People often refer to the fall of Rome as a way of displaying that great world powers can fail too. Rome never really fell though, as much as faded away. For lots of reasons that scholars debate, including copious amounts of politics, Rome slowly lost its grip on its empire until it simply lost its relevance.
I bring this to you today to tell you of the fall of another great empire, Sony. For quite some time now, the Sony brand on your electronics has meant something. In the past it signified QUALITY. Sony was one of the members of the
Japanese Quality Revolution, and similar to BMW or newegg, when you bought from them, you didn't have to worry about the quality of your products.
My how the mighty have fallen.
I generally hold the opinion that "most" CEO's and upper executives do not deserve to make nearly as much as they do. Sony's executive's have clearly shown that they are overpaid. They are singlehandedly driving a dynasty into the ground.
Lets look at recent events.
Playstation 3Sony has sold a
staggering amount of Playstation 2 units. It is a worldwide recognized brand. It has earned them untold amounts of money, brand recognition, and reputation. Aparently they decided that the best plan for developing the Playstation 3 was to "wing it".
When they pushed the rediculous boomerang controller, then claimed it was a beta design, then reverted to their time tested design, then added the Wii motion sensing, then removed the rumble because it interfered with the sensors (and lawsuits couldn't have hurt), I had to laugh. Where was their marketing department? Where was their developement team? How much money did they spend before caving into pressure from critics and whims of upper managers? Who wants to tell me that an executive did not walk into the engineering dept and say "Hey, the fanboi's are crying about our bananna shaped controller, could we make it work like the Wii's instead?".
When they had announced that there were
no plans for a unified online service, I had to cry with laughter. Does Sony truly not understand the internet? Or online gaming? Had anyone in their company played via Xbox Live, and then looked at their own solution to online gaming and given it even more then a moments thought? Apparently in all the time before design for the Playstation 3 began, noone with any input on online funcitonality for the PS3 had ever used Xbox live. If they had, there wouldn't even be a question, they would have copied it from the beggining. They would have tried to implement a Sony Live for PS2. It was like Dell announcing that they didn't see any reason to implement internet connection hardware in their upcoming models.
When they had announced that the system would cost no less then 3 trillion $US if pre-ordered with trade in games, the world soiled its' pants. Recently in
comparing its pricing to the competition in a rather deceitful way, Sony has landed into legal troubles. The reality is that with games being the price they
are, buying a PS3, a 2nd controller, and 2 games is going put you around 800$+tax. Don't forget to buy an HDMI cable, Sony is
too cheap to throw one in.
Some say 800$ for a gaming system is CHEAP. These people are PC gamers. These people don't realize that in this day an age, you need a computer, so you have one already. The difference between the computer you are going to own and a gaming system is 200$ on doubling your ram, getting the 100$ more expensive CPU and buying a new video card. The PS3 isbased off of the
G70, whose last revision card peaks at around 10.4/15.6 gigapixelgigatexel/second, from a first revision score of about 4.5/6.5. Nov. 8th, the first revision of the G80 is going to drop, with rumors placing its peak fill rate at 48-69 gigapixels, for roughly 400$. Why would I buy a G70 based console et all for 800$, when I can game-ify the computer I'm buying with a G80 base for 700$. Not to mention that I'm not stuck with a
soon to be laughable 1080p resolution.
Some say, a PS3 is only a bit more then a 360 with the HDDVD addon, but lets be even more honest. The HDDDVD addon is for people to watch movies, and is a cheaper alternative for movie watchers that own a 360. The Blu-Ray drive for the PS3 is an agendda in an of itself.
Egotistical FormatsWith formats such as mini-disk and memory stick becoming the industry standards that they are, Sony is still fighting the good fight on the format front. A Blu-Ray player with video game functionality is a bit too harsh a critisim of the PS3, but Sony is obviously banking on the PS3 as a way to push Blu-Ray. Trying to escape a repeat of the betamax fiasco, Sony has managed to damage its videogame branch by pushing its own format. They lost 6 months in the market to Microsoft. This in a console cycle that is looking to push to 2-2.5 years between systems. When developers are just starting to tap the potential of the PS3's G70 and Cell chips, MS will be already dropping the Xbox 720. Because of MS's Visual Studio XNA and .net, the potential of its newest console will be just as easy to unlock as the 360's. How can the executives justify this move? Not only did they hurt the PS3, they hurt their format. Because they're hoarding the blue lasers for the PS3's, they blu-ray stand alone's are slow to market, cost twice as much, and are losing from my point of view.
Loss of QualityThe only thing that needs to be said here is : Batteries. Thats not the extent of the humor though, so we'll say EXPLODING batteries. Where was the famous Sony Quality on that one? When did Sony drop from a prestiegious brand to just another label to put on OEM parts?
Loss of MoralityEnter Lik-Sang, importer of consoles, funky japanses accesories, grey market addons, and other toy's of the far-east. Lik-Sang is the Newegg of importers, trusted, well priced, fast, and curtious. Enter Sony, following the sin of Greed, who has declared open pricing in Japan and that Europe must wait forever to get a PS3. Lik-sang has been buying PSP's and then selling them to other countries, reguardless of release dates and the like. This is otherwise known as commerce. The practice has been around for a while, I believe starting around the dawn of mankind. Sony doesn't want them to do this, so what is poor Sony to do? Well if they complain that the PSP's are illegal to sell because customers could confuse the foreign voltage requirements and blame Sony. And btw, isn't it totally illegal to buy a european car and sell it in the USA because someone might confuse the diesal requirement and blame the european car company?
Hoozah, score one for Sony.
Dating back a bit farther, who could forget Sony's method of "protecting" its musical content? What were they to do with all those evil users who want to rip cd's that they've bought so they can play them on their ipod? They decided to rootkit the computer of anyone who placed the disc in their drive. Amazing strategy, I know. The best part about the rootkit, is that it is such a good rootkit, that once you know how to rename your files, you can run hacks on games like World of Warcraft or Sony's previously unhacked Everquest 2, that are usually detected by the games' guardian software. Way to go Sony.
Lets face it, for the past year, anywhere Sony could go wrong, they did. Their quality is down, they have no idea what their customers want, they care more about their bottom line then ethics, and they took a flagship product that was impossible to make wrong, and have been trying their best to give their most mentally challanged employees the job of designing and marketing it. Or is it their best and brightest that thought they didn't need a unified online presence, or that HD tv's were a luxury, and that the US isn't mandating all cable to be switched over shortly?
You want a better buisness strategy Sony? How about instead of
eating 300$+ releasing an overpriced PS3 and hurting your entire electronic division by pushing your format, you release the PS3 with a DVD drive for 300$ so that everyone and their mother buys one, or better yet, release the PS3 with DVD for 550, and eat 300+ from the cost of the cheapest blu-ray player you can make. How many 150$ stand alone blu-ray players do you think you could sell? Its not like you don't get the royalties from blu-ray media to re-coop the loss. Its not the guarenteed recoop from video games, but then if you own the media, you could have pressured the movie studios into giving you a bigger slice of the pie. Plus most people own more movies then video games anyway.
Really, what is Sony doing? Does anyone know? Please tell me.
