Sony starting to look like Sega |
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Anybody remember the Sega CD? Or how about the Sega 32X? The Dreamcast held much more promise but it tanked too. Eventually Sega gave up on gaming hardware and decided to focus strictly on games.
Sony is starting to run out of the number of flop hardware projects they can release and maintain customer confidence. Reports are that they are having trouble defining the PSP which is sad because the PSP is a beautifully designed device. For a portable gaming machine I think it’s the best design I’ve seen to date, but it has an identity crisis and is hopelessly lost fighting the DRM game. If Sony had only embraced the homebrew crowd as I wrote here well over a year ago, they’d have much less of an identity problem with this device:
I would offer that it’s better to have people interested in what you are doing than not at all. And if they are interested enough to build hacks and mods and to post on the internet about it, you should find a way as a company to connect and embrace the fans instead of shun them.
Then you have hardware like the LocationFree competing against the Slingbox. The idea is great, placeshifting TV and DVD content to the PSP and I seriously considered buying one. The problem? Too expensive. Pricing remains Sony’s major weakness. Almost everything they do these days is too expensive. And this sentiment is coming from somebody who spends over $500 a month on gadgets, games and movies at Best Buy alone. Sad. The PS3 drew long sighs and boos at E3 for its pricing. Worse yet, instead of acknowledging this, they seem to be taking an arrogant path. Stupid.
RealTechNews lists five reasons they think the new Sony Mylo device will fail and #1 is “too expensive.” Gotta love one of the comments from Eric N there: “Say hi to the Gizmodo.”
And then there’s Blu-Ray. Still much too early to call this a failure but nearly everything I’ve read about Blu-Ray has been negative from the format itself to, again, the pricing. Best Buy has a Blu-Ray player selling for $999. I’m not interested. I’m barely interested in HD-DVD which is half the price. Most likely I’ll finally be dipping the toe in water when the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive is released. By then there should be a decent number of HD-DVD titles out too. As of this writing, it’s less than 100. Blu-Ray has even less, I believe (someone in the know feel free to correct me below).
We bought a laptop for our son last week. We went with Gateway. I saw a really nice looking laptop beside it and then stopped when I saw the brand. I hesitate whenever the word Sony is on anything these days. It’s a bad taste from their rootkit debacle and the fact that they don’t seem to be the best value or hold good longevity any more.
Technology gadgets already have a short life span and Sony seems — although it might not be a fact — to have less longevity.
Sony isn’t Sega yet but they had better turn things around in a hurry. One way to start would be to emerge as the first big media company who abandons using any DRM. They need some dramatic move like this to turn heads and start restoring customer confidence. I’m not sure the PS3, which might be the last Sony device I’ll buy for a long time, will be enough.
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That’s a very good observation. I was actually having some conversations about Sony since I’m a huge avid fan of the PSP/PS/PS2, but the one thing Sony has wrong is the whole pricing scheme. Great ideas, terrible prices. If you look at the UMDs, you figure that people would snap those up at $5-$10 a pop pretty willingly. PSP greatest hits games should go for $15, not $20. If I have a choice between $20 for PS2 greatest hits, and PSP, guess which one I’ll choose.
And the whole PS3 price is terrible. They never would have done that if XBOX360 didn’t come out with the $400 pricetag and people jumped on it. Sony execs were like… hey, they’ll pay like $200 more for ours then! Uhh no. I’m even hesitant at shelling out $400 since I can get a computer for that price. For $600, I’ll go get that cheapo Dual Core off Akihibara.
Comment by darkmoon — August 10, 2006 @ 10:53 am PST
Interesting you mention getting a computer for $400, darkmoon. The Gateway laptop we bought mentioned in the post above this week was under $500 and came with Media Center 2005, 80 GB hard drive, CD/DVD burner, built-in WiFI and 512MB RAM. Who is going to pay $350+ for Mylo, when for another $100 they can get a full fledged laptop? Dudes in the Sony pricing department need a serious reality check.
Comment by TDavid — August 10, 2006 @ 11:03 am PST
That’s the thing though. It wasn’t going to be outrageous I don’t think until they saw the success of XBOX’s price hike. I suppose they figured: if people are willing to go that far from the original $299 thoughts, then why not $599. Stupid. I’ll still get a PS3, but I’ll wait for the price to drop. Sony’s games have always been more based in the Japanese crowd, not so American. Game base is more RPG. XBOX has always been more FPS/Sports. I still don’t see that changing at all from Microsoft’s perspective, which is why they fail miserably in Japan.
It’s actually rather funny that it’s such a simple observation, but no one at MS seems to realize that’s the point if they want to capture the Japanese market at all.
It’s also the reason why Square-Enix remains one of the heavy hitters for PS3.
Comment by darkmoon — August 10, 2006 @ 11:19 am PST
Sony needs to drop DRM if they want the tech crowd to love them again. Otherwise they are just another manufacturer who will we distrust. The problem with Sony is that they have become a media company committed to locking up the music at the expense of their hardware division.
Comment by Marc Lampard — August 10, 2006 @ 3:04 pm PST
I personally don’t think dropping DRM will do anything. Price beats all. Just look at Apple. Regardless of anti-DRM advocates, Apple still does well due to a low price point. Sony can DRM all they want, but if they do, they have to play the low pricepoint game for the media if they want people to purchase more expensive hardware.
If the PS3 is $600, then fine. I’ll pay for it. But I better be getting the games for $10 a pop at the most. I personally don’t think it’s even worth the $60 for most games currently. I remember when I’d save a whole year to get somewhere around that when I was a kid if I was lucky. Sony will blister and die if they get a reality check soon.
Comment by darkmoon — August 10, 2006 @ 3:58 pm PST
$10 for games? Rumors are $100 or more for some PS3 titles. It’s like Neo-Geo all over again.
Yes, price is the #1 concern, but since Sony already claims to be running out the hardware at a loss, we probably won’t get the price drop until the hype for PS4 is on. The best time to buy gaming hardware from a pennywise and games standpoint is at the end of its lifecycle which means Sony is targeting the early adopters with its initial launch. Early adopters do care about DRM.
My thinking is if they are going to have it be more expensive than they better make it have as many desirable features as possible and not shackling it with another proprietary DRM would be a positive feature.
Comment by TDavid — August 10, 2006 @ 4:43 pm PST
The other side of this is the PS3 needs to take on Xbox Live and their established micropayment and broadband gaming strategy. Japan aside, which you made excellent points on the RPG darkmoon, Xbox could prove to be a very formidable opponent for Sony. Microsoft can keep Xbox Live Wednesdays for retro titles going for years with the massive amount of quality retro titles and people still love the classics enough to pay for them (despite MAME).
Again, Sony’s arrogance got them in trouble with online connectivity. They will pay the price by playing catchup on the live front.
Comment by TDavid — August 10, 2006 @ 4:47 pm PST
After reading your blog, I’m not certain you understand the main reason why Sega failed as a console maker. Sega attempted to segment the video game market with the Sega CD, 32X, 32X CD and the Saturn. Sega’s 32X debacle was the beginning of the end for Sega. They abandoned their so-called next generation 32X system as soon as they introduced the Saturn. Sega had no respect for gamers and tried to get every penny from loyalist as they could.
While popular press these days will also say Sony has no respect for gamers, I think it is too soon to say so. The PSP is a great piece of hardware, as you admit. And it is far from a failure some wish it to be. UMD movies have failed — for predicable reasons, IE pricing– but the PSP lives up to it’s main purpose as a gaming device. I don’t see how DRM is terribly relevant to the ultimate success or failure of the PSP. And at $200 the PSP is reasonably priced for what it does.
I believe 20%-30% of current PSP owners can be classified as hardcore gamers, but I believe only 5% may be interested in home-brew. The press seem to think home-brew may be crucial for the PSP success and sees Sony’s efforts to prevent it draconian, I, however, think home-brew is of negligible importance.
$600 is too much to pay for a game system. But if you don’t care about HDMI, the base model is only $100 more than the premium Xbox 360 with a built in Bluray player. But depending how these console wars play out, I may end up buying American (hello Microsoft).
Sony does worry me. But depending on the adoption of HDTV sets in the next 2 years, their expensive gamble may pay off. If Sony does fail in the console market, it will be for vastly different reasons than Sega’s failure.
Comment by Zmonde — August 13, 2006 @ 4:10 am PST
[…] There are a lot of articles out there that are talking about Sony, their upcoming PS3, etc. The general theme is that they’re on their way to becoming the next Sega… It definitely seems as if they’re having issues balancing their hardware with their software (particularly in music). I think some of their MP3 players are amazingly designed, but why would I want one that only plays their format (to their credit, they play other file formats now, but you still need their software to transfer them). Not allowing UMS is fine, but at least go with MTP. […]
Pingback by Yuumoushin.com (勇猛心) » Does Sony have an identity problem? — August 13, 2006 @ 4:34 am PST
Interesting that someone says Sony is in trouble when for the quarter ending June 30, 2006 it reported a profit of $279.4 million.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6154726.html
The complaint about the ps3 pricing seems strange as well, especially when it’s said, “Most likely I’ll finally be dipping the toe in water when the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive is released.” Add the cost of that and the $100 wifi for the 360 and I bet both sku’s will cost a little more than the ps3. Oh and another thing, what happens when content holders decide to use the ICT(Image Contstraint Token), looks like you’ll have to buy an additional hdmi cable for the 360, if they ever make it, unless you like hd playback at less than hd image quality.
As far as the drm issue goes, may I entreat as to what solution you have prevent rampant piracy of content in Malaysia and China where the currency is so much weaker than ours that they can’t afford the movies you or I can? The normal price for movies here might be the equivalent of a months or more of wages there. I personally hope Sony wins in stopping hi-def content redistribution through illicit channels. Note I said hi-def, if somehow pirates can only get standard-def from blu-ray discs then I think Sony will be victorious.
I think the mylo will fail. But hopefully they’ll get a little revisionist and release a psp with 1GB of flash built in.
I predict that ps3 will come out on top, 360 in 2nd, and the wii in 3rd by 2008. To me the ps3 has the greatest span of gaming categories. If you want anywhere from kiddie games to mature games developed by western to eastern developers, there’s the ps3. If you want anywhere from kiddie games to mature games developed by mostly western developers, there’s the xbox360. I know they’re trying in Japan, but I don’t expect them to gain any ground anytime soon there. If you want anywhere from kiddie to teen rated games developed by mostly eastern developers there’s the wii.
This is off topic, but I really wonder if nintendo will survive the generation after next. Non-gamers might be a big market now. What will be the appeal to non-gamers of the next new generation console from Nintendo when they already have enough tech for the simple mini-games, simple puzzles, like sudoku, and musical simulators that they love. One thing I gotta say about efficianados of mature-themed gaming, they always seem willing to go for the subsequent next-generation tech when it’s ready. I guess Nintendo will have to release a new peripheral to maintain interest.
Comment by Xavier — August 13, 2006 @ 12:26 pm PST
Xavier - admittedly, I haven’t followed Sony’s financial picture as closely as I’ve followed their other activities, but this morning I saw Sony shares slide on ratings cut:
They are also taking it up the rear on the battery recalls for Dell and Apple.
Comment by TDavid — August 24, 2006 @ 1:33 pm PST
[…] Seems like Sony is backtracking on the PS3 pricing now — at least in Japan — due to many consumer complaints. The Wii has been looking more and more like the sweetheart deal. This price decrease will probably push Sony over the one billion dollar loss mark, as they reported earlier projections that they would lose $900 million. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Sony lowers PS3 price in Japan, will lose over a billion dollars on launch, may still be #1 — September 22, 2006 @ 12:07 pm PST
[…] Also, I found it interesting that Au pointed to the possibility that there might be no PS4 and that Sony could go the way of Sega, a comparison I suggested back in August and was quickly flamed by Sony fanboys. The blind Sony loyalists claim how great the PS brand is and how easy it is going to keep the #1 slot on the console gaming front, but this time around things are a lot different. […]
Pingback by Playstation head Ken Kutaragi replaced » Make You Go Hmm — December 3, 2006 @ 1:18 pm PST
i dont thinks sony is making a big mistake…seriously blu ray is the next gen of everything(games,movie,software)the cd is bigger than some hard dirve….applause to sony to create ie
Comment by erp — March 30, 2008 @ 12:16 pm PST