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It seems that Sony in recent years has built up a reputation of not being very nice nor very bright, even by corporate standards, with them spectacularly shooting themselves in their collective foots over copyright protection, not really caring about the consumers, and lacking common business sense.

They alienated the gaming community by shutting down the somewhat dubious (yet hugely popular) Lik-Sang business, they pissed millions of loyal consumers off with their defective rootkit programs on CDs or DVDs (screwing over people into downloading music anyway), pulled off marketing blunders too numerous to list here (pissing off the Church of England in one case), kinda of ruined the PS3 by using it to pimp their BluRay gimmick (the tallest dwarf in comparison to HD-DVD), the PSP is pretty so-so as a portable games console, and then they are too miserly to publish classic TV shows on DVD (another way of encouraging the very piracy they're clumsily clamping down on).

What happened? Was their blinding success in the 80s, 90s and early 00s made them overweeningly arrogant? The company got too big to manage properly, with too many branches and subsidiaries competing against each other without strong leadership pulling them back and giving them a coherent game plan?

Welcome to two years ago?

Japanese corporate culture worshiped hierarchy and authority such that it was incredibly unwieldy. Even over at Nissan, Ghosn encountered a lot of resistance within the Japanese management and took a while to win over most of them.

All very typical Asian, if you ask me. Part of the problem with consoles, I guess, is that their target market was the Japanese, and the West was just a cash cow to milk.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote: All very typical Asian, if you ask me. Part of the problem with consoles, I guess, is that their target market was the Japanese, and the West was just a cash cow to milk.

The problem now is that the Western market has become larger than the Japanese, and being a success in Japan alone is no guarantee of recouping expenses.

kinda of ruined the PS3 by using it to pimp their BluRay gimmick (the tallest dwarf in comparison to HD-DVD),

I don't think it's a gimmick - I've got over 20 Blu-Rays, on a full HD tv the difference between a Blu-Ray and a DVD is so freaking obvious it's not funny. DVDs almost look like turd by comparison.

Of course, Blu-Ray discs are expensive, which is why all the blu-rays I've got I got on sale (i.e. 2 for $50.00 and 3 for the price of two sales, which roughly works out to $25.00 per blu-ray, pretty good considering what you're getting).

What classic tv shows are you talking about though? I didn't know Sony controlled any.

As for pissing off the Church of England, are you talking about the church level in Resistance? Sorry, that's just retarded. Fuck the CoE, that's not Sony being idiotic, that's the church being their typical idiot selves.

Big Orange wrote: kinda of ruined the PS3 by using it to pimp their BluRay gimmick (the tallest dwarf in comparison to HD-DVD),

Yeah I really can't agree here. The PS3 is an awesome machine with minimal anal rape going on. Excellent build quality, excellent blu-ray player, support for standard off the shelf accessories like laptop harddrives, regular bluetooth headsets, regular usb charging cables, linux support, built in wifi, free online play, free themes and wallpapers, great upscaling for DVDs and PS2 games, PSP streaming functionality. Sony most definitely changed their usually consumer-hostile philosophy for the PS3.

Vympel wrote:What classic tv shows are you talking about though? I didn't know Sony controlled any.

I think BO is referring to Sony's decision last year to cancel potential plans of releasing the NBC show Dark Skies--which was pretty much "The X-Files, The Previous Generation" and only ran for one season in 1996--on DVD, concluding that music licensing costs would be prohibitively expensive compared to return profits.

That's the only "classic" show I'm aware of that Sony controls, didn't release, and BO would be pissed about.

The PS3 is beginning to outsell the Xbox 360 in most the other markets other than America (though that's like saying I'm outselling North Korea in ballistic missiles in the European market).

There's no way either of those systems is going to catch up to the Wii, though.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:The problem now is that the Western market has become larger than the Japanese, and being a success in Japan alone is no guarantee of recouping expenses.

Of course, but the Japanese are slow to react, particularly the older ones.

Corporate culture evolution in Japan is a slow crawl, to say nothing of their agility. Only a few companies strike me as agile, like Honda and Toyota. Sony on the other hand, has proven to be a sloth, and ceded a number of market top positions to upstarts like Samsung.

I was talking specifically about the video game industry, though its true the in all areas of business Japan is not big on "new ideas".

DPDarkPrimus wrote:I was talking specifically about the video game industry, though its true the in all areas of business Japan is not big on "new ideas".

Well, Sony is a big player in the video game industry, and all its business decisions stem from how it operates.

Pelranius wrote:The PS3 is beginning to outsell the Xbox 360 in most the other markets other than America (though that's like saying I'm outselling North Korea in ballistic missiles in the European market).

There's no way either of those systems is going to catch up to the Wii, though.

No actually Sony has sold more PS3 in the US in 2008 than MS has sold 360s. But it's kind of useless anyway, as they're fighting for the second place.

Stargate Nerd wrote:

Pelranius wrote:The PS3 is beginning to outsell the Xbox 360 in most the other markets other than America (though that's like saying I'm outselling North Korea in ballistic missiles in the European market).

There's no way either of those systems is going to catch up to the Wii, though.

No actually Sony has sold more PS3 in the US in 2008 than MS has sold 360s. But it's kind of useless anyway, as they're fighting for the second place.

Care to back up that statement? Last I checked, there were more 360's sold in the US than PS3's, and at best PS3 has only beaten a few recent per-month sales, while still lagging far behind on total sales.

I believe he means that the number of PS3s sold this year is greater to the number of 360s sold this year.

I don't know if that's accurate, but the PS3 did outsell the 360 in June and July.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Even over at Nissan, Ghosn encountered a lot of resistance within the Japanese management and took a while to win over most of them.

Sure, he saved the company, but did so by making it essentially Renault Japan.

Stargate Nerd wrote:No actually Sony has sold more PS3 in the US in 2008 than MS has sold 360s. But it's kind of useless anyway, as they're fighting for the second place.

That's hardly surprising as the 360 has much more market penetration (well over twice the installed base in the US) and is now on the high side of the takeup curve. At this point I doubt the PS3 is ever going to sell as many units as the 360 in the US. I expect it will eventually overtake the 360 in global lifetime sales, solely by virtue of Microsoft releasing a successor console fairly soon while Sony try to drag out the PS3 lifetime as long as possible.

The amusing part is that the Xbox360 has almost as many games sold as the Wii, except the Wii games are mostly first party.

tim31 wrote:Sure, he saved the company, but did so by making it essentially Renault Japan.

If the alternative was letting Nissan go tits up (which almost certainly would have happened with out Ghosn's intervention and Renault's money), then I'm not seeing the problem. It's not like Renault imposed it's engineering on Nissan or ruined their "cool" cars.

Xon wrote:The amusing part is that the Xbox360 has almost as many games sold as the Wii, except the Wii games are mostly first party.

From what I've gathered in a Neogaf.com thread the Wii has actually sold as many third party games as the 360 has sold first and third party combined. If you add the Wii first party games the difference is very big.

Hotfoot wrote:Care to back up that statement? Last I checked, there were more 360's sold in the US than PS3's, and at best PS3 has only beaten a few recent per-month sales, while still lagging far behind on total sales.

No not lifetime sales just 2008 sales.

Starglider wrote:
That's hardly surprising as the 360 has much more market penetration (well over twice the installed base in the US) and is now on the high side of the takeup curve. At this point I doubt the PS3 is ever going to sell as many units as the 360 in the US. I expect it will eventually overtake the 360 in global lifetime sales, solely by virtue of Microsoft releasing a successor console fairly soon while Sony try to drag out the PS3 lifetime as long as possible.

Yes overtaking the 360 in the US might be tough, but I think it's a inevitability for worldwide sales.

Stargate Nerd wrote: From what I've gathered in a Neogaf.com thread the Wii has actually sold as many third party games as the 360 has sold first and third party combined. If you add the Wii first party games the difference is very big.

Not likely.

The eight first party titles in the Wii's top ten sellers make up around half of it's total software sales. In contrast, there are only three firstparty titles in the Xbox top ten.

(The Wii has sold around 20 million more software units than the Xbox 360, or around the same if you exclude the pack in Wii Sports, as the Xbox has no pack in title)

Vympel wrote:

kinda of ruined the PS3 by using it to pimp their BluRay gimmick (the tallest dwarf in comparison to HD-DVD),

I don't think it's a gimmick - I've got over 20 Blu-Rays, on a full HD tv the difference between a Blu-Ray and a DVD is so freaking obvious it's not funny. DVDs almost look like turd by comparison.

Of course, Blu-Ray discs are expensive, which is why all the blu-rays I've got I got on sale (i.e. 2 for $50.00 and 3 for the price of two sales, which roughly works out to $25.00 per blu-ray, pretty good considering what you're getting).

I don't think the Blu-Ray is an intrinsically bad product, it won over HD-DVD, and is overall more successful than MiniDisc, but on the other hand it seems to have been sullied by it's association with the PS3 which was rushed into production, with few real exclusive games, and has been made more expensive by having the BluRay system included (which was why Sony lost a lot of ground against Microsoft and Nintendo).

As for pissing off the Church of England, are you talking about the church level in Resistance? Sorry, that's just retarded. Fuck the CoE, that's not Sony being idiotic, that's the church being their typical idiot selves.

Perhaps a bad example and religious groups are known for pitiful attention whoring (as were animal rights groups over the God of War II's lauch party), however Sony more legimately F'd up with their eyebrow raising PSP advertising posters that were seen as borderline racist. But Sony's advertising often seems vague and pretentious anyway, even if their products can be good.

Starglider wrote:

Stargate Nerd wrote:No actually Sony has sold more PS3 in the US in 2008 than MS has sold 360s. But it's kind of useless anyway, as they're fighting for the second place.

That's hardly surprising as the 360 has much more market penetration (well over twice the installed base in the US) and is now on the high side of the takeup curve. At this point I doubt the PS3 is ever going to sell as many units as the 360 in the US. I expect it will eventually overtake the 360 in global lifetime sales, solely by virtue of Microsoft releasing a successor console fairly soon while Sony try to drag out the PS3 lifetime as long as possible.

I doubt that Microsoft has plans for an Xbox 360 successor anytime soon.

Pelranius wrote:

Starglider wrote:

Stargate Nerd wrote:No actually Sony has sold more PS3 in the US in 2008 than MS has sold 360s. But it's kind of useless anyway, as they're fighting for the second place.

That's hardly surprising as the 360 has much more market penetration (well over twice the installed base in the US) and is now on the high side of the takeup curve. At this point I doubt the PS3 is ever going to sell as many units as the 360 in the US. I expect it will eventually overtake the 360 in global lifetime sales, solely by virtue of Microsoft releasing a successor console fairly soon while Sony try to drag out the PS3 lifetime as long as possible.

I doubt that Microsoft has plans for an Xbox 360 successor anytime soon.

And quite appropriately. The 360, despite the bad rap its gotten for all the bugs on early launch and plenty of complaints about having to pay for Xbox Live (which really isn't that expensive, anyway), works well, has plenty of games, and is second only to the PS3 in graphical capability, while having a superior controller. Now that recent versions have ironed out the problems, especially the Red Ring of Death that currently occurs once in each console, though rarely more than once, it's a system that is not only built to last, but it's a system that's cheaper to buy than the PS3 in a time of recession. I think that in the end, only the Wii and maybe the PS2 will last longer than the Xbox 360.

And if they do release a new console soonish, they'll have to deal with a PS3 with a continuously decreasing price while they're saddled with an expensive console that's still searching for mature stable of games. Not a good idea.

Looks like the PS3 is outselling the X360, and more so if the price drops again (which is probable), though the X360 beat it in Japan this month (though a fluke from the release of a RPG, IIRC).

Big Orange wrote: but on the other hand it seems to have been sullied by it's association with the PS3 which was rushed into production, with few real exclusive games, and has been made more expensive by having the BluRay system included (which was why Sony lost a lot of ground against Microsoft and Nintendo).

I don't quite see how the PS3 was rushed into production. Yes MS forced Sony's hand to release their next gen console earlier but the PS3 had excellent build quality when released, something neither the 360 or the Wii could claim when they launched.

As for the exclusives, Sony's has the biggest line up of 1st and 2nd party games in the industry, and still gets almost all 3rd party games as well so there really is no lack of games.

Pelranius wrote:
Looks like the PS3 is outselling the X360, and more so if the price drops again (which is probable), though the X360 beat it in Japan this month (though a fluke from the release of a RPG, IIRC).

The 360 is actually sold out till September in Japan.