Slashdot Mirror
Why Sony Should Ditch Everything But the PlayStation
An anonymous reader writes: A couple weeks ago, we were surprised by news that Sony was spinning off its game development studio. More recently, the company has been thinking about exiting both the mobile phone market and the TV market. An opinion piece suggests Sony shouldn't stop there, focusing more on the its PlayStation division and a few other areas — and giving up on the rest. "Continuing to concentrate on phones and other products actually makes the PlayStation experience worse for most people. Take the PS4's ability to stream games to mobile devices — a killer feature needlessly limited to the PS Vita and Sony's Xperia Android line. Why can't I play Destiny on my iPad when the TV's occupied? The iOS PlayStation app, meanwhile, is a confusing mess that hasn't even been updated for the iPhone 6. These sound like minor points, but imagine what Sony could do if everyone at the company were focused on making its most important product as good as possible. As Microsoft is learning with its recent iOS and Android experiments, you have to serve the customers where they already are."
sounds like a Sony strategy which is applicable to the entire Corporation.
Electronics are a low-margin business. Sony is making huge money from Sony Entertainment. Movies, licensing syndicated TV shows, music ... they don't need PlayStation.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Next 40 posts will be about /. users who haven't bought anything from Sony since the rootkit fiasco, but reserve the right to complain about Sony products anyways.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
They should just shut the whole company down and sell it off in small pieces.
I'd like to see lots of other companies do the same: Microsoft, Comcast, TWC, Oracle, Apple, GM...
All that remains is Ruins.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They should dump the "content" divisions..the movie studio and record company
The "content" divisions crippled innovation by insisting that the first priority must be content restrictions
They should shift their focus from style to substance
The "style" advocates crippled innovation by insisting that the first priority must be fashion
They should do whatever it takes to return to being the world's best electronics company
Sounds like someone wants Sony to give up doing everything except the thing the journalist is interested in. The infographic is pretty clear, the playstation division isn't even Sonys biggest profit centre, both Image Sensors and Financial Services make more profit and the Cameras division is almost as profitable as the PS. And I think there's some hollywood accounting going on in the Movies division that lost $10m. Image sensors and financial services will still be needed in the next 10+ years, so it's not likely they'll start making a loss soon.
Dropping the mobile division would seem like a rational first cut since that lost about twice as much money as all the other divisions made.
TFA writer is seriously myopic thinking that his console is more important than anything else. It would be s shame for Sony - for sll their faults they still are a quite impressive manufacturer - to be reduced to a one trick pony. And for what? A bloody game console? Why would anyone need another Nintendo? Besides, consoles cripple games. Deus Ex 2 could have been a much better game if not for consoles. And as for the xperia phones, they are actually decent. ANT+ support and IP55/56 is very handy outdoors.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Was that supposed to actually be an analysis of Sony's current strategy or was it supposed to just be pointing out that you're upset you can't play Destiny on your iPad? This is why I stopped reading Verge.
SONY should work on creating the premiere desktop and gaming Linux distro.
Canonical used to be working toward this goal to some degree with Ubuntu, but it's clear now that they've lost their way with Unity, Mir, Amazon ads, and all that crap that no sane user actually wants to ever deal with.
We've seen pretty much every other major Linux distro, except Slackware (which isn't even that major these days) and Gentoo, go totally stupid with the integration of systemd. The reliability and quality of Debian took a nosedive after switching over to systemd, along with introducing huge tension into its community. Some people are even moving to FreeBSD, they've had such bad experiences with systemd.
We've also recently seen Microsoft go totally stupid with Windows 8. Windows 10 is only slightly better, based on what we've seen of it so far.
There's a perfect opening for SONY to come out with a Linux distro that people would actually want to use. It wouldn't use systemd, because systemd is shit. It wouldn't use GNOME 3, because GNOME 3 is shit. It would likely use KDE, or even Xfce. It would have excellent support for the major graphics cards commonly used in gaming systems. It would perform well.
Its main selling point would be that it is usable, rather than trying to be trendy, and it would have excellent support for gaming. Somebody could run this OS on their gaming rig, their personal laptop, as well as their PS4. They'd have an integrated gaming experience, while also getting a damn fine desktop operating system out of it. Their systems are consistent. Their systems are integrated. Their systems just work together. Somebody could even go from playing a game on their desktop gaming rig to playing it on their PS4, and back to their desktop, without the game itself being interrupted!
In some ways it would just be SONY picking up from where Microsoft dropped the Windows 7 ball. People liked Windows 7's user experience. They liked how it was good for gaming. They liked how it was reasonably reliable. They liked how it was a productive desktop environment, too. SONY could offer all of that, but using Linux instead.
I thought Sony Professional was the industry standard for TV cameras, video mixing consoles, and a whole heap of professional film/tv/radio/audio/studio products, i don't think they would exit a market that they have massive saturation in.
The Android/iOS apps for their wifi cameras are FLAWLESS. The second screen shit (Playstation companion app Wii U tablet etc) is still experimental at best for EVERYONE, even Nintendo.
Why would you think PS4 is Sony's most important product? Wouldn't the lack of attention to it that TFA points out lead you to conclude the exact opposite?
Sony's cameras are amazing. Easily best in class in (most of) the markets they compete in.
Their new action cameras are also quite good and offer better than feature parity with the heavily advertised GoPro brand, but at better prices. (Though GoPros tend to have larger image sensors - But curiously with inferior low light performance)
Sony's small image sensors are also top notch and are found in the best phones.
Sony really seems to fall flat when advertising their camera products, though.
today systemd and sony
tomorrow... the world!
Sony is a huge company with a lot of divisions. These articles are written from a western tech consumer point of view. Western tech consumers don't know about the non-consumer, non-tech, or non-western-facing business that Sony has.
Rather than reading this article, find something better to do with your time.
Sony would make a killing if they brought their content to every popular platform out there, regardless. (even seemingly opposing platforms)
Hardware restriction is a dead industry.
Quite a few companies are doing away with it via dropping silly shit like region restrictions, abusive levels of DRM and such.
Sony are partially doing it, but seemingly still separate their online space by regions even though there are no actual region restrictions with said content. (instead of having, say, regional content, you have ot go through the process of making an account for each separate region, so stupid)
As mentioned, if they let you stream to more platforms, it would be good.
If they actually worked more on the lower-end games for mobiles and got some of their studios behind it, they might not be in such huge problems with gaming.
Of course, the biggest thing that could actually get them money, and it would be the first to do it in the console market, is half the price of games and more than triple sales.
Games sell like crazy on platforms like Steam around those prices all the time, and even more so during sales.
It would work more so in the physical world.
Most people would rather go for something cheaper than something original if said original thing is above a certain threshold they find acceptable.
Most people will also walk outside of their general comfort zone and impulse buy if something is cheap enough, which happens often with 2nd hand games, but now original releases that just got returned within the first month of a game being RELEASED are being bought up, giving all the profits straight to the stores.
The gaming industry is losing sales to the distribution because they are so naive to think they can keep doing the same tired high profits low sales bullshit.
Look at movies. Movies are still doing incredibly well despite the low entry price, pay low end double digits to see a movie for a couple hours and eat stale popcorn. Even a terrible movie can typically make back the money it cost to make it, simply because SO MANY PEOPLE went to it.
Execs are too focused on this stupid first week sales bullshit that it is eating away at the industry like a blackhole.
Each year more and more people are giving up on gaming and just playing addictive simple games on mobiles to pass the time. More and more gamers are growing up. Most kids just use mobiles and tablets. The consumer base numbers are dying, so hard.
This is why Nintendo are so down the shitter with WiiU, they seemed to think the Wii was a lifesaver, it wasn't, they just released it in the right place at the right time. The WiiU sales are in line with the sales from the previous consoles at the present time. At end of this generation, it will be around the same as GC, probably a little less since a lot of people felt abandoned by Nintendo with Wii.
The Wii was an absolute fluke that is extremely unlikely to happen again. And this is why they are now putting every effort behind 3DS because it still sells.
People WANT to be portable. But they won't get on-board if you half-ass it and rip consumers off. (like Sony did with stupidly high prices with some stuff, like memory)
They NEED to change. All of them. Consoles are dying a slow death because they refuse to adapt. (just like music industry)
PS4 as an emphasis and dropping the Vita and PS TV may be a good idea, but focusing the whole company on videogames seems like a good idea only to people who have never heard of Atari, Commodore 64, 3DO or any of the other failed company in the videogame business.
Dropping the mobile division would be best. It's super competitive and Sony hasn't had much success in the mobile phone market since the early digital days in the 90s. Seems they would do well to sell off their mobile interests to one of the companies seeking to enter the smart phone market, just their IP and facilities alone would be worth several hundred million
I have a pc from about 10 years ago that is like to sell you for top dollar. The specs should be significantly better than any current console, and with only minor work it sould be able to deliver the same experience.
Really console fan boys have no idea what good graphics are. Heck they couldn't recognize a good ui either.
To top things off, why do consoles have such short warrantys, the cheapest pc has a 1 year warranty, consoles have between 30 and 90 days. You can use any consume corker with a pc, and consoles have to buy exclusivity contacts else the game ends up on the pc anyway. (And in most cases the pic version is better.) So why again do you want a console?
And you want all of Sony dedicated to this? Really? Guess you don't like advancement.
Duh
BETAMAX has always been superior to VHS
Why the hell would Sony focus on _one_ division that basically sells a dumbed-down crippled PC ?
They already bailed on the PC market last year
Their TV division loses money hand over fist:
Sony, the parent company doesn't stick to selling insurance policies. It sells TVs, too, even though it canâ(TM)t manage to do so profitably. Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai said the company will lose money on its television business for the 10th year in a row, with the red ink for TVs this time amounting to Â¥ 25 billion yen.
And you want them to focus on a shitty under-clocked PC ???
Can we mod article: -1 Clueless Author
Sony's quality not to mention their ethics have been in freefall for years. They need to go back to basics and stick with what works.
Sounds like someone wants Sony to give up doing everything except the thing the journalist is interested in.
I suspect the 'journalist' is actually a disgruntled 8yo who recently stopped blaming Santa's elves for the poor quality..
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I'm not sure they should dump everything else, but limiting Playstation compatibility to only Sony mobile products is ridiculous. Apple doesn't even try to get away with that much these days, Sony's just shooting themselves in the foot.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
That there's a writer at The Verge who has no clue how big of a company Sony is, or how complicated it would be to add video game streaming to 3rd party devices such as the iPad.
Who's to say consoles will even be a thing in 10 years? I wouldn't be surprised if computers and TVs converge entirely in the near future making consoles obsolete. Want a game? Stream one to your TV from Steam. No consoles required.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Sony makes great electronics, why dump them for some shitty console?
There was an unknown error in the submission.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05... Sony, it is suggested, might be better off just selling insurance. Or just making movies and music. But not electronics. A new report from the investment banking firm Jefferies delivered a harsh assessment of Sony’s electronics business. “Electronics is its Achilles’ heel and, in our view, it is worth zero,” wrote Atul Goyal, consumer technology analyst for Jefferies, in the report, released this week. ...
Its financial arm accounts for 63 percent of Sony’s total operating profit last year. Life insurance has been its biggest moneymaker over the last decade, earning the company 933 billion yen ($9.07 billion) in operating profit in the 10 years that ended in March.
Sony’s film and music divisions, which produced hits like the Spider-Man movies and “Zero Dark Thirty” and recorded musicians like the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the electronic music duo Daft Punk, have contributed $7 billion to the company’s bottom line over the last decade.
In that time, Sony’s electronics division has lost a cumulative $8.5 billion.
Hardly Sony’s crown jewels, experts say.
Can't get caught using a Nintendo machine so I want all Wii U features copied for my playstation. Even if it means Sony makes terrible financial decisions - as long as I get catered to!
Did anyone posting read TFA?
I have doubts that the author of TFA looked at his own graph.
Sony will be fine if they just dump mobile and some of the "Other", and they will be a billion dollars back in the green.
According to the graph, if they become a one trick pony, they will lose 80% of their remaining moneymakers.
Sony just sucks right now. No matter what it does, it's failing. And when they fail, companies like to glorify their exits as some forward thinking strategic move, but it's all just spin. If they didn't suck, they'd be doing it. Sony already "exited" their Vaio business, and they also "exited" my neighborhood mall by closing the Sony store... When Sony was awesome, it "entered" the TV market, the computer market, the game console market... This is all just signs that the company sucks, and a company that can't stop bleeding money is forced to take it up a notch. It has to start cutting of its limbs.
IBM is a good US example. They spun off their hard drive business, their computer business... they had a bunch of commercials about what I could hardly tell, and now they are firing a bunch of people, whilst denying it of course, saying they're just "moving people around while dropping a few". But whatever. Companies that are successful hardly ever fire. Toyota keeps hiring. Google keeps hiring. All these stories written for shareholders are moot.
NT
Console gaming is not a commodity market at all. You can't buy a game and then play it on whatever console was on sale that week. There are no generics, and there is no interoperability.
The iBuyPower SBX looks like a console but interoperates with Steam and other sources of PC games. It's like the railroads: they lost parts of the market because they thought they were in the railroad industry but in fact were in the broader long-haul transport industry. Sony likewise needs to decide whether it wants to be in the console industry or the broader set-top computer entertainment industry.
Electronics is low margin because of commodity parts and consumer demand for interoperability. Think, microwaves and computers. You don't need a special brand of microwave to heat Packaged Dinner Product.
Low margin vs. High demand
There's room for both low margin, and there's high demand items in consumer electronics.
When I needed a Windows laptop, before Bootcamp existed so that Windows could run on Apple hardware, I bought a Sony Vaio: it was the most beautiful non-Apple laptop on the market at the time, and when you are going into a VC to pitch your idea to them, you want to dress to impress, and that includes the machine on which you are giving your powerpoint on your business plan.
Vaio's were a high demand item because they had very good esthetics. A lot of other Sony products were higher margin than their competitors as well, because they were aimed at the high esthetic market.
The PlayStation is really a terrible product, comparatively speaking; the XBox is a much better product, based on Microsoft being able to leverage it to get game onto their desktop platforms as well (at some point), and potentially onto Windows Phones, as well (at some point), because the underlying platform technology is Windows on all three.
I think the person writing the article is a gamer who has drank the PlayStation Kool Aid, and wants Sony to concentrate on it, even though Sony is one PSN hack away from losing out on a holiday season, as they did previously. A single product company is just too vulnerable to single point of failure due to externalities.
It's a dumb idea because it would be a bad business decision on their part.
Rather than reading this article, find something better to do with your time.
You fell for the Slashbait again.
Somebody at Dice enjoys saying, "this is the stupidest fucking thing anybody on the Internet has said today - I'll push it to the front page so everybody can comment about how stupid it is and generate a bunch of page views in the process."
The very best we can do is to leave them alone so it's all GNAA and AC FP's on these.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
An opinion piece based on an opinion piece? All it needs is an auto-playing video and Slashdot might as well implode.
One of Samsung's most important motivating goals has long been to utterly destroy Sony. They saw Sony not only as a competitor but also as a representative of a super-successful Japanese company in a country where Japan is viewed very bitterly and resented. Samsung resented Sony. Samsung made it their goal to kill that company, and it can be argued the have done exactly that, though certainly not alone. The end result is the same: Samsung is a household name across the globe, with a huge variety of products of all types.
And Sony? Aside from the PlayStation, they are largely a runner-up in most of their product segments. If Samsung wanted to challenge them on gaming, they could probably go to Microsoft and write a check for the Xbox division. But there is no need with Sony so weak everywhere else. The battle is over.
Sony still does OK in some audio lines. Their headphones are not bad. And their car audio is relatively good. That said, I am about to install my third Sony head unit in five years, because they are not durable. But they are cheap and forced other brands to bring in more features at lower price points. Sony used to bring this kind of pressure to bear in their other electronics lines. Not so much any more.
And my old Playstation first gen still works great. It happens to be the same age as my girlfriend. She thinks it's an antique (as am I for that matter, being more than twice her age) but nobody can pry her PS4 out of her hands. Don't try. I have.
Sig for hire.
The window management policy in stock Android isn't suitable for working in one application while referring to information displayed in another application.
Let me get this straight: being able to plug a video game console into one TV when the other TV has another user, is a "killer feature?"
I think the only reason you think this is even slightly noteworthy, is because your second TV is crippled beyond belief (by lacking a video input jack) so you're amazed that someone(*) came up with a hack (**) to transport the video over IP. Now, I'm all for hacks, but don't you think the bar is being set a little low here? Do you think in 1995 or 1985, anyone would have been amazed by that?
(*) By someone, I mean the manufacturer of the video game console (which you currently rent) and a handheld TV (which you currently don't rent, because you're renting from their competitor).
(**) By hack, I mean someone decided to eschew standards and allow it to work within that one manufacturer's product line only.
I was alive in 1995 and 1985, so I hereby appoint myself as representative from those years. Throw away your worthless piece-of-shit video game console (which is intended to not be fully interoperable) and your worthless piece-of-shit handheld TV (which is intended to be just as bad but to serve yet another party's interest's (Apple's) instead of the device the console is intended to serve (Sony's)) and say "fuck that" to any worthless piece-of-shit which isn't YOURS.
Now, I get that you're unhappy about this and aren't saying this is how things should be; you're saying you want the opposite. But you're not saying it with your wallet, and you're not even really explicitly saying it here (I think, because you're so distracted by products, that you are completely oblivious to technology). Check our your next sentence, because someone in 1985 or 1995 never would have said anything quite as gag-worthy as these next few words:
Stop right-the-fuck there. What the fuck is an iOS PlayStation app? Why would you even consider something called that? What you need is an application that implement's standard protocol X, and a server that implements standard protocol X. But you're asking for neither.
Maybe Sony looked at the demands that people-like-you put on the marketplace, and saw (not predicted, but observed, past-perfect tense) that people buy worthless piece-of-shit crap and aren't interested in things that are intended to be good.
The power to change this is in your hands, but that means you need to think. So stop funding crap and start funding things that aren't intended to suck. No more Sony. No more Apple. Stop doing that, dammit. You are the problem. You are why Sony's game machine doesn't work right. You are why we can't have nice things. Because you bought something you knew sucked, and then keep pumping more money into it. For fuck's sake, please, please STOP!!
I wouldn't be surprised if computers and TVs converge entirely in the near future making consoles obsolete.
That's what a game console does.
That or a console is a tool to prevent end users from installing community-made game mods.
Sooner or later, all video will be delivered via the internet (or via the same technologies, anyway, from your ISP/content provider)
Cable doesn't cover everybody. Good luck getting rural Internet service below $5/GB.
Android-based gaming is about to eat up the space Nintendo has been occupying
Xperia Play tried and failed. OUYA tried and failed. Everyone else just has a touch screen, which works well for point and click gaming. But some genres demand a directional pad and physical buttons, and on-screen buttons lack a clear way to position the thumb over them while watching action in the center.
Eventually Sony will have to realise that no matter how many new consoles they throw out, backwards compatibility will be a key issue so players can run their old and favourite titles instead of having a brand new flagship device that only has around 10 new titles... or better yet, build a Steam console/pc and have all of the games ported to multi-platforms which will bring them in a ton of cash WITH backwards compatibility for older titles...
They should go into bitcoin mining!
With the latest z3 series I truly feel sorry for sony. I have a z3 compact and I cant for the love of god understand why this phone isnt selling like the first gew iphones during their prime. from what I can see, it seems like their advertising and marketing strategy sucks donkey balls (yes that's what I said). The new phones have features..useful ones at that..that no other phone has (by default.. obviously all features can be ported across in android).. like the glove mode in snowy weather.. the timeshift burst camera... the answering machine in the default phone app... NOBODY seems to know about this stuff.... Instead, all their ads talk like hopped up fashion models... come on sony. learn from samsung ..only their ad strategy,.. not their phone making skills..
I've been helping run the family pawn shop since about November - we have had all of ONE PS4 come into our shop, whereas I've taken in at least a half-dozen Xbones.
Take from that anecdote what you will, but it seems to me that the PS4 is doing pretty good without any extra focus.
Also Sony makes killer DVD players and televisions. I hope they don't stop making that stuff, personally.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Right now the real innovators in the camera market is Sony and Olympus. Sony is the supplier of sensors for many of the top camera brands.Olympus uses the same Sony Sensor on all of its ILC cameras. Check out the Sony A6000 and A7II. Olympus' new EM5 II, has taken the Sony sensor to new heights with its sensor shift technology. Sony and Olympus are working together on the new technology. Olympus needs Sony sensors, and Sony could use Olympus Lens tech and Oly's 5 axis IBIS. Sony's camera dept is bringing some excitement to the camera business, and reflects good on Sony. Good press attached to their name can't hurt.
photosMy Photostream
Sooner or later, all video will be delivered via the internet (or via the same technologies, anyway, from your ISP/content provider)
Right now I can buy a $200 TV and a $40 amplified antenna and receive the farmer five without a recurring fee other than rent and the electric bill. How would you suggest to subsidize viewers' Internet access the way advertising and, in the case of PBS, contributions to stations from viewers like you currently subsidize the broadcasting of OTA TV? Or what else would cause the major networks to cease OTA broadcasting?
[On PlayStation Vita,] you don't have to put up with F2P monetized crap
Apple agrees with this anti-microtransaction sentiment, which is why it has opened a "pay once" category in its App Store.
Hell, the Vita version of Minecraft is better than the Android version.
Does Minecraft for PlayStation Vita support mods? Minecraft for Android does.
Including Columbia Pictures/Music? What about all the other consumer hardware, like blu-ray players, receivers, cameras, etc.? Sony is huge.