PS3 delayed.

[oldengineer]

Old news but still significant.

Yes we know that the the PS3 will sell by the bucketload, but the delay can only help MS sell yet more 360's over the crucial Christmas period.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5319190.stm

Do you think they were right to delay?

[_skitzo_]

Shame, MS still feels some affects in Europe with a sloppy 360 launch.
Sony has now allowed MS to have another holiday with PS3 and you can bet MS will do anything in it's power to sell!

Like I've said for sometime, Sony does take up 60 percent of the market, only Sony can lose that themselfs.

[Parris]

I've read a great deal about the seemingly endless failures and issues surrounding Sony's current business strategy. Sony are no strangers to failure however and have bounced back more than once. The strangest thing for Sony is that they often produce a great product, but then fail to grant wider access. They are very controlling and that means other companies wishing to produce material for the product may be required to pay larger sums of money for that priviledge.

The first failure I can think of relates to Betamax v VHS. Unless you worked in the audio visual industry you'd be under the impression that betamax died on it's feet and disappeared. It was actually deemed better in quality (falsely) than VHS and it went on to become a huge industry success, used almost exclusively by broadcast & filming units for editing purposes.

So, why did the average consumer not use Betamax? Simply because VHS lasted longer. The spool ran for 2hrs as opposed to the Sony Betamax being 1hr in length. Films would have to have been cut or edited to fit the spool.

Most of you will be aware that Sony invented the 1.44Mb 3.5" floppy drive & disc, which made them a small, but continued profit throughout the period that these drives were standard kit. Whenever a floppy drive was installed in any PC throughout the world, Sony made a small profit, which thanks to licensing expired for Sony either last year of the year before. That was one profit line cut.

Sony pushed ahead in handheld audio technology striving to produce a market standard, but as usual insisted that their developers produced the software from scratch and not use MP3. Instead they used their own format called Atrac3, originally designed to assist with MD to PC transfer. It was clunky, the OS was poor and it was slow. The world had already chosen MP3, but Sony continued to produce products that didn't even accept MP3.

Having invented the Walkman, Sony were confident that they could produce the next wave of new formats, such as Minidisc, which never really took off as Sony had wished. Who would have thought that cassette sales would out strip Minidisc sales to a ratio of 7 cassettes sold for every 1 MD purchased? Sony certainly didn't! It also seems ironic that cassettes which had been so instrumental in Sony's success were practically ignored by Sony in favour of formats they failed to sell.

Even the newest range of Sony Walkman style MP3 players have been recalled due to connectivity issues. Software appears not to be Sony's forte especially where music is concerned. A piece of software called Connect was blamed for connectivity issues and replaced with SonicStage, which didn't have the same level of functions & features, so you might of had a cool looking and stylish new Sony MP3 player, but the software didn't allow you to access all of them. I assume Sony sorted it out, but just how often does the average user want to download new software for their MP3 player?

Whatever happened to Super Audio CD? The format of the future that Sony confidently suggested was the way audio CD's would be produced as standard within a matter of years. They didn't play on standard CD players, which didn't help as it meant everyone would have to switch to new players. In the end they dropped the idea incredibly quickly and to date I have never even heard an SACD! So much for the format of we'd all buy into. A quick check on Wikipedia proves the point - only 4274 SACD titles have thus far been produced, the vast majority in the Classical genre, which as the format was supposed to produce high standard in audio playback is no surprise.

Do you remember Sony's MediaMax? The measure employed by Sony to curb copyright theft & piracy of their music was deemed unworkable and eventually withdrawn thanks to the potential of hackers gaining access to users PC as the software was automatically installed if a Sony CD was inserted into a PC drive. Sure enough, an announcment in 2005 indicated that a Trojan horse utilised Sony's software as a means of entry. Another recall.

Handheld and portable video formats that Sony developed were also by-passed when they refused to adhere to industry standards. Time and time again Sony have attempted to capture an audience and market place with new technological formats, such as the useless UMD, which is in reality just data minidisk, a format the recording industry had rejected as unstable almost a decade ago.

Sony batteries and PSU issues abound for anyone familiar with the PS2 Slimline and Dell laptops. In total over 9.6million batteries were recalled. But in 2005 Sony were also heavily involved in a massive repair programme for CCD (charge-couple device) sensors they produced for the likes of Canon, Fujifilm & Konica Minolta. The faulty sensors supplied by Sony rendered the digital camera totally useless. I can't find figures of the costs of the recall, but the vast majority of Sony's Cyber-shot cameras, Canons Powershot, Fuji's Finepix, Konica's Dimage, Nikon's coolpix, Ricoh's Caplio & Olympus' Camedia products were affected at the time.

The PSP itself was delayed and has never received the kind of acceptance it perhaps should have, but then again it's a PS2 in handheld form, which only really appeals to a certain portion of the market. By the time it launched Nintendo had created a nice lead with the DS. It has maintained that lead.

Initially it looked as if Sony was going to go it alone in relation to Blu-ray and fly in the face of any other developments. In terms of technology, as far as I can see HD-DVD and BD are virtually the same. My interest in audio engineering and audio visual equipment means that I have a fairly good understanding of the various formats and what they are capable of. One gripe is that Dolby Digital Plus (the audio side of things) is optional on BD as opposed to madatory on HD DVD. That may mean that the better sound quality will be available on more HD DVD titles than BD. This won't affect the average user as they both support AC-3 (Dolby Digital) which is what all 5.1 decoders use to produce their audio output.

You also have to wonder whether Sony's overall product quality has suffered over the period that they have been cutting back their overheads. For instance Sony TV's used to consist of a variety of chassis (30 in 2003), whilst Sony cut this in half by 2004 with the view to having a mere 6 in 2006. Sony's parts list dropped from 840,000 to 100,000 meaning that Sony reduced baseline costs drastically, buying in 3rd party parts or signing partnership deals, such as LCD's produced in Sony-Samsung ventures. So, precisely who's products are under the Sony lid? Instead of having a Sony you may have a Sony branded item produced predominantly by another manufacturer. Why then expect the Sony name to mean so much to the consumer? Water down the product, you undermine the brand name.

Back in 2004 Sony pinned some of it's hopes on a 70" rear projection TV set to be introduced prior to the Super Bowl. Retailing at $10k. Whatever happened to that elephant? Rear Projection TV? $10k?

They also suggested that the PS3 was it's trumps card, the ace up it's sleeve and bound to turn Sony's fortunes around.

Sony are top heavy, appear to be rather badly managed at present and certainly lagging behind Microsoft & Nintendo thanks to the faltering start to the PS3.

I've detailed a plethora of glaring failures in recent years. Sony used to mean quality, reliability and innovation. They began producing small portable radios and grew into a massive global company marketing products for every aspect of home life, which is one reason they have hit a run of bad luck. They are top heavy, spread out across too many products and being left behind when other companies challenge those sales lines. Specialist companies can come in with just one product and kill the Sony product stone dead. They've been too slow to react.

At £600 the Playstation 3 is a huge gamble. It is a relatively expensive piece of gaming hardware. It has appeared late on the market place, has been subject to several delays and cancelled launches. Can the fanbase that Sony has built up with the Playstation 1 and Playstation 2 really be expected to rally round and save the product and possibly Sony from being taken over if it fails?

This is quite an interesting quote I came across whilst looking at Sony: "Valve head honcho, Gabe Newell, would seem to have attacked PS3 in US magazine, Game Informer. The developer apparently states:

"The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels, I think It's really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted. I'd say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a "do over". Just say, "This was a horrible disaster and we're sorry and we're going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it""

The same article suggests that Sony themselves have reduced considerably the number of PS3 consoles they feel they are likely to sell, missing it's projected target by a massive 25% according to Nomura Securities (Japanese analyst group). This is blamed on lack of confidence in the product by NS, but may actually translate to lack of interest!

What frustrates me is that frankly I feel that competition is a very valuable asset for all parties. Without the drive to improve upon the technology we may well see that the next generation of consoles are less of a leap in technological terms than perhaps many may want. Microsoft & Sony truly wanted to out gun one another and took fairly massive strides from the previous consoles. Without that kind of challenge, without the same drive then what happens next in terms of development might be pretty dull.

[Parris]

P.S. Do I get some kind of award for posting what I think must be the longest reply to any topic to date on CT? Also, does this warrant a change in my little tag as I feel that the term "Junior Member" really doesn't sum up the kind of commitment displayed in staying up 'til 2am ranting on like that!

;-)

[oldengineer]

*O.E faints*

...Thats some reply Parris, and welcome!

[Parris]

Well I didn't just want to write the usual "considering their track record" for others to have to go and find that track record.

Sony have a history of not quite capturing the market, not quite producing the best piece of equipment for the job, turning their back on industry standards and going it alone and sadly of making glaring technical or software problems which result in products being recalled and as a result slapping their name on overly priced items which increasingly in the public eye appear to fail.

It might be that their customer base, who are far better informed of their on-going failures rather than any recent success Sony may have enjoyed are just not keen to dip their toes. As Sony managed to produce products for every corner of every household, when those products began to lose ground, develop faults or turn into white elephants you can bet that their customers would become rather tired of all the products in every corner of their household they had to replace after making substantial investments and believing Sony's hype! They appear to be paying dearly for convincing their customers that Sony had THEE product on the market and then realising nobody wanted the particular format Sony demanded of their R&D.

Personally I feel that at £600 the risk is too high. The corner may be turned for Sony in Europe as European legislation states that there is a product guarantee of 2 years. More people may be willing to take the risk knowing their rights are protected.

However you look at it, the PS3 launch has been a bit lacklustre and many appear to have made their chose as to which next gen console they are supporting. Sony may deeply regret not getting their main product right first time around.


END

There, I say no more!