Good article but theres some BS, the engineer hate is overblown, every other successful company credits its engineers for its hit products, but here is all poor little executives being beaten by angry dumb engineers, yeah right
I remember the original PSP prototype was going to use MS, but Sony added the UMD because the media division wanted to sell movies for it, so the console was now more expensive, heavy, easier to break and have less battery life because of a decision that didnt work because nobody was going to buy the same movie again to watch it on a handheld.
The reason Sony took so long to launch something like the iPod is because the music division plain HATED MP3s, I remember many digital players prototypes shown by sony during the 90s, those were obviously cancelled by the media executives.
To say that sony's multiple formats are solely because of anal engineers is plain stupid, its well known that was a cheap moneymaking strategy from the executive branch. Sure the betamax had the whole quality thing, but after that it was all about getting buyers locked-in so they couldn't use non-sony media in sony products.
Now phones, do they have any engineers on that? because Xperia phones feel like something out of a designer's portfolio that doesnt knows anything about materials or good craftsmanship, because the plastic is bad, the build is bad, the overall quality is bad and the specs are plain awful. When Meizu a completely unknown chinese company can launch a phone thats 100x better that means Sony doesnt knows what is doing.
TBH I dont think engineers have any liberty at sony, all their products have that tryhard marketing feel from people who dont know anything about hardware and merely copy what others are doing.
I do agree that the PS3 was the moment Sony jumped the shark, but IIRC a lot of the cost had to do with Sony trying to subsidize the CELL to break into the server business, so I wonder who's really at fault here.
