Format failure of Business Model Failure?
on
Everyone Hates UMD
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· Score: 1
I read that story (and the decidedly less gloating feeder article) and I was struck by the fact that while the UMD was admittedly a pretty shitty format, maybe the problem isn't the format but the business model.
Sony are an electronics and media company. For the past 100 years, western society has been buying these boxes that allow them access to information and then going out and buying the information in a little delivery device called a format. So you have an economic system based on companies designing machines, building them then having other people pay them to sell the machines to us. Ditto for the media.
However, now we all have one broadly identical box and we're growing more and more used to pressing a button and having instant access to media. Want a song? it's a handful of clicks away on iTunes or the P2P network. Want a film or an old TV series? well it's a click away on the torrent sites and, if you're a good little consumer, a website that will sell it to you for less than any of the shops in your area can give it to you for.
Bandwidth is growing, the speed and ease with which we can access information is increasing every month.
But there are millions of people who work in industries that require us to go and buy our information in shops thanks to these little delivery systems and boxes that allow you to get at the stuff in the delivery systems.
So in other words, Sony aren't just trying to keep alive a format that was widely decried as shit virtually from release, but they're battling to keep a business model and an economic system in place. If we could instantly access any information we wanted at the touch of a button it would mean that high-street retail would die tomorrow and it would take most of the consumer electronics industry with it.
So Sony and the others are trying to keep us interested... trying to sell us format after format after format where in reality, as the research shows, people want content not formats. So consumer electronics has a balancing act to maintain... make the format too open and transparent and you risk making it obsolete from birth, but make it too closed and difficult to use and you're fighting not just other formats but instant information on the internet. I hope for their sake that they've learned from this disaster... but strangely I also hope that they haven't.
Slashdot Mirror
I read that story (and the decidedly less gloating feeder article) and I was struck by the fact that while the UMD was admittedly a pretty shitty format, maybe the problem isn't the format but the business model. Sony are an electronics and media company. For the past 100 years, western society has been buying these boxes that allow them access to information and then going out and buying the information in a little delivery device called a format. So you have an economic system based on companies designing machines, building them then having other people pay them to sell the machines to us. Ditto for the media. However, now we all have one broadly identical box and we're growing more and more used to pressing a button and having instant access to media. Want a song? it's a handful of clicks away on iTunes or the P2P network. Want a film or an old TV series? well it's a click away on the torrent sites and, if you're a good little consumer, a website that will sell it to you for less than any of the shops in your area can give it to you for. Bandwidth is growing, the speed and ease with which we can access information is increasing every month. But there are millions of people who work in industries that require us to go and buy our information in shops thanks to these little delivery systems and boxes that allow you to get at the stuff in the delivery systems. So in other words, Sony aren't just trying to keep alive a format that was widely decried as shit virtually from release, but they're battling to keep a business model and an economic system in place. If we could instantly access any information we wanted at the touch of a button it would mean that high-street retail would die tomorrow and it would take most of the consumer electronics industry with it. So Sony and the others are trying to keep us interested... trying to sell us format after format after format where in reality, as the research shows, people want content not formats. So consumer electronics has a balancing act to maintain... make the format too open and transparent and you risk making it obsolete from birth, but make it too closed and difficult to use and you're fighting not just other formats but instant information on the internet. I hope for their sake that they've learned from this disaster... but strangely I also hope that they haven't.