Tough times for Sony

I'm not a big fan of Sony. When they started making audio players with tape that no other player had I thought they were nuts (DAT drive). Then they started making cameras that work only with their MemorySticks. I told people who listened to keep away from Sony cameras since their memory (which was expensive at the time) could only work inside Sony devices. Now that flash memory is cheap it's not as big a deal. Still, it appears that Sony likes to go their own way and prefers it when their customers are locked in to their products and their products only.
Now they have two more problems. One is the Sony rootkit fiasco, this has started to make Sony look very evil in some consumer's eyes. Another is their PS3 game console. It looks like they practically have the company riding on this product which most likely will be late. Part of the lateness and expense of the device is their insistance of putting BlueRay into the machine. BlueRay (and HD DVD) are evil twins of the DVD. The DVD is already pretty bad: has region encoding so a DVD you bought in one Country can't play in another, the menus can't be skipped so you are force to watch adds or FBI warnings, the menus are non-standard so sometimes it's easy to change the language, sometimes not so much. The next generation of DVD promises to be far worse!
I think the PS3 will do poorly, and BlueRay (and HD DVD) will do poorly as well (since DVDs are good enough). Sony has some great products but that may change rapidly if they are short of cash. They really need to change their corporate culture so that the customer comes first, again.
So, in short, my prediction for 2006-2007 is that XBox 360 will win over PS3, and that Sony will be in a little financial difficulty by 2008.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I don't think so, sony will sadly fully succeed with the ps3 in europe and japan. Said sadly because i'd wish you were right.

Sony damaged sega and nintendo, perhaps the best companies in videogaming and i'm very upset with that. Sony doesn't have personality making games, just have a few nice games that makes casuals happy.
1:39 am
Scott Kirkwood said…
Perhaps you are right. But there's a lot more competition out there and parents are a little smarter about these games than they used to be. We'll have to see.
9:36 pm
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