Blogs Does Sony Still Matter?

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2009/05/31/does-sony-still-matter/

 

Actually, you're on your own there. I've never, ever seen the relevance of the Sony brand - there is always, always a quality alternative that's cheaper to buy: Samsung, Toshiba, LG, Asus, Apple, Philips, Panasonic.. the list goes on. All you have to do is search. Sony has tried on many-an-occasion to create the integrated lifestyle ecosphere that Apple *has* created, yet, it's more or less utterly failed:

Betamax flopped
The Walkman was a hit, but eventually fell into irrelevance apart from the name - the later MP3 "walkman" flopped
Mini-Disk failed
Blu-Ray is a half success at best, but only after Sony and others bought out the studios at considerable cost.
PS3 isn't that successful - especially not since the PSX/PS2, and hasn't be integrated with the PSP like they said it would
UMD movies?
OLED TVs? Very late, very over budget.

It has the occasional fantastic product: PS2 Slim, some Bravia TVs, and.. uhh.. the odd Vaio laptop, but it's hardly an endless list of world changing devices.

To me, Sony is a cluster **** compared to the consistent and measured success of the likes of Apple, or, dare I say it, Microsoft (this year is the only year their profits have dipped) for just two examples - I'd never invest.

 

Speaking personally I certainly don't have a soft spot for Sony in the same way that I do for, say Lucasarts. I don't favour any of the three console manufacturers in fact.

I do however, take issue with Sony in two other ways - as a professional and as a consumer. From a consumer point of view, I find their products often at odds with the market - poorly designed controllers that the company doesn't deviate from, a reliance on exclusive games and a brand name that really doesn't amount to much. Sony products have certainly for the last few years rarely shown me the extra quality that I as a consumer would look for in order to accept an inflated price. Instead, prices are inflated because it's Sony.

As a professional, I also take issue with Sony in that they pretty much just will not deal with us and have actually been quite rude about that. It's not professional for me to go into detail about it, so I won't, but I've certainly never had a positive experience when dealing with Sony as either a gamer, consumer or journalist - yet still I see the company talking themselves up, demanding outrageous prices and (in journalist circles) acting like lord of the manor. Sony does have some amazing products every now and then, but they mostly rely on brand these days and I see them mainly as a company built on ego and arrogance, tbh.

 

I can't think of any consumer sony products that I'd like. However, their pro/semi-pro video cameras are immense.

 

I believe Sony really started to slip when they dropped their Trinitron CRTs, be it in the form of tvs or computer monitors. Before that, Trinitron, and by extension Sony, was synonymous with the absolute best image quality in tvs and computer monitors, bar none.

Of course they needed to shift their attention away from Trinitron CRTs and the CRT technology (sadly) was on its way out, but they had apparently gotten too lazy or too set in their ways to have anything to follow that feat. They even pulled out of producing computer monitors altogether and needed Samsung to help get them back into the tv business.

But yes, Sony seems to (slowly) lose its relevance...

 

+1 to azrael, I remember seeing EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE raving about the Trintron CRTs, and it's true, Sony's been so set in it's ways that it's gotten lazy.

Although they're still kind enough to provide parts for their CRTs, XBR or not.

 

At some point or another every mammoth company seems to lose the way. It happened to IBM, Apple, Microsoft (in perception, not sales) and now Sony.

It's tough at the top afterall....

The ability to bounce back is contingent on another killer product IMO, not just good TV's

 

It did?



AFAIK IBM is still the most successful and profitable semiconductor company in the world.

 

THIS

and that also happens to be two personality traits i despise more than almost everything else.

They made even Microsoft look like the good guys in comparison in my eyes

 

But...but... I like my PStriple

Seriously though I don't have any preference, but the PS3 is a good product. It just costs too much

 

I've never had any love for Sony, but no objection either, until recently. Their behaviour in recent years has been ridiculous and I would heartily laugh if they went down the pan.

Now for what I really wanted to post:

 

I like Sony TVs, they're worth the price premium.. The interface on the new Bravias is the XMB, which is excellent.

My first PC was a Sony Vaio, my first TV was a Sony Trinitron, my first game console was a Sony Playstation, and so on. I just wish Minidisk didn't fail, it was such a promising format for music.. I still want to buy a player, some stores still sell blanks, 1GB each.

I think their Mylo was the biggest failure, who has EVER seen one outside of a store?

 

This post and the featured article are my two favourite things so far this week. Lots of truth kicking around

I wish the PS3 had been viable, but they just misunderstood the market. People, by and large, are not rich. And with the PS3 slowly rolling towards total market flop like the Dreamcast's long-lost heir, I don't think Sony will be in gaming at all in the future.

 

I seriously doubt Sony is going anywhere. One gaming flop doesn't destroy the whole company. Sega suffered NUMEROUS flops before bowing out. Nintendo had a bad run in with the Gamecube and bounced back. Microsoft stumbled out of the gate and bounced back. I think it's comical that some of you expect them to withdraw or honestly think their built on exclusives (and I guess Microsoft isn't, or Nintendo, or Sega was at the time), and arrogance (who isn't? Microsoft has been arrogant since Windows became the market leader, Nintendo was arrogant about the CR-Rom vs their cartrige). And I believe it was reported that this year (or was it last year) was the first in 14 years that Sony suffered a loss. That's pretty good run up for a company that's a cluster****. Some of these posts just seem more like a vent your personal grievance with Sony than honest to goodness views on the state of the company.

I'de say that Sony still matters. Being innovative doesn't always help a company. That's why Sega, after their early attempts at disc based gaming, suffered. As a result Nintendo backed out of their work with Sony which led to the Playstation in the first placed. They even jump started digital distribution on consoles (Sega Channel). Sega innovated the industry alot, and look where it got them.

 

Great article. I a fair few sony products, they are usually good quality and well designed. However sony have long since stopped being innovative. They are a company that seems to say me too and at twice the price.

They seem to have no idea what customers want, and don't seem willing to try to learn from mistakes.

 

That's an awesome film.

 

Sony are an odd bunch and have a weird mentality to their products. Take the PS3 (which i own) for example. It's an over engineered and arguably to high quality a product for its market. I also now believe that Sony largely saw the PS3 as a way to get blu-ray into a dominant position over HD-DVD which it has succeeded in. Look at the marketing for the PS3, its practically non-existent in the UK where the 360 is heavily advertised on TV.

 

Sony's problem is its ADHD when it comes to formats, I might love MD personally but I know it's a flop - that's all down to Sony's failure to push it properly as a portable format and tape killer when music CD-Rs were dominating in the hi-fi space. It was also too busy trying to pimp double-density CD-R/W when DVD Burners took over, Super Audio CD which it had to dual-bond with ordinary CD to make it shift, various dead camcorder formats, but it didn't get over Betamax and kept pimping it until it ruled the broadcast recording space instead as Betacam.

Which brings us neatly to Blu-Ray. Congrats to them for winning that war, the problem is they won't just relax and count the royalties like JVC did with VHS - they'll want to rush something else out that's brand new, not just a computer-based extension to BR. Looking at TVs at the moment, I am not buying a flatscreen until the digital switchoff so I would have to see which technology at the time was the winner.

Build quality wise that still holds true, depending on the item, lots of Sony equipment is more like furniture, hard-wearing and just working, if not necessarily the best picture quality and the sound from its audio equipment can be neutral and controlled and need a decent amplifier to make it come alive.

So the company has every chance of bouncing back if it changes its ways, but my loyalty's gone for good if they just keep chopping and changing formats.

 

But Oh! Sony TVs! Even my mum, who has no interest in gadgets will always look first at Sony TVs, they've had about 4 Trinitrons over the last 20 something years, and all of them have had a fantastic picture quality.
If I was going to point the finger at where Sony has gone wrong it would be their size, they always seem to screw themselves up, eg, selling minidisk recorders so you can copy CDs, whilst also being in the business of trying to sell music on CDs, doh!

 

Sorry net wobbled on me... PTO