Optik1
Power Member
Uma longa, mas extremamente interessante reportagem, que nos fala da história da Sony, e faz uma analise do presente/passado da empresa.
Nada de surpreendente ou novo, apenas um resumo do que já muito se tem falado por ai...
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/sony.html
Highlights:
Será que a PS3 / blu-ray vai salvar a Sony do iminente colapso?
Nada de surpreendente ou novo, apenas um resumo do que já muito se tem falado por ai...
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/sony.html
Highlights:
Last October, a security researcher reported on his blog that CDs from Sony BMG – the music label half-owned by Sony – contained antipiracy software that covertly embedded itself in computer operating systems, spying on their owners and leaving the machines themselves vulnerable to identity theft and zombie takeover attempts. Sony BMG pooh-poohed the problem and released a software fix that made it even worse. Millions of CDs had to be recalled. As class actions multiplied and even the Department of Homeland Security warned music labels against undermining computer security, angry consumers declared themselves ready to boycott anything with the Sony name on it.
Only once in the past five years has Sony's all-important electronics division posted a profit; during that same period, the company's share price has fallen by nearly half. Its hit products of the '90s – Handycams, WEGA TVs, VAIO computers – were succeeded by stillborn wonders like the AirBoard, a $1,000 videoscreen that could be carried around like a laptop, and the Net MD Walkman, a too-little-too-late attempt to challenge Apple's iPod.
In recent decades, though, it's become oddly fixated on imposing its own standards – Betamax for VCRs, the Mini-Disc for digital music players, the Universal Media Disc for PlayStation Portable, the Memory Stick for anything you can think of – despite the world's unwavering rejection of those standards.
The culture of the lone-wolf hardware engineer reached its apex when Ken Kutaragi triumphed over internal opposition to create the PlayStation. In the early '90s, Kutaragi burst forth with a seemingly reckless scheme to take on Nintendo and Sega, the ruling powers of the game world. Yet even then he viewed Microsoft as the ultimate enemy. Shuji Utsumi, a former PlayStation exec who now heads the Tokyo-based game developer Q Entertainment, recalls an exchange in which Kutaragi declared, years before the Xbox was introduced, that his competitor was Microsoft. "I thought, what is he talking about?" Utsumi says. "Is he nuts? But even before PlayStation was born, he was predicting a big war for the living room."
Blu-ray is equally fraught. For starters, the whole business of high-definition disc drives seems designed to invite cynicism. With DVD players now in 85 percent of US homes, sales fell in 2005 for the first time – so some manufacturers may need a next-gen disc player, but it's not clear consumers do. Especially after August 2005, when talks aimed at averting a standards war with Toshiba's rival HD-DVD format ended in a stalemate. Andy Parsons, who heads advanced product development at Pioneer USA (a Blu-ray supporter), says compromise was impossible: "It's kind of like saying, 'LCD and plasma – why don't you combine the two?'" True enough – but it's also true that Blu-ray offers Sony yet another chance to establish a proprietary format. During the '90s, a similar conflict over the original DVD ended with Sony's surrender and Toshiba's collection of most of the royalties on every DVD and DVD player sold. This time, Sony had the support of the big US computermakers, most of Hollywood, and nearly all the Asian consumer electronics giants – so why not call Toshiba's bluff?
Then there was the decision to build Blu-ray into the PlayStation 3. Sony's logic seemed ironclad: Not only would the hi-def drive's huge storage capacity allow for far-more-realistic and complex games, the PS3 would carry Blu-ray into millions of households and drive sales of HDTVs as well. As it turned out, however, Blu-ray has done nothing good for the PS3. Blu-ray was the main reason gamers weren't able to get the new machine last spring: The launch had to be postponed because the new format's digital rights management system did not yet satisfy every Hollywood studio. Blu-ray was also a big factor in the PS3's high price tag. Of course, with stand-alone Blu-ray players starting at $1,000, the PS3 is actually a bargain – if a Blu-ray player is what you really want. If not, $600 is a lot of money. "For rich, older people it's attractive," Utsumi observes. "But I don't know if they are gameplayers."
Like the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 will get a hi-def disc drive, but it won't be built in, and it won't be Blu-ray. Last September, Microsoft and Intel announced they were throwing their weight behind Toshiba's HD-DVD, a move that prompted several companies from the Blu-ray camp to hedge their bet by accommodating both standards. Amir Majidimehr, Microsoft's point man on the decision, cites several reasons for siding with Toshiba, chief among them Blu-ray's move – largely at the behest of some copyright cops at Fox – to supplement the already draconian DRM mechanism adopted by both camps with yet another layer of protection. "We worry that this program could be hacked to do bad things," Majidimehr says, alluding to last year's Sony BMG fiasco. Blu-ray partisans say that's impossible – but in any case, Majidimehr argues, "if one or the other of these layers decides it doesn't like what you're doing, it won't let you play the movie." Was the competition with Sony a factor, too? "Of course," he says. "But our strategy is, people want to play games, so we build a game console. Sony is like, all or nothing. They're going to have a world of hurt waiting for them at the end of this year."
It was hardly an unexpected question, and Stringer answered as best he could. Citing runaway ticket sales for Sony Pictures' The Da Vinci Code and the remarkable success of the Bravia digital TV line, he argued that Sony has entered a period of reemergence. But The Da Vinci Code will have no more lasting effect on the bottom line than earlier Sony blockbusters like Spider-Man, and Bravia relies on LCD technology that Sony ignored for years – until finally it had to partner with its Korean archrival Samsung to get back in the TV business. So while each was good news, they don't add up to a sign that mighty Sony is back.
Stringer's new mantra is "Sony United." It's meant to get the company to perform in the digital world, to shed its antiquated ways and embrace network thinking. Most of all, though, it's meant to get Sony to perform as a single unit. Blu-ray is the first product to get the full treatment, not just from PlayStation but from the film and music divisions as well. This will be the test of the theory that was used to justify the billions Sony spent to get into the entertainment business in the '80s – that Sony could have won the Betamax-VHS war if only it had had enough "content."
All this makes you wonder if united is the way to go. In 30 years, Sony has transformed itself from a consistently profitable consumer electronics company with annual sales of $1.6 billion to a dangerously wobbly consumer electronics-entertainment-financial services behemoth 40 times that size. Sony Electronics needs to embrace the networked world, obviously, but does it really need to be allied with a Hollywood film studio and a consumer-wary global music label in a global campaign against Microsoft? Probably not. It just needs to make cool products for the century we live in.
That shareholder in Tokyo had the right idea: Bring back mighty Sony. Please. That doesn't mean gargantuan Sony or megalomaniac Sony or rule-the-universe Sony; it means a Sony that's fun again. And for God's sake, no more wars in the living room – not unless they're the kind we can play with our friends.
Será que a PS3 / blu-ray vai salvar a Sony do iminente colapso?
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