Recently in Sony Category

Charlie Rose interviews Sony CEO Howard Stringer. Worth watching if you used to work at Sony.

This is very, very disappointing.

Sony BMG's chief anti-piracy lawyer: "Copying" music you own is "stealing"

Clayton Christensen has an engaging piece in Forbes around how Nintendo's Wii has run circles around Sony and their PS3.

Christensen believes that there are 3 possible approaches for Sony to take vs. Nintendo:

1. "The seemingly simplest option is to just come up with a copy-cat version of Nintendo’s controller that works with one of Sony’s existing consoles."
2. "repurpose Sony’s “legacy” product (PlayStation 2) into a me-too version of the Wii."
3. "The final option is for Sony to try to 'disrupt the disruptor.' Instead of following a me-too strategy, Sony could seek to truly develop a category-changing project. While this approach would take more time and require greater investment, it has the most long-term potential—if Sony can figure out a different measure of performance on which to compete in the video game market."

The article is long and is worth reading if you are interested in this fascinating business case study that is unfolding in front of all of us. If we go back to the news pre-launch of these new consoles, the media was busy lapping up the PR from Kutaragi and everyone thought that Nintendo was on their way out. Fascinating how situations can shift in a few months. Amazing to see Nintendo's market cap pass Sony's.

While these options are all open for debate, Roger Ehrenberg brings up the reality of corporate change:

So before I would begin even thinking about answering the question "What should Sony do next with respect to its gaming strategy?", I'd want to answer the question "How can Sony re-shape its organization, culture and product development approach in order to be more flexible, customer-centric and innovative in a rapidly-shifting market?" Because without a good answer to the latter, you might as well take the former, write it on a piece of paper, crumple it into a ball and toss it in the garbage can. Because that is all the value good strategy is worth in the absence of good culture.

I'm with Ehrenberg, if it's not already clear.

Of course the big news this week is Semel out at Yahoo! and Yang in as CEO. That topic has been over-analyzed to death and I don't have anything new to add to the discussion there.

What I'm sure no one noticed in the midst of the big news in Silicon Valley is that Paid Content reports that at long last Sony Connect is dead as a business.

Sony Connect To Close Music/Video Services; Focus on Servicing Playstation Group; 20 People To Go

And to add insult to injury, Sony's Japanese music service, Mora has been replaced by Apple's iTunes at Yahoo! Japan Music.

I've written a lot about Sony Connect over the years highlight all the problems with that business:

July 05, 2004 - Sony Connect FAQ

November 10, 2005 - Sony Connect Player 1.0 review

November 22, 2005 - Sony Connect Player fiasco

January 24, 2006 - Cleaning up after Sony Connect Player

April 26, 2006 - Sony Connect E.O.L.

To me, it's absolutely indicative of the malaise within Sony that Connect wasn't killed in mid-2006.

But really, no one cares about Sony anymore, because there's nothing to care about. Wii is killing PS3 in every market around the globe. the DS is killing the PSP in every market around the globe. Sony stock is up on account of Bravia, but "Bravia" is another name for "made by Samsung." Things may be turning around, and we're seeing desperately needed management changes, but I don't yet see new hit products to turn the tide.

Watch Sony announce Ken Hirai of SCEA to become the next head of SCE. SCE needs someone more revolutionary than Hirai however.

Architect of Sony’s PlayStation to Retire Amid Faltering Sales - New York Times

Walt Mossberg calls the Sony VAIO first-run experience "irritating" and "a big hassle." Pre-loading 4GB of Sony movie content on the VAIO is horrendous. Guess who hasn't cared about their customers for many years...

Personal Technology -- Personal Technology from The Wall Street Journal.

As if the poor sales of the PS3 isn't bad enough, Sony Computer Entertainment of America's senior director of corporate communications has quite a way with words when interviewed by the New York Times.

Dave Karraker, a spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said the Wii did not belong in the same category as the more powerful PlayStation 3. “Wii could be considered an impulse buy more than anything else,” he declared.

Many gamers think that a $250 Nintendo Wii is not an impulse buy. But hey, you know better than your customers, right? That's why the sales of your new game machine, "will reach only 75% of its global target for PlayStation 3 sales this fiscal year through March", according to a Nomura report released Monday.

I remember how, in a recent interview on Gamasutra, Dave Karraker spoke about media misperception of Sony and the PS3.

Gamasutra: It did seem like there were a number of mis-statements, and this may be a media misperception, but did you have to work to rein people in and make sure they’re on message?

Dave Karraker: I don’t know that it was a lot of mis-statements, the problem that we had was because there wasn’t anyone in this position that I’m in right now, we weren’t driving the message. We were allowing media to drive the message for us, and interpret it for us. So allowing someone like Peter Moore, who’s a good friend of mine, to stand up there and say negative things about Sony, there wasn’t anybody refuting that. People just took that for face value. Now we’re very aggressively defending our turf, and attempting to right all the wrongs that have been said about us in the past, which includes misrepresentation of quotes from our executives. I think you’ve probably seen the difference, just in the last couple months, where if somebody goes out and says something negative about Sony, we’re not going to sit back and allow that. We’re going to position it properly, and provide the facts.

"Driving the message" now Mr. Karraker? Is this what is called "aggressively defending our turf"? and "attempting to right all the wrongs"?

Interesting PR strategy you have here.

Sony Corporation president Chubachi says to the Japanese media:

"The company should have investigated the cause of the battery problem more quickly," Chubachi said in an interview with the Mainichi Shimbun daily published on Friday.

"The worries over the batteries spread as a result," he said.

Sony president admits slow response to battery defects

Seth Scheisel's review of the Sony PS3 in the NY Times has a bunch of wince-inducing quotes.

Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company’s new video game system just isn’t that great.
...
Sony blithely insisted that the PS3 would leapfrog all competition to deliver an unsurpassed level of fun.

Put bluntly, Sony has failed to deliver on that promise.
...
It falls far short, however, of providing the world’s most engaging overall entertainment experience. There is a big difference, and Sony seems to have confused one for the other.
...

the whole PlayStation 3 system is surprisingly clunky to use and simply does not provide many basic functions that users have come to expect, especially online.

A Weekend Full of Quality Time With PlayStation 3 - New York Times

Kotaku has an incredible (in terms of the reportage and the video footage) post up about the launch of the Sony PS3 in Tokyo. One of the people in line, a foreigner in Japan, reported that the first 20 people in line were either Japanese homeless paid by the yakuza or Chinese nationals who were paid to stand in line as their PS3s were then taken away to be sold on the grey market overseas. The reporter, a Dirk Benedict, does not fault the people who received money to stand in line, he faults both the retailer, Bic Camera, for not properly preparing for the situation, and Sony for not producing enough units and thus creating this intense demand.

This is the true face of the PlayStation 3 debut in Japan. Hardcore gamers are not here waiting in line overnight, buying a first-run PS3, and running home to play some good old next-gen gaming. Rather, opportunistic Japanese businessmen have the largest presence, hiring poor Chinese men and women to wait in line for a PS3, one which will later be sold on web auctions to wealthy gamers around the world for exorbitant amounts of money.

While this kind of news may not make the mainstream media in Japan, it will get back to Sony as Sony executives certainly read Kotaku.

Foreigners And Fights, PS3 JPN Launch's Dark Side - Kotaku