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Father of PlayStation Admits Sony Mistakes 215

Posted by timothy from the shoulda-bought-IBM-in-1938 dept.
News for nerds writes "Following the news of Sony slashing its profit forecast due to the underperforming AV & PC divisions, Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) known by the PlayStation brand, admitted he and other Sony employees have been frustrated for years with management's reluctance to introduce products like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, mainly because Sony had music and movie units that were worried about content rights. The PSP by SCEI is one of the first Sony products that support non-proprietary standards such as MP3 or H.264, and now SCEI considers opening up the UMD disc format employed in the PSP."
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Father of PlayStation Admits Sony Mistakes More

Father of PlayStation Admits Sony Mistakes

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  • DUPE! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @01:34PM (#11448773) Homepage Journal
    (Pink Panther Theme)

    Dupe De-Dupe, De-Dupe-de-dupe-de Duuuuuuupe,
    Dupe-eh de-Dupe!

    • That has no resemblance to the pink panther theme, which has a lot more dupes on the front...

  • Dupe! (Score:1)

    by XanC ( 644172 )
    here [slashdot.org]
    • The one where Sony admitted the mp3 error was regarding their digital music players such as the minidiscs or hard-drive based. This is why their latest hdd players (and future) supports mp3 playback and maybe other formats that are more "universal" than lets say ATRAC.

      This article mentions the UMD format to be opened
      "We have already proposed UMD disc media as an open standard for everyone," he says. "The game profile will be unique for PlayStation Portable but movie and music should be a common applicatio

  • Deja-vu (Score:5, Funny)

    by voidptr ( 609 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @01:35PM (#11448782) Homepage Journal
    So when do we get to see the article /. editor admits duplicate? [slashdot.org]

    • Re:Deja-vu (Score:4, Funny)

      by pv2b ( 231846 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @01:39PM (#11448801)
      Hey. You know that your comment is a dupe? (Original here. [slashdot.org])

    • Re:Deja-vu (Score:2, Informative)

      by GtKincaid ( 820642 )
      Or perhaps a post about slashdot readers who admit to RTFA .
      correct me if im wrong but the last story was about sony turning tails on the mp3 issue and this is about the "father" of the Playstation talking about being frustrated at the uper management refusing to take risks
      it just hapens to include some info that is a also in other storys .
      if the everyday press wern' to dupe parts of information in storys we would have some rather confusing bits of information
    • This is the third dupe from him today too, along with the articles on PS3 architecture and eXeem lite.

    • Q: What's funnier than a dupe?

      A: When they're wrong the second time around. MP3 is proprietary. Ogg, for example, is not.

  • Big corporations (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cyriustek ( 851451 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @01:38PM (#11448792)
    This is an example of what happens when companies turn into huge conglomerates. Eventually, you have competing interest and a piece of the business loses a major opporuntiy to grow further due to anoth business unit. Although I am not a proponent of government breaking up companies, I must say there are times it is actually good for the companies.

    • Re:Big corporations (Score:5, Interesting)

      by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @01:45PM (#11448842) Homepage Journal
      Heh, it's an even bigger problem in Japan. For years, Japan has had a torrid love affair with the big companies, the bigger it got, the better. The companies would develop relationships with other companies that even governed what kind of beer their employees should drink. However, the companies got(and still are) way too big for their own good, and made every product you can think of. The beucracy and red tape puts makes the US government look efficient by comparison. This led to a lot of stagnation and now Japan is finally coming to realize that small, focused companies aren't really that bad.
      For example, Mitsubishi manufactures everything from LCD monitors to trains to escalators, to motor vehicles. Not surprisingly, one of the groups(Mistubishi Motors) is now in a lot of financial trouble.

      • Re:Big corporations (Score:5, Funny)

        by dourk ( 60585 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @02:30PM (#11449124) Homepage
        Good thing Mits is also a bank!
      • I also found Mitsubishi brand tuna fish once. It's called Three Diamonds (hint, look at the logo). But said Mitsubishi in the small print on the back.
      • For example, Mitsubishi manufactures everything from LCD monitors to trains to escalators, to motor vehicles. Not surprisingly, one of the groups(Mistubishi Motors) is now in a lot of financial trouble.

        I don't think there is a company called Mitsubishi. There are 29+ companies, all which have Mitsubishi in their names, and all of which use the same tri-diamond logo. But the only relationship between the companies is that most of their presidents belong to the same Friday club - and they meet informally

    • Re:Big corporations (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bigpat ( 158134 )
      "Although I am not a proponent of government breaking up companies, I must say there are times it is actually good for the companies."

      What says government has to be the one to break up companies? I did very well as a stockholder when Sears spun off Dean Witter, Discover Card and Allstate Insurance. More companies should take that lead and spin off big or unrelated business units. Sure the CEOs might end up with less power under one roof, but that can ultimately be the best thing for investors. GE and G

  • I enjoyed reading this on /. last week.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Osrin ( 599427 ) * on Sunday January 23, 2005 @01:39PM (#11448802) Homepage
    ... I'm sure I'll enjoy the comments as much this time around.

    Thanks for reposting.

  • And when will they get back to quality? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @01:39PM (#11448804) Homepage
    Broken Sony junk:

    Walkman.
    PS.
    PS One
    PS 2.
    Clie (which was a present for my brother).
    Surround amp.

    None of which was abused. I'll reconsider buying things from them when the stop making cheap shit that doesn't work. They have had, and squandered, plenty of chances from me.
    • Well, then I have to say that my experiences are quite different from yours. I've had a PS2 since the first day, still working. I had a PSX for many years, even taking it on a yacht (the salty air nearly *destroyed* my powerbook G3, just for a comparison). I've never had a problem with any of my sony stuff, and I am planning to buy a PSP.
      • I actually pre-ordered a PS2, it arrived DOA, which meant I would have to wait a month for another. I've never bothered re-ordering.

        This was unusual though, as I own a lot of Sony gear - TVs, Monitors, CD players, laptops, cameras, all of which has worked fine.
    • I'm not sure what world you come from but the original Walkmans were made to take severe beatings and still function. You should at least specify which generation such as today's budget-aimed minidiscs.
    • if i still had it all i would have a very large pile of Sony broken bits. quite a few walkmen including Sony Sports and Outback models, minidisc players, car stereos.... etc.
      my brother told me he heard a saying "Sony makes the best equipment, as long as it has no moving parts". i could agree with that. their TVs and computer monitors are great. well, i never looked at the LCD/plasma displays too much but i know the CRT devices are among the best. the LCD/plasmas *look* darn good to me.

      in addition to stuff
      • i never looked at the LCD/plasma displays too much but i know the CRT devices are among the best. the LCD/plasmas *look* darn good to me.

        I can't find the article right now, but, Sony is losing/not making much money on TV's right now because they have to buy their LCD's and plasma's from LG.

    • One thing to remember people, since Sony is the biggest seller of consumer electronics there are going to be more out pissed off ones out there with faulty equipment. I'd like to see some sort of faulty equipment ratio to Panasnic, Samsung, ect. But yes, the Playstations are not known for durability or longevity.
      • For some reason, I've ended up with a lot of Sony phones, from cheapo handsets to expensive zillion function wireless things, and every single one has failed massively after a fairly short time (I find it amazing that something as simple as a wired handset can actually fail!).

        I understand that less fashionable Sony product lines like phones are made in Malaysia (e.g.) and not well constructed, but this definitely doesn't help their reputation -- I've owned similar "made in low-salaryistan" phones from othe

    • I remember the walmans being pretty rugged. However, the rest is indeed junk.

      You forgot one though, the VAIO. Sony makes probably the lowest quality laptops of any company I've had experience with.

      They're so interested in putting stupid shit like ports for their BS gumstick memory, that they forget to make a machine that doesn't have all the parts falling off or breaking inside a week.
    • Sony has always made junk, they've just make a little better junk than everyone else. Essentially they provide a product that is 10%-20% better sounding or better looking or better to use than a competitor yet the cost of components or quality is the same or lower. After a while (or right away) the thing just falls apart. I guess it's a tough trade off. Would you rather a product that performs like crap but lasts a long time, or something that works well and lasts a little? Sony is the latter.
    • I'll add the "industry standard" DJ headphones, the Sony MDR-V700. I think they pay a lot of big name DJs to use them. They actually work well, but the swivel joint always fails within 12-18 months.
    • The buttons, base booster & LCD displays all cease working over time.

      Sony Professional make top gear but their consumer stuff is crap.
    • I've actually been happy with the last few Viao laptops work bought, but having to send a 6 month old Clie in for a new backlight really chapped my ass.

      That said, prior to my Clie I went through at least 4 palm devices in 4 years. But you would expect a $300 device to at least outlive the free piece of junk they ship with the Dells.

  • Double Dupe! (Score:5, Funny)

    by XanC ( 644172 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @01:40PM (#11448812)
    We've also managed to dupe this one: Sony to Standardize UMD Format [slashdot.org]

  • Japanese and "frustration" (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    from what I read about japan when a japanese person describes themselves as "frustrated" with a situation what they mean is "I AM GOD DAMN FUCKING PISSED OFF AND YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!" ...

    I was kind of amazed when the sony mp3 products suddenly turned up and now considering opening up the format for the drive?

    Me thinks some corporate bloodletting has been going on.

  • I don't see how it's a mistake. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by glrotate ( 300695 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @01:45PM (#11448849) Homepage
    The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the availability of terrabytes of stolen material being circulated. Is it in Sony's best interest to implicitly support this movement through the introduction of MP3 devices that will undoubtably be used to play, and encourag further dissemination of, pirated Sony content? I don't think it's an easy question to answer, and I can understand Sony's hesitancy.

    • Re:I don't see how it's a mistake. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dmaxwell ( 43234 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @01:52PM (#11448899)
      It's a huge mistake because Sony's consumer electronics business is much much larger than Sony's content business. Other posters have pointed that overly large conglomerates can have conflicts of interest with themselves. Realistically as the larger and more profitable business, Sony Electronics needs to tell Sony Content to go f*ck itself. Even better would be if Sony divested itself of the content arm at a profit and turned the electronics divisions loose to make products people actually want.
    • Well, Sony did provide software to convert MP3s to UMD, so I don't see what your is. Not supporting MP3 on the device just made Sony's offerings a lot less convient if you are using MP3. Oh, and a lot of people did rip CDs they bought to MP3, it's a hell of a lot more convient that searching through your collection for the cd you want.
    • The (perhaps flawed) assumption you make is that there would be less piracy if Sony didn't make an MP3 player. The truth is that piracy isn't going to go away anytime soon, and you might as well make money off of the players before you render them all obsolete by introducing DRM.
      • I guess I shouldn't have assumed it, because that is part of what sony had to consider. If in '98 they would have come out with a MP3man I think it definately would have increased piracy. At this point probably not.

        By releasing a MP3 player they may also weaken any legal argument against filesharing networks they may try to sue. Just something to consider.

    • Re:I don't see how it's a mistake. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by illumin8 ( 148082 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @02:07PM (#11448995) Journal
      The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the availability of terrabytes of stolen material being circulated. Is it in Sony's best interest to implicitly support this movement through the introduction of MP3 devices that will undoubtably be used to play, and encourag further dissemination of, pirated Sony content? I don't think it's an easy question to answer, and I can understand Sony's hesitancy.

      That may or may not be true. I'm sure in some ways the popularity of the iPod has to do with filesharing, but in a lot of other ways, it's just about how people like to enjoy their music. A lot of people I know have an iPod that have never stolen any music or used Kazaa. They just like being able to rip their CDs, chuck them in a storage closet somewhere, and carry their whole music library in the palm of their hand.

      If Sony wants to join the market, they will admit their mistakes and uncripple their devices. The marketplace has spoken. Crippled, proprietary formats do not sell and the more they try to cram them down our throats, the more people will just buy an iPod that plays MP3 and AAC.
    • I think its a really easy question. If Sony makes more profit on selling these unrestricted devices that would theoretically give us what we really want than by selling content and tying that content to their devices, I think its a pretty easy decision.

      Of course, this story is also brought to you by the same company that has sued ITSELF! Wrap your head around that one.

    • Re:I don't see how it's a mistake. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @02:13PM (#11449013) Homepage
      It's a massive mistake, because the evidence that increased piracy actually doesn't seem to affect sales at all, if at all, and may even improve sales.

      It's not clear why this would be, but there are suggestions that essentially there has been piracy ever since home taping in general and cassettes in particular hit the market- people have been copying off of friends ever since.

      Now, you could argue that this is wrong, and that the artists and music companies are worse off because of this. But music companies are making good money, and stopping the home copying would be a double-edged sword, since the home copying acts as free advertising. In addition, it's very unclear that the lack of home copying would increase sales- many people, particularly young people are on a budget, and simply wouldn't buy more music, they would just listen to less music and spend no more money.

      Also, except for the most hardened copier listening to music usually creates a taste for music- so they end up buying more music in the long run.

      So, home copying doesn't seem to reduce the market size for selling music. On the other hand, real pirates- people making copies of music and selling them for money, or even as legitimate forgeries, they really can reduce the market size.

    • The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the availability of terrabytes of stolen material being circulated. Is it in Sony's best interest to implicitly support this movement through the introduction of MP3 devices that will undoubtably be used to play, and encourag further dissemination of, pirated Sony content? I don't think it's an easy question to answer, and I can understand Sony's hesitancy.

      "You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability."

    • Re:I don't see how it's a mistake. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sanity ( 1431 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @02:30PM (#11449120) Homepage Journal
      stolen material
      Wow - stolen? That means the record companies don't have it any more - right? Can't they just get it off a P2P network like everyone else?
    • This isn't interesting at all. The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the convience of having ones music collection at the tip of their fingers. Instead of walking about with tapes and cd's. You simply go from Bach to N.E.R.D with the touch of the Next button.

      Sonys mishaps have been their own based on their contesting to own "media". To put everything in their own proprietary, undocumented and closed formats.

      As for the "terrabytes of stolen material". Theives will be theives, it doesn't stop hones
    • You may make the same argument about the popularity of the Walkman range, they were popular because of the availability of unathorised copies of tapes and CD's.

    • Re:I don't see how it's a mistake. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by salesgeek ( 263995 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @03:00PM (#11449339) Homepage
      The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the availability of terrabytes of stolen material being circulated.

      This is bull. First, MP3 players were successful because they were simple and open. Convert audio to MP3, download, press play. Utilities are simple file level tools. No DRM validation that doesn't work right. No encryption. No chance that in 10 years I can't listen to my collection of fine Pantera music.

      Sony made some of the most complicated uncompatible junk ever. SONY SHOULD KNOW BETTER: Beta, Minidisk, that bizarre DAT format they tried and memory stick have been dismal failures (unless you ask the marketing department for the product). Sony's open products such as 3.5" floppy drives (they were one of the original sources), Mavica Cameras (that used floppy disks when everyone else was using early and expensive flash cards), CD ROM, 8MM Video have all been wildly successful. Consumers like stuff that works.
      • Beta. You are right, Beta was an untter failure in the consumer world. However, Sony wasn't unjustified in thinking it might work. The reason is, Beta (in the case Betacam, not Betamax) is the shit, the reference in the pro world. To this day, the standard to which everything gets compared is Betacam SP. Whenever a new format comes out, you always hear the pros talk about how it compares to Betacam. That's actually why everyone fell in lvoe with DV, because it is as good as Betacam SP (both in subjective qu
    • terrabytes of stolen material

      When someone steals, they take your stuff and you can't use it until you get it back or pay to replace it. If someone physically steals your masters, ok... it's theft. When someone makes an unauthorized copy, you still can make copies of your material. Most of the time an unauthorized copy doesn't even cause economic harm. For that to happen, the copy I make would have to be sold in a market where you are selling or give your product away to someone who would have bought.
      • Definition of steal:

        From Merriam-Webster dictionary [m-w.com]

        Main Entry: steal

        intransitive senses
        1 : to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice
        2 : to come or go secretly, unobtrusively, gradually, or unexpectedly
        3 : to steal or attempt to steal a base

        transitive senses
        1 a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully b : to take away by force or unjust means c : to take surreptitiously or without permission d :
    • It's not stealing. It's Cultural Exchange.
    • It is true that the wide-spread acceptance of mp3 compression and the internet (and technology in general) will dramatically reduce the value the product and services that record companies provide, so it makes sense that Sony would want to protect its investment in the recording industry.

      The irony is that while the value of traditional recorded music plummets music has never been so popular; there's never been a better time to be a music fan. Consumers are spending hundreds, or even thousands of dollars o
    • The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the availability of terrabytes of stolen material being circulated. Is it in Sony's best interest to implicitly support this movement through the introduction of MP3 devices that will undoubtably be used to play, and encourag further dissemination of, pirated Sony content? I don't think it's an easy question to answer, and I can understand Sony's hesitancy.

      What utter shit. Do you work for the RIAA or is there some other reason you've bought into their party

  • MiniDisc Player having to replace (Score:5, Interesting)

    by failedlogic ( 627314 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @01:53PM (#11448911)
    Dupe or not, I didn't comment last week so....

    I have a NetMD Minidisc player. I can apprecaite that Sony wants to enforce copyright, etc for its music units. As far as the box advertised 2 years ago, their OpenMG or SonicStage software was supposed to be really easy to use. So I bought a MiniDisc player. Having a RIO PMP 300 previsously, it was an improvment in capacity, quality and battery usage (it lasts much longer on a AA battery).

    Having lost my original software disc (2 years ago), I've tried upgrading to newer software (SonicStage 2.0). I've tried for 20 minutes to upload songs to it -- importing music libararies ... no go. The worst thing is, is that Real Player was the easiest sofrware to use to update the MiniDisc player. If it weren't for RP, I probably wouldn't have used it (and taken it back). RP update servers seem to be down now, so I can't get the drivers for it.

    I warn everyone who thinks of buying Sony, that they use many proprietary formats (the memory stick in cameras, etc). Sony has probably lost many sales from my peers (business and friends alike) as a result. Unless they clean up their act, I cannot recommend them, good as their products might be.

    • I can apprecaite that Sony wants to enforce copyright, etc for its music units.

      While I appreciate this, you don't have to buy a device that restricts your rights in order to protect their overbroad definition of their rights.
    • until I arrived at a local electronics store and noticed a pile of returned Sony NetMD players sitting in the discount bin. Against my better judgement, I bought one and I am still sorry for doing so.

      As a MiniDisc player, the unit was great will exceptional battery life and great sound quality. When I attempted to use the NetMD functions of the unit, the reason for so many returns became obvious, mainly to do with the absolutely atrocious software that is used to transfer MP3 or WMA files to the unit (as m
    • I bought an MD player and deck in 97 or 98. At the time it was fabulous, at least as a direct replacement of cassette tape. If Sony would have paid attention and done the right thing, MD players could have easily been ubiquitous and maybe even have stopped the iPod (sorry, a little hyperbole to keep you reading).

      Their optical disc format held 230MB way back then, even the first MP3 players had 64 and sometimes only 32MB of fixed flash. Getting nearly 4x storage on a single MD for MP3s, $5 media and -- t

  • Dupe Spin (Score:4, Funny)

    by Adrilla ( 830520 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @01:57PM (#11448936) Homepage
    Hey /. editors. Do the PR thing and tell everyone it's not a dupe, It's the 'Best Of'. The Beatles and Elvis have been getting away with it for decades. Hell, that shithole of a network G4Techtv calls it 'retro'.
  • It's so obvious. it's ridiculous!

    If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

  • But does it... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @02:26PM (#11449093) Homepage Journal
    The PS2 was the first console to run Linux "out of the box". Sony opened the PS2 a little with PS2 Linux [playstation2-linux.com], an open Linux distro that runs on PS2 HW. It was apparently a strategy by Sony to get official game developers started on something programmable, but cheaper than the dedicated HW dev system. But it's in a cage: it doesn't run on the actual HW (instead, a kind of HAL that emulates the HW on the HW itself), and the OS must boot on a firmly DRM'ed DVD. And Sony prohibits the distribution of PS2L SW (apps, drivers, etc) on discs, so a LiveCD that boots into your wicked port of NetHack could never compete with their latest NBA licensed blockbuster. Maybe now that they're opening the UMD, they'll open the Magic Gate to Linux on PS{2,3}. That could put cheap, powerful, consumer-stable grade multimedia HW (subsidized by gamers) under the control of Linux programmers, who could target a market of millions of potentially Interneted consoles. That would really steal the thunder (and developers, developers, developers, developers) from Xbox - go, Sony, go!

  • Sony has made more than one mistake (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MemoryDragon ( 544441 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @02:43PM (#11449217)
    Sony has made more than one mistake in the past. I know several people who really could afford anything who bought basically Sony only but will never buy Sony for the forseeable future.

    The reasons are various. First of all, thanks to Sony Media lots of their stuff is crippled, Region Codes which are hardest to remove from any manufacturer, no decent two way transport of media files in almost any of their devices. The obscure Atrac conversion in their MP3 players, lousy quality of their PCs and add to that at least here in Europe one of the worst customer services ever in existence, combined with repair costs which are higher than a new device from another company, and you can see why Sony has a bigger problem than they admit on their hands.

    Also add to that that their retailers are totally frustrated because, they were taken away the support business (which was done in the past by the retailers themselves in many cases) and the profit margins even of the high end devices are close to zero, driving the smaller shops away from Sony.

    The Support problem started when Sony centralized all support, before Sony had this kind of luxury structure Apple still has with small shops who do all the small stuff and have good personal, Sony wanted it big and basically drove those shops away trying to cash in on a centralized structure. Add to that constant problems caused by Sony media which resulted in catastrophicly castrated devices and lots of problems which often caused Sony hardware to fail shortly after the warranty expired and you have a huge mess on its hand.

    The playstation basically saved the Sony hardware division without it this division would have made huge losses already. Sony really has a problem, but it is far bigger than only a few mp3 player models which they have missed out.
    • "The playstation basically saved the Sony hardware division"

      Except for the fact that all first gen PS2's had laser trouble. My son-in-laws(both) have had to return theirs four times each.

      Sony R&D is fantastic, but the companies excecution is shoddy. If they just liscensed their ideas to someone who built quality hardware, they might make a larger bundle.

  • For fun and profit. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @02:59PM (#11449333) Homepage Journal
    With Sony PC and AV sales slumping, and their movies selling more than ever, with their music failing less badly than much of their (sparse) competition, Sony will surely move towards free/cheap HW, subsidized by draconian DRM on their media products. They might be opening some of their HW and formats, but only to universalize their platforms, so more of their media can be controlled.
  • Now let's see if they learn from it.
  • Some of Sony's stylish computers do look very nice, but then they should be as they are now more expensive than similar equipment produced by Apple (just compare the prices of their laptops and slimline monitor solutions and you will see what I mean). This says a lot about Sony's computers at the moment, yes they look nice, but they are still PCs after all, and Dell can produce something similar at a lower cost. Apple's computers not only look good, but actually work better by not using Windows. Sony hav
    • Or even "maybe they should have concentrated on PlayStation.
      Their biggest mistake in the last couple of months was not having sufficient stocks of PS2 (either the old, large one or the new, maybe melting, slimline one) in time for Christmas, so that they could not be bought anywhere in UK for weeks. Not a good business decision.

      Anyway, do they want to emulate mid-1990s Apple (the "beleagured" one during the Amelio days), when they had too many product lines for their own good; each different PowerMac mo

  • Sony also owns music, y'know... (Score:3, Informative)

    by AnriL ( 657435 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @03:04PM (#11449374)
    This is completely expectable - every time Sony electronics produces a gadget which plays a non-DRM music format (MP3 etc), someone in Sony Music starts screaming bloody murder. I know I saw a specific reference to this in an interview some time ago but it's lost to me now.

    However, Sony has been producing MP3 players (walkman brand CD portables and also car stereos) for a number of years now - it's just that they are marketing them primarily as "ATRAC Walkman" which also happens to play MP3 as a side feature. The bundled crappy software produces ATRAC discs which suck large asteroids through thin straws (it has no ID3 for starters) and has no support for MP3 whatsoever. However, feed the discman with an MP3 data disc and it will play happily. The in-car stereo I have (a Sony CDX-R3300) is actually marketed as an MP3 car audio player.
    • the electronics side of SONY is much bigger than the content side (movies/music/TV).
      How come the electronics side continues to listen to the content side? Why doesnt Sony Consumer Electronics tell Sony Music and Sony Pictures to go jump?

      Thats a question I could ask about the tech industry in general, how come the consumer electronics industry, computer industry etc (well excluding those like Microshaft who seem to be benifiting from Big Media) dont fight back with their superior size.
      Why havent the tech co
  • I wish that would mean there wouldn't be regional lockouts on the Playstation 3. But I doubt it.
  • I would have bought a NetMD player without hesitation if it had played MP3s and if one could transfer files without reencoding. Even if Ipods had been as cheap.

    So is Sony giving up on MD? Or am I finally going to get my MP3 MD player? (Make it with a screen the size of current HD Mp3 players, or Rio's MP3 CD players, and I'll buy two.)
  • That must be a record.

    You know it's nice to have so many links in a story to provide context and background but it gets a little tough to figure out which link is the key one the story is about.

    Maybe we should make it a practice that when you put a lot of links in a story you make the key link boldfaced.

  • Prerecorded UMDs are dead on arrival (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cybpunks3 ( 612218 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @11:38PM (#11452838)
    Opening up UMD has no value other than allowing PCs to write to UMD-Rs or UMD-RWs for their PSPs. Nobody is going to be interested in a 1.8GB format like this when DVD writers have just gone dual-layer (8.5GB) and blu-ray is around the corner.

    It's just another oddball optical format. If they start selling movies in this format it's not going to take off. How many people are going to want to buy movies in two formats just so they can play them on their PSP? They are going to just want to rip their DVDs to DIVX and burn UMDs for their PSP.

    In fact, they now have these "Mini-DVDs" with kids movies coming out for miniature portable DVD players like the Cyberhome CH-MDP2500.

    The world does not need any more optical formats for prerecorded movies (or music for that matter).

  • Notice how Sony's latest digital cameras, starting with the F828, have both MemoryStick and CompactFlash slots that can even harbor microdrives.

    In the same product line, now the RAW files are more accessible.

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