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

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

"free Ken up to do the vision thing"

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

Re:

[ageitgey]

If it's a manpower issue, they could always hire this guy [mac.com] who looks like he is well qualified for that, skill wise.

Re:

[king-manic]

Under Steve Jobs:

1 - Everyone in the music dept will now be shuffled into janitorial services. a new sony online stores opens to great success.
2- PS4 will look fabulous, perform slightly slower then the next Xbox but will excel at 1 or 2 game genres so much we'll forgive him. It will also be $1900 and somehow we will buy it anyways.
3- The PSP2 will suddenly be the most popular consumer product ever. It will actually be a repackaged DS but with a better shell. Analysts will be stunned.
4- Oddly most fo slashd

Re:

[ProppaT]

I'm glad you got modded insightful instead of funny. It's the blatent truth of the issue. Ken is a crazy, crazy man with little to no business since. Sony is running off the steam of their name at this point. Hopefully the up in commers in the corporation will have a little more sense or there's going to be little cash to run off of in the future. As it sits now, SCE is the company's only real profit (other divisions are taking losses).

Frankly, after my run of faulty Sony products (tally of broken sony

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ken is a crazy, crazy man with little to no business [sense]."

"As it sits now, SCE is the company's only real profit (other divisions are taking losses)"

for a crazy man with no vision and no business sense, you have to credit him with steering the boat that upset the mighty nintendo. created the first console to ever sell 100 million units and followed it up with a second console that sold even more. it took vision to convince sony to enter the games business. it took business sense to secure key titles an

Re:

[thatguywhoiam]

Frankly, after my run of faulty Sony products (tally of broken sony equipment: 1 psx, 2 ps2's, 2 discmen, 1 dvd player)

So you're the one who bought the PSX! Neat!

they lost a potential PS3 customer until they prove to me that the hardware is solid

Just out of curiosity, how are you ever going to find out if you've decided not to buy Sony stuff?

Re:

[xantho]

Especially since that guy cut his ears off and gouged out his eyes. He'll never be able to find out now. Except maybe by braille articles in Newsweek.

Shuffling and shuffling

[asb]

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

From TFA

[tttonyyy]

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.

Re:

[antifoidulus]

Is it wrong to be turned on by that last sentence?

Re:

[tttonyyy]

Is it wrong to be turned on by that last sentence?

Yes, keep your tentacle extrapolation to yourself. ;)

It's...

[CaseM]

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

Re:

[Thraxen]

It's only restructuring if the actual 'structure' changed. Say, for example, R&D and QA were two different departments, but then it was decided that R&D should be a sub-division of QA and thus the top QA execs are now in charge of R&D. Also, creating entirely new positions or departments could also be considering restructuring.

I don't know if any of that happened here, but from what I've read it just sounds like swapped some people aroundin existing positions... thus that would be 'reshuffling

Nothing concrete really...

[Chordonblue]

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 stup

Re:

[ClamIAm]

No discussion as to how to get themselves out of the hole

What hole? Do you mean...

They've managed to alienate all but the most rabid fans with their stupid and uncoordinated moves.

Um, right. I think what you mean is "they've alienated all the video game and computer nerds who aren't rabid fans". The general electronics-buying person doesn't even know about the rootkit fiasco, much less understand its gravity. In fact, they generally like Sony [slashdot.org].

Re:

[Chordonblue]

Even non-gamers were alerted to problems with their MP3 players, exploding batteries and rootkit-based copy protection schemes. As the technical people generally advise the non-technical it's usually not a good idea to anger that base.

There is every indication that Sony is hurting financially from all of this, not to mention increased competition from China and Korea in their electronics department.

Re:

[ClamIAm]

There is every indication that Sony is hurting financially from [PR problems]

Care to cite some respected analysis that agrees with this?

Re:

[Chordonblue]

Not really necessary... No. :)

Re:

[ClamIAm]

In other words, you got nuthin?

Re:

[Chordonblue]

I guess feelings aren't worth much these days... Yeah.. Nothin' :)

Big ships turn slowly

[PingSpike]

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:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an AC, so this probably isn't goint to get read, but why does everyone think BluRay is a proprietary sony format? It was created by a consortium of many different companies. Granted sony has the lions share in the Blu-Ray consortium, but it is by no means controlled exclusively by sony.

The fact that it is created and controlled by a consortium is no different than HD-DVD or DVD or CD.

Betamax was proprietary. It was created by sony, hardware was exclusively produced by sony. Sony had complete control ove

Re:Big ships turn slowly

[djupedal]

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

[thatguywhoiam]

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

[testudorex]

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...

[nsmike]

Getting dizzy from that spin...

All Stringer's fault

[gamer4Life]

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 politica