventing the other player seeing what play you selected.

But does it...

[Doc Ruby]

The PS2 was the first console to run Linux "out of the box". Sony opened the PS2 a little with PS2 Linux, an open Linux distro that runs on PS2 HW. It was apparently a strategy by Sony to get official game developers started on something programmable, but cheaper than the dedicated HW dev system. But it's in a cage: it doesn't run on the actual HW (instead, a kind of HAL that emulates the HW on the HW itself), and the OS must boot on a firmly DRM'ed DVD. And Sony prohibits the distribution of PS2L SW (apps, drivers, etc) on discs, so a LiveCD that boots into your wicked port of NetHack could never compete with their latest NBA licensed blockbuster. Maybe now that they're opening the UMD, they'll open the Magic Gate to Linux on PS{2,3}. That could put cheap, powerful, consumer-stable grade multimedia HW (subsidized by gamers) under the control of Linux programmers, who could target a market of millions of potentially Interneted consoles. That would really steal the thunder (and developers, developers, developers, developers) from Xbox - go, Sony, go!

Sony has made more than one mistake

[MemoryDragon]

Sony has made more than one mistake in the past. I know several people who really could afford anything who bought basically Sony only but will never buy Sony for the forseeable future.

The reasons are various. First of all, thanks to Sony Media lots of their stuff is crippled, Region Codes which are hardest to remove from any manufacturer, no decent two way transport of media files in almost any of their devices. The obscure Atrac conversion in their MP3 players, lousy quality of their PCs and add to that at least here in Europe one of the worst customer services ever in existence, combined with repair costs which are higher than a new device from another company, and you can see why Sony has a bigger problem than they admit on their hands.

Also add to that that their retailers are totally frustrated because, they were taken away the support business (which was done in the past by the retailers themselves in many cases) and the profit margins even of the high end devices are close to zero, driving the smaller shops away from Sony.

The Support problem started when Sony centralized all support, before Sony had this kind of luxury structure Apple still has with small shops who do all the small stuff and have good personal, Sony wanted it big and basically drove those shops away trying to cash in on a centralized structure. Add to that constant problems caused by Sony media which resulted in catastrophicly castrated devices and lots of problems which often caused Sony hardware to fail shortly after the warranty expired and you have a huge mess on its hand.

The playstation basically saved the Sony hardware division without it this division would have made huge losses already. Sony really has a problem, but it is far bigger than only a few mp3 player models which they have missed out.

For fun and profit.

[Doc Ruby]

With Sony PC and AV sales slumping, and their movies selling more than ever, with their music failing less badly than much of their (sparse) competition, Sony will surely move towards free/cheap HW, subsidized by draconian DRM on their media products. They might be opening some of their HW and formats, but only to universalize their platforms, so more of their media can be controlled.

Maybe Sony should concentrate on Playstation

[plusser]

Some of Sony's stylish computers do look very nice, but then they should be as they are now more expensive than similar equipment produced by Apple (just compare the prices of their laptops and slimline monitor solutions and you will see what I mean). This says a lot about Sony's computers at the moment, yes they look nice, but they are still PCs after all, and Dell can produce something similar at a lower cost. Apple's computers not only look good, but actually work better by not using Windows. Sony have a choice, learn either from Dell or Apple, or stick to making Playstations that allow you to play games.

Sony also owns music, y'know...

[AnriL]

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.

I thought NetMD was a great idea...

[Hamster Lover]

until I arrived at a local electronics store and noticed a pile of returned Sony NetMD players sitting in the discount bin. Against my better judgement, I bought one and I am still sorry for doing so.

As a MiniDisc player, the unit was great will exceptional battery life and great sound quality. When I attempted to use the NetMD functions of the unit, the reason for so many returns became obvious, mainly to do with the absolutely atrocious software that is used to transfer MP3 or WMA files to the unit (as many are aware, the NetMD players convert MP3s or WMA files to Atrac before uploading to the MD player). It took nothing less than a miracle to find a way around the nearly useless software after Googling for a while, but I did. If I hadn't found the Simpleburner/Nero work-around to Sonicstage, I would have returned the unit just like the other dozen players sitting in the return bin.

From my own experiences, I think simple economics and word of mouth had the most impact on Sony's decision. After all, if your biggest competitor and market leader, Ipod, is not forcing MP3 copy restrictions on their player, how do you expect your model to work?

Prerecorded UMDs are dead on arrival

[cybpunks3]

Opening up UMD has no value other than allowing PCs to write to UMD-Rs or UMD-RWs for their PSPs. Nobody is going to be interested in a 1.8GB format like this when DVD writers have just gone dual-layer (8.5GB) and blu-ray is around the corner.

It's just another oddball optical format. If they start selling movies in this format it's not going to take off. How many people are going to want to buy movies in two formats just so they can play them on their PSP? They are going to just want to rip their DVDs to DIVX and burn UMDs for their PSP.

In fact, they now have these "Mini-DVDs" with kids movies coming out for miniature portable DVD players like the Cyberhome CH-MDP2500.

The world does not need any more optical formats for prerecorded movies (or music for that matter).

Sony is slowly opening up

[baffo]

Notice how Sony's latest digital cameras, starting with the F828, have both MemoryStick and CompactFlash slots that can even harbor microdrives.

In the same product line, now the RAW files are more accessible.