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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."
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 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
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.
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
Too many companies get rendered irrelevant by not diversifying. Looking at you Blockbuster: After years of domination of the block and mortar video rental and sales niche, they passed up a chance to purchase the fledgling Netflix for $50 million US in 2000. (Current Netflix market cap is $28+ Billion.) Carl Icahn waged a proxy fight for control in 2005, and by 2010 the once great concern filed for Bankruptcy.
It's precisely why you see Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Google making what appear to be crazy stupid acquisitions.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Sony have always wanted to be the giant behemoth that dictates the market and thus abuses it for their own profit at the expense of everyone else.
They have always done this and become exceptionally arrogant in the process..
The difference now is that they have become increasingly irrelevant while still vainly attempting those same business practices. It is a common progression for companies of this ilk. (e.g. Microsoft with the browser and search)
I think what should happen is that we should streamline OUR lives and be rid of Sony.
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.
wasting tons of time without even having to play the game at all. Update required x 100,
That's only if you don't use it, or don't have background updates turned on.
only plays media in very specific formats
If you mean it doesn't play your pirated anime MKV's then say so. It does play the following: .mts)
Memory Stick Video Format
- MPEG-4 SP (AAC LC)
- H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile (AAC LC)
- MPEG-2 TS(H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, AAC LC)
MP4 file format
- H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile (AAC LC)
MPEG-1 (MPEG Audio Layer 2)
MPEG-2 PS (MPEG2 Audio Layer 2, AAC LC, AC3(Dolby Digital), LPCM)
MPEG-2 TS(MPEG2 Audio Layer 2, AC3(Dolby Digital), AAC LC)
MPEG-2 TS(H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, AAC LC)
AVI
- Motion JPEG (Linear PCM)
- Motion JPEG (μ-Law)
AVCHD (.m2ts /
DivX
WMV
- VC-1(WMA Standard V2)
As for audio it does WAVE, WMA, AAC, ATRAC and MP3. For images, GIF, JPG, PNG, TIFF, BMP and MPO
Alternate OS takes an inordinate amount of time to install
I am quite familiar with installing Linux on a PS3, it depends on the packages you choose to install. It's no longer than any other LInux distro.
Alternate OS pulled as a feature after spending an inordinate amount of time giving it a chance to "own" my living room TV.
If you wanted to keep OtherOS, you could. You have a choice, keep OtherOS, and lose access to PSN because your PS3 isn't running current firmware. Or update. Your choice, and it asks to confirm..twice.