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[DiscoJer]

Beyonce is a Sony Music Artists, Beyonce has been an icon of our generation. Beyonce is associated with Sony therefore Sony's brandname still has meaning.

I dunno. The trouble with her as a spokesperson or icon, it's that pretty much everything else in the commercial (or whatever) gets ignored. Since she draws all the attention to herself, by being, well, wow.

 

[Dedication Through Light]

I agree and disagree.

I don't see games like Motorstorm or SOCOM doing particularly well and the cost of keeping those particular studios afloat really can't be worth it for the minute rewards, from both a sales and platform standpoint.

Developers like MediaMolecule on the other hand are a very different story though as they're producing the types of games which third parties absolutely don't, games which define the platform.

I think Sony could do with cleaning up and slimming down their first party studios and with recent rumours it sounds like they're already doing that.

I think the DLC pack approach they took with the previous Motorstorm probably brought them in tons of money, or did better than you are counting them off for, at least well enough to spawn three of those packs, a PSP release and even a third Motorstorm entry, and possibly an NGP release.

Its also not like there isnt a Motorstorm fanbase...if sales are to be believed then Motorstorm is perhaps the third or fourth best selling first party software on the PS3, and possibly the series too. Motorstorm helps keep diversity in the racer market as other companies abandon (Bizarre and Blur, Disney and Split/Second, EA and Nascar) the market or produce mediocre titles (Nascar current).

 

[a176]

This could be the last nail in the coffin. I don't see how sony can recover from this. Its hard to imagine a generation without a playstation.

 

[Grampa Simpson]

This could be the last nail in the coffin. I don't see how sony can recover from this. Its hard to imagine a generation without a playstation.

15 year plan. PS4 in 2021.

 

[Degen]

I have full confidence that they'll come back. The only question is when to invest.

 

[elrechazado]

Beyonce is a Sony Music Artists, Beyonce has been an icon of our generation. Beyonce is associated with Sony therefore Sony's brandname still has meaning.

this post is amazing

 

[MalboroRed]

I agree and disagree.

I don't see games like Motorstorm or SOCOM doing particularly well and the cost of keeping those particular studios afloat really can't be worth it for the minute rewards, from both a sales and platform standpoint.

Developers like MediaMolecule on the other hand are a very different story though as they're producing the types of games which third parties absolutely don't, games which define the platform.

I think Sony could do with cleaning up and slimming down their first party studios and with recent rumours it sounds like they're already doing that.

There's no way all of Sony's studios will have a 1.000 batting average, it's a ridiculous level of expectation, it's true that both Liverpool and Zipper need to reinvent themselves with new IPs, both had successes under their belts, if you can a studio the moment their main IP starts to lose popularity you wouldn't have a single studio left. No studio can continue to pump out one megahit after another, you're bound to have some misses, there was a time when SOCOM was a bigger brand name than Jak and Daxter.

 

[ReBurn]

Sony's a big company. Maybe they're spread too thin. There has to be some fat to trim somewhere. Hopefully it's not the places I like.

 

[Jackl]

This could be the last nail in the coffin. I don't see how sony can recover from this. Its hard to imagine a generation without a playstation.

Nah, Sony is kind of like MS. They've got their fingers in different markets. Allows them to recover if one collapses.

To be honest this is what they need. To fall down and start over. Sony has suffered an amount corporate Hubris the past generation. Flushing it will be net positive in the long term I believe.

 

[jcm]

I'm sorry if it's been posted already (I don't have the time at work to weed through the "Sony's dying!" "No they're not!" back-and-forth)... but is it known when the games division swung to profitability?

I had kind of assumed it had been profitable for a while, but one of the stories linked in the OP implied that it was a pretty recent development.

EDIT: BTW, if their estimates on the cost of the hack prove accurate, they'll have come out of it better than I expected

Gaming has been profitable the last five quarters.

Kinda curious if anybody knows how Sony's financial branch and bank did.

We won't know until Thursday when we get the full release.

 

[corrosivefrost]

Do we know if the 171 million figure include lost sales from the downloads within "appreciation program"?

 

[AgentChris]

Nah, Sony is kind of like MS. They've got their fingers in different markets. Allows them to recover if one collapses.

To be honest this is what they need. To fall down and start over. Sony has suffered an amount corporate Hubris the past generation. Flushing it will be net positive in the long term I believe.

Next year, Sony Pictures will make them $$$. Spidey and Will Smith.

 

[Scrow]

Intriguing.
I was completely under the impression that no actual living beings with actual grey matter actual spoke this way, but I have truly learned something today.

check the OP's actual tag

and yeah, maybe you have actual learnt something.

actual

 

[NemesisPrime]

This could be the last nail in the coffin. I don't see how sony can recover from this. Its hard to imagine a generation without a playstation.

There were quite a few generations before PS1 you know

 

[pseudocaesar]

Next year, Sony Pictures will make them $$$. Spidey and Will Smith.

Hell yeah they will make bank on MIB. Cant wait for it

 

[gofreak]

An interesting, glum 6-page article about Sony, quoting numerous heavily critical ex-employees.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...stringers-makeover-fail/article2032492/page1/

The main theme is the charge that Sony is now an 'ordinary company' where misfits have been more or less driven out, and there's no longer the freedom for engineers to roam that previously existed. As much as some gamers like to mock Kutaragi, it was his type of 'craziness' that bred the innovation Sony's lost. Kutaragi's not named, but I couldn't help but think of him when one of those quoted says that Sony needs someone who is 'unafraid to be “absurd, irrational and outrageous.”'

Some other quotes:

“I was the inventor of the Airboard,” says Maeda between mouthfuls of fried prawn and dumplings at a Chinese restaurant in downtown Tokyo.

He was referring to a flat panel device that predated the iPad by a decade yet boasted video, touch screen typing and Internet access.

A hefty price tag and patchy picture quality were among the reasons the product, which in hindsight looks like it was ahead of its time, didn’t initially take off. Internal politics and a series of disruptive divisional reorganizations ensured the product never got the management focus it needed to succeed, Maeda says.

...

Maeda said he knew a year earlier that Sony under Howard Stringer, who became CEO in 2005, was going to kill his invention. His boss sent him an e-mail saying he was taking it over.

...

“Sony old boys liked Airboard and Location Free TV because it was doing something new, which is what they did at Sony,” said Maeda. “The current Sony people have no experience with such things because they haven’t introduced any new products for about 10 years.”

“Too big to succeed comes to mind,” a former senior manager involved until recently with Sony’s PlayStation game console told Reuters, declining to be identified because of the sensitivity of the comments. “I was at PlayStation, considered the most flexible of the Sony units, but ironically that was crippled by over-secretive IT security, a lack of a coherent management structure and a lot of deadwood at the top. It was harder to work across Sony units than to work with outside partners,” he said.

Stringer trotted out a group of what he claimed were the 50 brightest engineers that Sony had to show the 1,200-strong crowd of managers gathered in the ballroom.

“These are our future,” Stringer boasted of the group of the cleanest, most well-composed assemblage of geeks, recalls one former Sony executive in attendance that morning.

They “were the equivalent of scrubbed, West Point recruits,” he said in reference to a prestigious U.S. military academy. “No tattoos, no piercings, no 14-year-olds,” the former Sony manager said. “I remember saying, ‘We’re so screwed.’ No one in that group was going to say ‘Why the fuck do we need a (computer) mouse.’”

Sony’s problem, offers Hironobu Yokota, a procurement manager who left Sony in 1995 because “all the misfits had left”, is that it has become ordinary, a condition he says is worsening.

“I have consulted for Sony several times since I left. Looking at it from the outside, it is basically getting worse and worse,” explains Yokota.

On Stringer's succession - apparently likability among gamers is important to Stringer

Most at risk of taking the blame for Sony’s latest debacle is Stringer’s right-hand man, Kazuo Hirai, who was anointed by Stringer in March to eventually carry the CEO baton.

“Since he is in charge of networks, he is the obvious candidate to take charge of sorting this out,” Katayama said. “Of course, if he can’t manage that the way up will be blocked.”

For the moment, Hirai is getting gushing praise from Stringer. While he was being piped in through a video conferencing connection into the New York roundtable last Tuesday, Stringer described him as “very helpful and very demonstrative.” Gamers, insisted Stringer, “like Kaz.”

Yet it is difficult to think that Hirai won’t have to take some of the blame, potentially damaging his chances of being the next CEO.

Whoever follows Stringer to the top of Sony, pressure will be on the new boss to quickly exit from thin-margin or loss-making operations such as phones, televisions, and peripheral businesses, including financial services, analysts predict.

“I would be very focused on a narrow set of products,” advises the CEO of web security company Symantec, Enrique Salem, also speaking at the Reuters Summit. “If you look at what happened at Sony over the last 15 years, they’ve diversified their portfolio and I would pick one or two things I wanted to spend all of my time on to make sure they are the very best in the market.”

Another of Sony’s options may be to seek closer cooperation with U.S. Internet giant Google.

Sony is already warming to Google’s Android operating system – notably partnering with the Internet search leader on Google TV. The U.S. company could help tie together the Japanese company’s treasure trove of content and products with Google’s software and innovation – if that were to happen, industry watchers argue, Sony could then hope to take on Apple.

“It is now moving in the right direction but does not have the luxury of time that it had 10 years back,” said CLSA’s Goyal.

In its May edition, Japan’s Bungei Shunju, a widely read current affairs magazine, lamented the demise of Sony in a piece quoting an engineer who had left for a rival consumer electronics firm.

“It’s obvious the days will never again come when we marveled at the quality of sound from a Sony FM radio, or the beauty of the images on a Trinitron TV, or the inspiration of the Walkman,” the magazine said. “We shouldn’t expect Sony to shine as it once did.”

Pondering Sony’s future again over his dumplings in Tokyo, Airboard creator Maeda is equally as glum. “I don’t think Sony can change,” he says. Not unless, he adds, “Sony has a leader like Steve Jobs.”

I'm reminded vaguely of concerns Panajev voiced yonks ago about a post-Stringer Sony. Oh Pana Pana for Sony CEO!

 

[Parmenides]

People seem confused,so I guess this needs to be clarified:Sony Corporation posted an operating income of $2.5 billion,but net income decreased by approximately $4 billion primarily due to a non-cash charge to establish a valuation allowance of approximately $4.4 billion against certain deferred tax assets in Japan.The non-cash charge does not have any impact on Sony’s consolidated operating income or cash flow.

As you can see Sony is in decent shape.

American Depositary Shares

S&P 500 1319.71 +0.18%

Sony Corp $27.74 +4.32%

Microsoft Corp (*) $24.11 -0.21%

Nintendo $28.07 +1.92%

(*) Common Stock

Link:S&P 500 Chart

Link:Sony (ADR)

Link:Microsoft Common Stock

Link:Nintendo (ADR)

 

[XiaNaphryz]

People seem confused,so I guess this needs to be clarified

No, there are plenty of people in here who seem to understand just fine and are in fact arguing that what you cite isn't necessarily a sign of being in good shape by itself.

 

[dionysus]

People seem confused,so I guess this needs to be clarified:Sony Corporation posted an operating income of $2.5 billion,but net income decreased by approximately $4 billion primarily due to a non-cash charge to establish a valuation allowance of approximately $4.4 billion against certain deferred tax assets in Japan.The non-cash charge does not have any impact on Sony’s consolidated operating income or cash flow.

As you can see Sony is in decent shape.

I will play devil's advocate not cause I think Sony is in that bad of shape, positive operating income is always a good thing, but because equating daily moves in stock price with a companies overall health is completely fallacious.

It just means that aggregate market expectations were slightly worse than what was reported.

I also disagree that non-cash charges related to right downs of tax credits are trivial. These are very real, because it means that Sony can not generate enough profit in the coming years to utilize their tax credits before they expire. Moreover, Sony counted those credits on its balance sheet in past years as a positive thing, so it is perfectly legitimate to knock them when they can no longer reasonably expect to use those credits.

Overall, any time a company has positive operating income it is not going out of business. But, Sony is still losing shareholder equity.

 

[Revolver]

An interesting, glum 6-page article about Sony, quoting numerous heavily critical ex-employees.

The main theme is the charge that Sony is now an 'ordinary company' where misfits have been more or less driven out, and there's no longer the freedom for engineers to roam that previously existed. As much as some gamers like to mock Kutaragi, it was his type of 'craziness' that bred the innovation Sony's lost. Kutaragi's not named, but I couldn't help but think of him when one of those quoted says that Sony needs someone who is 'unafraid to be “absurd, irrational and outrageous.”'

I've never been a fan of Stringer as CEO. I just don't feel confident in him. Things like his push for 3D depress me and his insistence that Sony is a luxury brand seem so out of step with the times. Right now I feel that Sony are like Apple before Jobs came back and righted the ship.

 

[ReBurn]

I've never been a fan of Stringer as CEO. I just don't feel confident in him. Things like his push for 3D depress me and his insistence that Sony is a luxury brand seem so out of step with the times. Right now I feel that Sony are like Apple before Jobs came back and righted the ship.

So are we waiting for Ken to come back? That PS4 isn't going to design itself, you know.

 

[ToyBroker]

Did Sony destroy their brandname this generation?

Tarnish.

Did Microsoft? No. Did they tarnish it? Yes.

 

[M.D]

So are we waiting for Ken to come back? That PS4 isn't going to design itself, you know.

I thought he said he gave them plans for the PS4, PS5 and PS6 before he left?

 

[[Nintex]]

The main theme is the charge that Sony is now an 'ordinary company' where misfits have been more or less driven out, and there's no longer the freedom for engineers to roam that previously existed. As much as some gamers like to mock Kutaragi, it was his type of 'craziness' that bred the innovation Sony's lost. Kutaragi's not named, but I couldn't help but think of him when one of those quoted says that Sony needs someone who is 'unafraid to be “absurd, irrational and outrageous.”'

Yep, Kutaragi would've been a great asset for the company at times like these. Many have said the same thing about Sony. The most striking problem is that the veterans who 'made' the company left or retired and Sony has been unable to prepare a new group of young and bold engineers. A lot of Japanese companies face the same problem look no further than Square Enix for example. Sony just started doing the usual corporate thing, molding everything into formula's with proven concepts and little creativity or incentive from the higher ups to create something totally new. Kaz Hirai is pretty much the worst possible choice as a Stringer follow up but Sony for some reason ignores all the warnings and just keeps trucking towards the end of a cliff. Much like how Microsoft for some reason clings to Ballmer, who has proven to be quite terrible at what he does.

 

[AgentChris]

Sony needs someone like Iwata as CEO. There has to be a current or former Sony engineer with new revolutionary ideas to make Sony standout. Kill Sony Music. Music industry is never going to make money again.

Sony doesn't need a trim, they need liposuction. PlayStation, Bravia, Sony Pictures and burn everything else in a fire.

 

[Beer Monkey]

The Sony brand just doesn't carry the weight it once did. For quite a long time, when you thought television, you thought Sony. When you thought video games, you thought Sony. That IMO is the bigger concern than the immediate financial results.

 

[CadetMahoney]

Did Sony destroy their brandname this generation?

Tarnish.

Did Microsoft? No. Did they tarnish it? Yes.

Indeed. It is in tatters, tatters I tell you.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

The Sony brand just doesn't carry the weight it once did. For quite a long time, when you thought television, you thought Sony. When you thought video games, you thought Sony. That IMO is the bigger concern than the immediate financial results.

lol what, I only own a PS3 and no TV's and such BUT I hear their name mentioned all the time. Who told you this?

 

[AgentChris]

Sony needs to do something big in the next couple of years. They always seem to be too reactionary and not revolutionary.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

lol what, I only own a PS3 and no TV's and such BUT I hear their name mentioned all the time. Who told you this?

Anecdotal evidence wars GO!

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

Sony needs someone like Iwata as CEO. There has to be a current or former Sony engineer with new revolutionary ideas to make Sony standout. Kill Sony Music. Music industry is never going to make money again.

Sony doesn't need a trim, they need liposuction. PlayStation, Bravia, Sony Pictures and burn everything else in a fire.

A strange sentiment on a message board that frequently laments the loss of development jobs after loss-leading software releases.

 

[H_Prestige]

I agree and disagree.

I don't see games like Motorstorm or SOCOM doing particularly well and the cost of keeping those particular studios afloat really can't be worth it for the minute rewards, from both a sales and platform standpoint.

Developers like MediaMolecule on the other hand are a very different story though as they're producing the types of games which third parties absolutely don't, games which define the platform.

I think Sony could do with cleaning up and slimming down their first party studios and with recent rumours it sounds like they're already doing that.

Agreed. They have some studios they absolutely need to keep (PD and ND for instance), but some studios just produce high budget duds (like GG).

 

[H_Prestige]

lol what, I only own a PS3 and no TV's and such BUT I hear their name mentioned all the time. Who told you this?

Samsung is the undisputed market leader in TV right now and their products get the most advertising and wall space at Best Buy. Sony is a third tier player at best nowadays.

 

[[Nintex]]

Sony needs someone like Iwata as CEO. There has to be a current or former Sony engineer with new revolutionary ideas to make Sony standout.

They tried their best to get rid of people like Kutaragi and Harrison and this is the result.

Kill Sony Music. Music industry is never going to make money again.

I don't think that would be a good idea, you'd think that along with Sony Pictures and Sony Music it should be a piece of cake for the company to be leading on the entertainment front and giving Apple a run for their money but for some reason that is not the case.

Sony doesn't need a trim, they need liposuction. PlayStation, Bravia, Sony Pictures and burn everything else in a fire.

This is what their competitors would like to see. I agree that they need to think about their next move but they shouldn't burn everything in a fire. Imagine the cash they could make if they get all that shit sorted out. They need to get rid of the suits and put the engineers back in charge. The guy leading the batteries division and such from that article sounds like a much better choice than Hirai will ever be. They just need to get rid of their 'elitist' attitude towards everything. The Walkman wasn't a $999 golden plated music player. It was durable, marketed well and a great product overall, affordable too.

 

[MalboroRed]

An interesting, glum 6-page article about Sony, quoting numerous heavily critical ex-employees.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...stringers-makeover-fail/article2032492/page1/

The main theme is the charge that Sony is now an 'ordinary company' where misfits have been more or less driven out, and there's no longer the freedom for engineers to roam that previously existed. As much as some gamers like to mock Kutaragi, it was his type of 'craziness' that bred the innovation Sony's lost. Kutaragi's not named, but I couldn't help but think of him when one of those quoted says that Sony needs someone who is 'unafraid to be “absurd, irrational and outrageous.”'

Some other quotes:


On Stringer's succession - apparently likability among gamers is important to Stringer


I'm reminded vaguely of concerns Panajev voiced yonks ago about a post-Stringer Sony. Oh Pana Pana for Sony CEO!

It's kind of ridiculous to expect Sony to be able to find another Steve Jobs, even Apple will be hard-pressed to replace Jobs, and Jobs probably won't be around for that long, given how much the recurring cancer problem. If and when Kaz takes over he needs to set his priorities and focus on key products.

Before Kaz can even be considered for a promotion, he needs to get the games division in order, I really wonder what Kaz is going to do with SOE.

 

[plagiarize]

It's kind of ridiculous to expect Sony to be able to find another Steve Jobs, even Apple will be hard-pressed to replace Jobs, and Jobs probably won't be around for that long, given how much the recurring cancer problem. If and when Kaz takes over he needs to set his priorities and focus on key products.

Sony really need to take an interesting risk with the next PlayStation. the PS3 took a lot of risks, but only in terms of how much it pushed the 'more power and features!' model, which in retrospect didn't prove to be the right sort of risk.

Microsoft have Kudo (and i can't believe i'm typing that as if that nutcase is an asset... but... jesus Kinect is hard to argue). Nintendo have a few people still. Sony really need to have someone just a little bit mad again.

oh, and yes, i love my Kinect, but Kudo has always struck me as a maniac.

 

[Revolver]

Samsung is the undisputed market leader in TV right now and their products get the most advertising and wall space at Best Buy. Sony is a third tier player at best nowadays.

I may not be up to date with the numbers, but the last I heard Vizio were the TV market leader in the U.S. followed by Samsung and Sony.

 

[Parmenides]

Link: Sony ADR up almost 5%

No, there are plenty of people in here who seem to understand just fine and are in fact arguing that what you cite isn't necessarily a sign of being in good shape by itself.

I fully understand your position from an investor's perspective,nonetheless plenty of people here are video game enthusiasts worried by this news,so this situation needs to be clarified:Sony is not bleeding money.

I will play devil's advocate not cause I think Sony is in that bad of shape, positive operating income is always a good thing, but because equating daily moves in stock price with a companies overall health is completely fallacious.

Markets overreact to bad corporate news,however Sony shares(ADR) rose almost 5 percent;that's what GAF needs to know.

I also disagree that non-cash charges related to right downs of tax credits are trivial. These are very real, because it means that Sony can not generate enough profit in the coming years to utilize their tax credits before they expire. Moreover, Sony counted those credits on its balance sheet in past years as a positive thing, so it is perfectly legitimate to knock them when they can no longer reasonably expect to use those credits.

Overall, any time a company has positive operating income it is not going out of business. But, Sony is still losing shareholder equity.

Don't get me wrong.Sony is not a sound investment,however Sony's inability to hit its target of a 5 percent operating margin has been known for years.On top of that,the company was hit very hard by the financial crisis and now the earthquake.Sony's inability to produce taxable income in the future to realize the deferred tax assets is hardly a surprise,therefore investors are not fazed.

 

[BannedEpisode]

Thats an awful lot of money.

 

[patsu]

An interesting, glum 6-page article about Sony, quoting numerous heavily critical ex-employees.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...stringers-makeover-fail/article2032492/page1/

The main theme is the charge that Sony is now an 'ordinary company' where misfits have been more or less driven out, and there's no longer the freedom for engineers to roam that previously existed. As much as some gamers like to mock Kutaragi, it was his type of 'craziness' that bred the innovation Sony's lost. Kutaragi's not named, but I couldn't help but think of him when one of those quoted says that Sony needs someone who is 'unafraid to be “absurd, irrational and outrageous.”'

Some other quotes:

On Stringer's succession - apparently likability among gamers is important to Stringer

I'm reminded vaguely of concerns Panajev voiced yonks ago about a post-Stringer Sony. Oh Pana Pana for Sony CEO!

Interesting article ! The truth is probably somewhere in between. I googled for AirBoard. It looks rather crude but promising (I wouldn't buy it yet). Too bad Sony management didn't have the will and guts to develop further. Not sure they have the software teams to carry it all the way though.

They should fix the softer issues first ($$ later). Things like morale, perception, image, unity, dedication to create great UI, etc. are the foundation. I don't think letting misfits run an organization is THE only answer. It's one of the approaches, but it has its problems if the management don't know how to rein the Engineers like Steve Jobs does.

 

[J-Rock]

Sony's a big company. Maybe they're spread too thin.

Bingo.

 

[patsu]

Yap, I think so too. Also, if they are going to build custom OS based on Android, WebKit and other web technologies, they may need to beef up their software team even more. Not just any software developer but the right kind of talent.

 

[bangai-o]

is Beyonce' still trying to steal style from M.I.A. and Shakira?