What happened to Sony?

[Vic]

Capitalism. The mighty always forget what it was that made them mighty and fall to new competition.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Tizyler
I realize that they released PS3 about 6-12 months early, but what else has caused all of this recent hatred towards Sony?

Early? More like late! It was supposed to come out much earlier.

I don't buy Sony products (except products only Sony makes - like the PS2), because I've been burned enough times.

- Dead $300 DVD player 14 months after purchase. C 13:00 error. Common problem with their DVD players back then, apparantly there was a resistor or something on a circuit board that was insufficient.

- Dead PS2 - disc read error.

- Dead Vaio laptop - well, it sometimes works if you put pressure on the bottom of it with your knee.

I've had better luck with other brands, so I buy other brands.

 

[Aftermath]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: BudAshes
Rootkit and banning porn from blueray.

Since when did they ban porn from bluray?

It was announced today.

Sony can kiss my blue ass

Ah, I see that the first Smurf-Human ass transplant was indeed a success.

 

[slackerinabox]

Extereme competition from the Koreans. Samsung, LG, etc. can deliver similar products for much less green.

Consumers view electronics as disposable now. They realize that it will be out of date in 2 or 3 years anyways so they often go for the best deal. I remember owning a sony tv for 15 years and it still worked when we gave it away - but that reliability came at a price premium.

To compete (or to milk customers), sony has also seemed to lower the quality on a lot of their consumer products, building stuff in taiwan instead of japan. news of this gets amplified on the internet and public opinion then suffers.

 

[James Bond]

What is the rootkit everyone is talking about?

 

[BurnItDwn]

In the 80o, Sony's R&D was extremely good.
They developed the Walkman
They developed CDs
They developed the Discman
Yes they had some flops (beta)
But overall, they produced extremely well made products that were the top tech of the time.

Over the years ...
It seems like more and more focus has been shifted towards marketing & cutting costs.
They don't focus on their R&D nearly as much as they used to.
They also tend to charge more than their competition does, for similar quality products.

In recent times, things have been continuing to decline, rather then improve.
Perhaps Sony will find themselves in a situation not too different from what Ford or GM is in now, which will eventually hopefully lead to a good turnaround, however, that is the future, and it is not foreseeable.

EDIT: Sony's root kit is one of many intrusive "anti-piracy" measures as of recent. It's related to their DRM.

This article at Wired should explain things further.

 

[Adn4n]

I love stupid Sony. Every time they release new firmware for the PSP, it's written so bad that I can hack it myself.

 

[Aimster]

what is their earnings/loss/profit each quarter? anyone got a history?

 

[Adn4n]

They're planning to loose 1.7 billion in their gaming division by this march.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: monk3y
Sony's just been making some bad decisions. They can bounce back if they can start valuing what their customers want more.

I agree entirely. Back in the days before LCD and DLP, when only CRT televisions were around, I woundn't even consider buying ANYTHING but a Sony.

I still have a 32" Sony (non-flatscreen) that I paid a LOT of money for. It even has an S-video input, which was Teh Schiznitz back in that day. The TV still looks beautiful.

 

[Adn4n]

Luckily the PS3 is homebrew friendly, unlike the psp which needs "custom" firmware.

 

[lobbyone]

PS3 Happened

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
In the 80o, Sony's R&D was extremely good.
They developed the Walkman
They developed CDs
They developed the Discman
Yes they had some flops (beta)
But overall, they produced extremely well made products that were the top tech of the time.

Over the years ...
It seems like more and more focus has been shifted towards marketing & cutting costs.
They don't focus on their R&D nearly as much as they used to.
They also tend to charge more than their competition does, for similar quality products.

In recent times, things have been continuing to decline, rather then improve.
Perhaps Sony will find themselves in a situation not too different from what Ford or GM is in now, which will eventually hopefully lead to a good turnaround, however, that is the future, and it is not foreseeable.

EDIT: Sony's root kit is one of many intrusive "anti-piracy" measures as of recent. It's related to their DRM.

This article at Wired should explain things further.

I'll recommend this Wired article instead.

How did it come to this?
There were missteps aplenty, but at their root is a common dynamic: What once made Sony great has worked against it in the digital age. Sony's course was fixed in the 1946 prospectus drawn up by cofounder Masaru Ibuka, when he set forth the new company's purposes of incorporation. Number one on his list: "To establish an ideal factory ? where engineers with sincere motivation can exercise their technological skills to the highest level." To succeed, engineers would need to form small development teams and compete to build the next great gadget.

Teams of hardware engineers locked in competition: "It's the principle Sony is built on," says Shin'ichi Okamoto, PlayStation's former CTO, now a Tokyo entrepreneur. "Personally, I believe it's not such a good principle nowadays. I got this impression in the '80s, with the technological shift to semiconductors and software" ? both of which require enormous development teams that collaborate with the hardware units their work is intended for. "At Sony, most engineers want to invent something new by themselves. That's a very different goal."

 

[clamum]

They started requiring their management to smoke rocks

 

[Aimster]

well wont sony make billions off of games from the ps3 thus making it even?

 

[randomlinh]

root kit was the last straw for me with sony.

as for banning porn, the blu-ray alliance did not ban porn, that is a bad misconception. read here

 

[KRandor]

One of the problems sony has had - is that the siftware/music/entertainment side of the corporation has started to gain far more influence than the hardware side - and this has been snowballing for a few years now - to the detriment of the company as a whole. A few people in Sony saw it coming - but didn't expect it to get so bad - they thought that the hardware side would always have more influence because it was more valuable - but got caught out - now the entertainment side is winning - and it's not good. (Though if it wasn't for their financial services division they'd really be in trouble).

 

[BurnItDwn]

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
In the 80o, Sony's R&D was extremely good.
They developed the Walkman
They developed CDs
They developed the Discman
Yes they had some flops (beta)
But overall, they produced extremely well made products that were the top tech of the time.

Over the years ...
It seems like more and more focus has been shifted towards marketing & cutting costs.
They don't focus on their R&D nearly as much as they used to.
They also tend to charge more than their competition does, for similar quality products.

In recent times, things have been continuing to decline, rather then improve.
Perhaps Sony will find themselves in a situation not too different from what Ford or GM is in now, which will eventually hopefully lead to a good turnaround, however, that is the future, and it is not foreseeable.

EDIT: Sony's root kit is one of many intrusive "anti-piracy" measures as of recent. It's related to their DRM.

This article at Wired should explain things further.

I'll recommend this Wired article instead.

How did it come to this?
There were missteps aplenty, but at their root is a common dynamic: What once made Sony great has worked against it in the digital age. Sony's course was fixed in the 1946 prospectus drawn up by cofounder Masaru Ibuka, when he set forth the new company's purposes of incorporation. Number one on his list: "To establish an ideal factory ? where engineers with sincere motivation can exercise their technological skills to the highest level." To succeed, engineers would need to form small development teams and compete to build the next great gadget.

Teams of hardware engineers locked in competition: "It's the principle Sony is built on," says Shin'ichi Okamoto, PlayStation's former CTO, now a Tokyo entrepreneur. "Personally, I believe it's not such a good principle nowadays. I got this impression in the '80s, with the technological shift to semiconductors and software" ? both of which require enormous development teams that collaborate with the hardware units their work is intended for. "At Sony, most engineers want to invent something new by themselves. That's a very different goal."

That is an excellent article. I included the other one just to further explain the root kit.

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: Tizyler
What is the rootkit everyone is talking about?

Which one, the one they were putting on their music CDs in 2005? Or the one they're still distributing under the guise of copy protection in SecureROM with games?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: CKent

Originally posted by: Tizyler
What is the rootkit everyone is talking about?

Which one, the one they were putting on their music CDs in 2005? Or the one they're still distributing under the guise of copy protection in SecureROM with games?

My thread about rootkits and DRM, I would love for you all to review it, as I am not nearly finished:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=33&threadid=1985685&enterthread=y

 

[CTrain]

Originally posted by: her209
Apple is the new Sony (I guess).

I think Samsung is the new Sony.
Good all around products and competitive pricing.

BTW, did you notice how Sony is missing the boat on Digital audio player(ie MP3).
Its one of thye hottest thing right now and Sony do not even have 1 MP3 player out.
They need to realize that their Minidisc is DEAD.
Also, their memory stick is crap.
Nobody uses those except them and they are entirely too big now.
The Micro SD will rule the market.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: CTrain
The Micro SD will rule the market.

MicroSD? No way. MicroSD is great when space is extremely limited, i.e. cell phone. There's no need for the expense of MicroSD when MiniSD or SD is small enough. And I believe MemoryStick Pro is comparable in size to SD.

Think of MicroSD, MiniSD and SD like 1.8", 2.5" and 3.5" hard drives. 1.8" hard drives are great for MP3 players, because size matters. 2.5" drives are great for laptops, because you have more room to work with. And 3.5" drives will continue to thrive in towers, because cheap capacity is king.

The main problem with MemoryStick is that it's Sony-only. I like that I can use my SD memory in not only my camera and my Wii, but other people's cameras too. My MemorySticks... useless for pretty much anything other than my old crappy Sony camera.

My flash memory:
5 GB SD
3 GB MiniSD
16 MB MicroSD

9 GB CF

320 MB MemoryStick

In the future I expect to buy quite a bit more CF, the SD variants will grow but stay proportionally the way they are now, and I'll never buy a MemoryStick again. I, like most people I think, use flash memory primarily for digital cameras. I don't see MicroSD taking off in cameras, considering that my compact P&S camera (Canon Elph) uses SD.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Back to the point of this thread....

Sony has shifted focus in recent years, they have focused more on dominating the motion picture and music industry (I believe Sony Music and Sony Pictures are one of the largest in each of their respective businesses). IIRC, the guy that is calling the shots for Sony is the former head of their Music/Movie group. They have let the quality on their electronics business slide, it would probably be best if they spun it off so they could focus solely on being a media company.

 

[PrinceofWands]

I've had it out for them since EQ days.

 

[Sphexi]

Samsung >>>>> Sony