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Kazuo Hirai To Assume CEO Position At Sony
thomst writes "Cnet's Stephen Shankland breaks the news that Sony will replace the lamentable Howard Stringer with Kazuo Hirai, the (now former) head of its electronics division. Better yet, the changeover will take place on April Fool's Day. Stringer, who was appointed CEO of Sony in 2005, will become Chairman of its board, and Hirai will become a board member. Hirai has been the leader of Sony's consolidated electronics group only since last year. He was in charge of all Sony electronics products, including the Playstation Network, which famously suffered a massive security breach that compromised its unencrypted user data on his watch."
I mean, he probably SHOULD...but they're not going to MAKE him.
I just hope Hirai's first speech to the board doesn't include the sentence "I propose we introduce a new propriety format."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The roadmap to sucess at sony is to take the guy responsible for the biggest fuckup in company history...and make him CEO......
Nah, It'll probably be something like:
It's a new propriety format! Proprieeeeeetttyyyyyyyyyyyyyy format!
Lo and behold, for I am a sig!
"Okay, lets get this over with. Assume the position."
Judging by who his successor is I'm not actually convinced that Sony believed Stringer ever made any mistakes as CEO.
Promoting Mr Gaffe Prone Failwhale himself to CEO seems to be the quickest way to finish Sony off, is this really what they had planned? Is this some kind of financial scam that I'm missing the point of where they're making money from Sony's demise?
It'll probably be more like "I promise to bring customer abuse to a whole new level, driving masochists to us like insects to a bug zapper. We shall not only retain the masochistic elements of our customer base, but bring in the MS and Apple customer bases as well!"
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
...promoting them? Is Sony a bank now? Did I blink and miss something?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The thought of Sony having a particular format for propriety is sort of hilarious.
The ship is burning. Vita looks like a wreck. Bring back Kutaragi. The only guy at SCE with taste.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Nope. It's the Dilbert Principle working its magic IRL. Promote the incompetent to limit the amount of damage they can do.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
look out for the giant enemy Stringer.
In comes another disaster. Sony needs to return to its roots as a solid engineering company.
Or, as I like to think of it, "the anniversary of the death of OtherOS."
I'm not sure if the explanation is as much "that's Japan" as "that's Sony."
For the last decade (at the very least) Sony has acted like a bad stereotype of the guy obsessed with not losing face, and always being right. Every single bad decision, PR gaffe or just someone from Sony putting his foot in his mouth in an interview, they've dug themselves deeper and deeper just to not admit "ok, it was dumb." They'd rather put the other foot in their mouth too than admit that the first one was a foot after all.
I'm not even sure it has anything to do with Japan per se. While Asians generally are more careful about not losing respect, I don't think they're anywhere near the bad caricature that Sony has become. Plus, I see lots of us westerners doing the same too. I think it's more about hubris and/or insecurity than anything particularly Japanese.
But, anyway, I can actually see some guys at Sony prefer to promote him than admit that he might have said anything stupid ever.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Whatever, his first speech is going to be delivered on 1st April.
Actually April 1 of every year is the start of the Fisical Year in Japan.
So who's the biggest Fool: the Fool or the Fools following the Fool?
Actually, I've seen stuff like that in action, except the (sadder) underlying assumption isn't just that they're now somehow immune, but that they've got experience.
As a trivial example, just think of companies and/or designers who've fucked up two MMOs in a row, and then suddenly get a third, bigger budget MMO to make, because, hey, they're the guys who have experience with making MMOs. And when that turns out to be a fuckup too, hey, lookit all that experience they have making MMOs, someone actually gives them money to make a fourth. (And if you think that that's a totally made up example, and nobody would be that stupid, it's actually the verbatim story of Funcom.)
Though an even better example is Michael Brown of FEMA fame, the guy who majorly fucked up during two disaster recoveries in a row and had to resign... consulting as a disaster recovery expert afterwards.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I mean, Sony's consistently used April 1st for the effective date of corporate restructuring annually since 2009 (at least). Let's at least use this opportunity to bet on who gets axed next season.
I like Sony's gaming (SCE's) products far and above the other gaming products I have ever owned (including 3 Xbox 360's, on my first day one PS3 still) - Nintendo, Sega, Atari etc.. You name it I've owned and played it. The spec and build quality of my PS3 is second to none of this generation. The rootkit fiasco - despicable, but a different part of Sony. And the account hacks - well Sony and many others have been hacked with the loss of sensitive user information, so probably not fair to pin that on Sony alone. If you don't want your details hacked, I'm afraid there are very few people you can trust out there anyway (perhaps other than the major banks and I wouldn't be so sure about that either). Anyway, karma be damned. *whistles*
I was going to ask if the Dilbert principle had ever been tested to this level before, but then I remembered SCO and answered my own question.
We already know how this ends, it's not quick, and it's not pretty.
I think "a new proprietary format" is the first bullet point in the standard "new proposal" powerpoint presentation template at Sony.
We show geeks how to get their dream girl at EyesOfOdessa.com
Hirai is already receiving congratulations from people grateful for his stewardship of such cultural cornerstones as Riiiiidge Raaacer!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Truth! I followed the SCO story, thinking that there must be an amazing master plan being hidden by McBride's apparent bumbling destruction of a healthy company. It came as a surprise when McBride was ditched, as this was when I realized that McBride and SCO's board and shareholders were seriously expecting McBrides almost decade long string of consistent failure was going to be replaced by some kind of success.
Come on Sony, don't disappoint me! What's this amazing secret plan that forces you to give the impression of a company being run by a severely autistic couple in the middle of a messy marital breakdown.
Kutaragi seemed to not appreciate the difficulty of programming the Cell processor, but to his credit, the PS2 was also hard to program and offered performance to those whom tuned, but the high sales volumes made it worthwhile for the programmers spend the extra time. Was it a big stretch to believe the console market worked that way? Yes, high end games are much more expensive to produce today, but a lot of that is asset creation and marketing, so the extra expense in programmer time is still a tolerable fraction of the game's budget.
yet fights tooth and nail to keep people from using it legitimately for their movies where others allow it.
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The Japanese fiscal year runs from April 1st to March 31. April 1st is when you begin the school year (from kindergarten to grad school), when you begin a new job, the accounting period both for private companies and the state, research funding period and so on and so on. What would be extraordinary is if you have a shuffle at the top at any other time than April 1st.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Too late.
Sony has already released the new umd.
The playstation vita card.
About the same size as an sdcard, but made by sony, and appropriately more expensive, and less versatile.
Sure, they *could* have just used SDcards and enabled the encryption functionality in the industry standard spec... but they are sony. They gotta "innovate".
If anyone doesn't remember, Kaz Hirai is the guy who gave Sony's laughably bad E3 2006 presentation, featuring such great quotes as "Five hundred and ninety-nine US dollars," "Riiiiidge Racer!!!," "Giant Enemy Crab," and "attack its weak point for massive damage."
Judging by who his successor is I'm not actually convinced that Sony believed Stringer ever made any mistakes as CEO.
Promoting Mr Gaffe Prone Failwhale himself to CEO seems to be the quickest way to finish Sony off, is this really what they had planned? Is this some kind of financial scam that I'm missing the point of where they're making money from Sony's demise?
As a result, all Sony TV's will now be sold with big block V8 engines attached to the back but only 3 cylinders will be usable at any one time. Petrol can be bought from the Sony Petrol Network only. Six months later, Sony will release a "Slim" TV that has a regular V6 engine and as an "Upgrade" to "phat" TV users, Sony will disable 2 of the cylinders and the alternator on the big block V8's.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Nah, seppuku is a little harsh. But it really should cost him a finger.
We might read, 1 April 2013, Kazuo Hirai gunned down by Yakuza hitman while leaving all-male Pachinko Palor in Kabukiza.
Yakitori za.
Should never have lived.