What the Sony Reshuffling Actually Means

Newsweek's N'Gai Croal steps up this morning with some interesting analysis of the Sony re-organization that occurred late last month. Mr. Croal points out the difficulty of understanding the machinations of a notoriously tight-lipped foreign company, and attempts to look at the executive movements from the games business view. From the article: "Here's what's on SCE's plate at this very moment: three product lines that must be managed over the next five to six years (PS2, PSP and PS3); two more product lines that are almost certainly already in the planning stages (PS4 and PSP2); an online service, an online store, operating systems and system updates for each of the post-PS2 machines; and one of the world's largest game studio operations. Given that workload, Sony desperately needed to free Ken up to do the vision thing, and groom the next generation to run SCE on a day-to-day basis, much like Microsoft did when Bill Gates ceded operational control of Microsoft to Steve Ballmer. So while we have absolutely no visibility into whether this evolution was initiated by Kutaragi or by Stringer, it strikes us as precisely the right move to help ensure the future health of the PlayStation business."

I hate forced subjects

"free Ken up to do the vision thing"

translation: Stay out of the way and shut the hell up, crazy man.

Shuffling and shuffling

I thought you meant the recent PS3 firmware update. I'm still wondering what the heck it means.

From TFA

In the days that followed, much of the speculation and analysis was misleading, inaccurate or just plain outlandish.

Sounds just like the speculation that used to exist over the hardware in the console.

Summary of TFA: We don't really know what's going on, but we've got a few clues so we'll wildly extrapolate forward from those.

In other news, no tea in the vending machine this morning - this probably means that Asia is now underwater and establishing a subsea uber-race.

It's...

"Rrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeestructrinnnnnnng. C'mon it's restructuring, people!"

Nothing concrete really...

There's no meat here at all. No discussion as to how to get themselves out of the hole, or at the very least stop digging new ones. As I see it, it's the friction between the different divisions that's causing all the problems. Useless MP3 players (when they should be OWNING that market), lagging media sales (DVD and CD), bad press due to various stumblings, PS3 waiting for Blu-Ray, and more, have caused the once-mighty Sony to stumble. They've managed to alienate all but the most rabid fans with their stupid and uncoordinated moves.

Either Sony has to REALLY reorganize and focus on what they do best, or they need to give the CEO carte blanche to make the tough choices. Toes will be stepped on, feelings will be hurt, but if they don't do this things won't be any better by this time next year (even if the PS3 is in good supply).

Big ships turn slowly

Larger, more established companies tend to change slowly. They tend to be risk averse even though they're actually better equiped to weather potential failures then their smaller competitors. And in situations like this, divisions within the company can be crippled by their sister divisions. The video game division doesn't just have to compete with nintendo and microsoft, it has to compete with other divisions within sony. The video game division says they need to keep their costs down, but the other division needs to push that new expensive bluray format so that gets stuck on there for instance.

Sony seems obsessed with trying to get the market to adopt one of their proprietary media formats. They tried just using their name to push it, and then they've started trying to piggyback on the success of some of their other products to get it adopted. Neither has had much success. It'd be a great revenue generator, but consumers don't want to pay the extra cost and competitors are right there to offer an alternative. Give it up already! They aren't helping blu-ray be adopted, they're hurting their PS3.

Re:Big ships turn slowly

Time out...

"It was created by a consortium of many different companies"

Incorrect, sorry - Blu-ray technology was 'created' in Sony labs, by Sony engineers, using Sony R&D budget monies and the Japanese 'Bullet Train Development Concept', that says why make the next leap a measly 10% over the existing level, just to keep you in the game, when a 200% jump means a whole new game... with the field, ball, rules, cheerleaders, refs, players AND winning trophy firmly in your grasp, since there are no competitors even in the same league.

After which, Sony called a campfire meeting of friends, and then the BD consortium was formed. Roughly 170 companies have lined up to date, or so they say.

Re:Big ships turn slowly

Sony seems obsessed with trying to get the market to adopt one of their proprietary media formats.

Even just 3 years ago, I would have agreed vigorously. Now I'm not so sure.

As you mentioned above, these big corps steer like a Buick. Changes take a long time to trickle down. But somewhere between the death of MiniDisc and the PSP, Sony has changed tack.

They no longer sell ATRAC3, their proprietary audio codec. New devices only support this for legacy reasons The PSP, while locked down as far as executable code goes, does support standard things like JPG / PNG / MPEG-2 / MPEG-4. Even the Sony Ericsson phones only play MP3/AAC. Nothing DRM'd.

And now we see that the PS3 has multiple card readers (not just MemoryStick) a Linux bootloader provided and supported by Sony, a standard HDD that is removable without voiding the warranty, and a regular power plug (they used to rape you for those 'special' plugs, remember that?) Say what you will, but these things were basically unthinkable for Sony a few years ago.

I don't know exactly where they are going with this but these are certainly encouraging signs.

Rush reminiscing

Remember when Rush Limbaugh revealed how he was finally free of his burden to "hold other people's water" that "didn't deserve it?"
I bet a lot of Sony sympathizers are feeling the same thing now that Kenny is no longer making retarded remarks about the PlayStation brand.

Hoo boy...

Getting dizzy from that spin...

All Stringer's fault

Many missteps made by Sony in recent years can be attributed to Stringer and his leadership in Sony's content business. The content side has always hindered their consumer electronics division, through adding proprietary formats, DRM, and other content-driven designs. Everything from the lack of an iPod competitor, the inclusion of Blu-ray into the PS3, to the rootkit ordeal has Stringer's hands in it. They are all an example of how the content side of Sony has taken control.

Kutaragi, being less politically savvy than Stringer, criticized the company for Sony's policy of using proprietary technologies and implicitly criticised the company's use of DRM technologies [wikipedia.org], to his own detriment. Fact was, the content side was making money at the expense of the consumer electronics division, and that's why Sony's leadership in electronics has gone downhill.

The past year, we have seen Stringer oversee the rootkit fiasco as well as Blu-ray in the PS3, both of which are tied to the content business. Hopefully Stringer is fired, and the rest of the content executives demoted, as well as the marketing director.

Ken Kutaragi as a replacement would be much better than Stringer, although he would first need coaching on public relations.