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Kazuo Hirai to be named Sony President

Metalmurphy said:
How the hell is making decisions innovation? Greenlighting an innovation is NOT innovating, the people hard at work on prototyping stuff is where the innovation comes from.
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So you're saying they just sit there and tinker with things randomly all day without any sort of direction?

At the top level, management has to send some sort of directive in which innovation stems from. An idea transformed to a product.

TTP said:
What is Sony good at? What shoud they stick with? Digital cameras perhaps? Serious question.
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Playstation, Bravia, and imaging devices. Everything else needs to go.

And they really need to get rid of Qriocity and all of those other scrapped together services while they're at it.
 
TTP said:
What is Sony good at? What shoud they stick with? Digital cameras perhaps? Serious question.
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Maybe he wants them to stick to Walkman only.
 
bob page said:
So you're saying they just sit there and tinker with things randomly all day without any sort of direction?
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Who's they? That's how all the brilliant ideas are formed. That's also how Nintendo works.

bob page said:
At the top level, management has to send some sort of directive in which innovation stems from. An idea transformed to a product.
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Definitively. But what does that had to do with having innovation on something that already happened and had nothing to do with management.

Kandinsky said:
I lol'd.
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What was so funny about that particular comment?
 
Metalmurphy said:
Besides the point.
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No, it isn't. Sony had the opportunity to take the forefront with uncontested technology and they let it die until such point that a competitor refined the concept and made millions. No one gives a shit if you had the idea first if you don't capitalize on it. Sony didn't. Reactive.

Metalmurphy said:
That's pretty much an early version of the Move...
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Oh yeah, Move. The product that wasn't released until 4 years after the Wii phenomenon. That Move.


Reactive.
 
Metalmurphy said:
Who's they? That's how all the brilliant ideas are formed. That's also how Nintendo works.



Definitively. But what does that had to do with having innovation on something that already happened and had nothing to do with management.
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You're not getting it. Everything has to do with management. This is a corporation, not some random collection of workers with independent goals and ideas.

At the end of the day, which products hit the market (and how) is entirely up to the management.
 
Metalmurphy said:
How the hell is making decisions innovation? Greenlighting an innovation is NOT innovating, the people hard at work on prototyping stuff is where the innovation comes from.
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Just search around google, there was an article with a business site(Forbes, Business week, wallstreet journal?) can't quite remember, but the general idea was that they sat down with former Sony engineers and one said that he was working on an iPad like device that management shot down. This one is easy to find however: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/what-is-sony-now-11172011_page_4.html
 
DeaconKnowledge said:
No, it isn't. Sony had the opportunity to take the forefront with uncontested technology and they let it die until such point that a competitor refined the concept and made millions. No one gives a shit if you had the idea first if you don't capitalize on it. Sony didn't. Reactive.
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It's still an example of innovation. Particularly, innovation being stifled by bad management (see Phil Harrison's departure). This is about a change in management. Granted, Hirai was in charge of SCEA at the time (right?), and may have had a big hand in not pushing Singstar/EyeToy in his region.
 
That has been obvious since the moment he left the gaming division to Andrew House, they have been preparing him for the new position for a while.
They have been speding quite some time building a contents distribution platform with Playstation Network/Music Unlimited/Video Unlimited. The gaming division has been turned around and the music and movies division are doing fine.
They have bought Sony Ericsson so that they can have full control of the smartphones and tablets businesses.
At this point their problem is the TV business, their strategy seems to be get rid of manufacturing costs of LCD TVs which will be made by other manufacturers, rebranded and integrated with their own services to make smart TVs. For the future maybe they're focusing on new technologies like OLED, we'll probably find out at CES.
 
[Nintex];34047943 said:
All Ken Kutaragi's work. Hirai was head of SCEA.

Ken Kutaragi was set up to fail:


All they needed was another mayor blow to Kutaragi and that was easy since Sony had mandated the use of Cell and Blu-Ray in their products and told Kutaragi to go build a super computer.
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thats so silly... so Ken couldnt bring around electronic division (instead he ruined it), but it is because it was hard job and hence they should have given him complete Sony as he has proven himself inept? I dont see how that works.

Kaz and Howard are cool... they realize what is needed - complete unification of Sony. And thats what Kaz has been doing. All of their hardware is now one unit.

Sony is huge company. They have 170,000 employees (Apple has 60,000). But they have acted in past as 100 smaller companies that all competed against each other.
 
Marco1 said:
Why did they pump so much into CELL?
Surely they had a grander vision for the chip other than PS3.
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From what others have said it's because they thought they'd get majority market share and then other developers would be forced to adapt to cell and make games primarily for PS3. If it was the same as 360 devs could make multi-plat games without issue and there would be less 3rd party exclusives for PS3.

Instead PS3 failed and we got shitty ports since 360 was top dog and devs made their games with 360 in mind (with the exception of a few). I think PS2 had 'weird' architecture too but it got a bunch of games anyway because it had the most market share so nobody could complain. Hopefully PS4 doesn't try anything new again. Just put in an advanced version of cell or whatever since developers already know it now.
 
DeaconKnowledge said:
No, it isn't. Sony had the opportunity to take the forefront with uncontested technology and they let it die until such point that a competitor refined the concept and made millions. No one gives a shit if you had the idea first if you don't capitalize on it. Sony didn't. Reactive.
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How is that a reaction if they were the first? Yes I agree that they "let it die", that IS my whole point. It's not that they're not innovative, it's that they don't properly support it.

DeaconKnowledge said:
Oh yeah, Move. The product that wasn't released until 4 years after the Wii phenomenon. That Move.

Reactive.
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Agreed, still doesn't mean they were lacking the innovation.
 
Meh. Nobody in their current leadership circle has shown that they understand what Sony Corp (including all its arms) need to do to work together to produce products that don't cannibalize each other, that aren't redundant, and that use the strengths from all to make single, superior products.

Nothing about this move impresses me from a business perspective. He will be judged by his ability to give Sony some common focuses and produce winning products. Their television and a lot of their electronic products have slid away from even competing for the title of "the best" in any market segment.

edit: glad to see many are on the exact same page about Sony.
 
Stringer will leave once Kutaragi is ready to replace him!
 
Angry Fork said:
From what others have said it's because they thought they'd get majority market share and then other developers would be forced to adapt to cell and make games primarily for PS3. If it was the same as 360 devs could make multi-plat games without issue and there would be less 3rd party exclusives for PS3.

Instead PS3 failed and we got shitty ports since 360 was top dog and devs made their games with 360 in mind (with the exception of a few). I think PS2 had 'weird' architecture too but it got a bunch of games anyway because it had the most market share so nobody could complain. Hopefully PS4 doesn't try anything new again. Just put in an advanced version of cell or whatever since developers already know it now.
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Surely this is were the success of PS4 should be. If they own the CELL tech then then could put an advanced CELL into PS4 and use the additional resources and funds beating xbox next on the GPU.
 
Elios83 said:
At this point their problem is the TV business, their strategy seems to be get rid of manufacturing costs of LCD TVs which will be made by other manufacturers, rebranded and integrated with their own services to make smart TVs. For the future maybe they're focusing on new technologies like OLED, we'll probably find out at CES.
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nothing is being rebranded... it is contract manfuacturing. Just like what Apple does.
Unless you think Apple is just rebranding other products :-).

Even Samsung sources 40% of their LCD's from 3rd party Taiwanese companies.

That way you let Chinese and Taiwanese vendors competing for your business, and lower your manufacturing prices. High yen is making anything coming out of Japan a losing prospect.
 
obonicus said:
It's still an example of innovation. Particularly, innovation being stifled by bad management (see Phil Harrison's departure). This is about a change in management. Granted, Hirai was in charge of SCEA at the time (right?), and may have had a big hand in not pushing Singstar/EyeToy in his region.
Click to expand...

I said this earlier but i'm no expert on Sony's internal culture outside of their games division and even that is of the armchair executive variety. That said management, or to be more specific, over management, has been Sony's problem of late.

The Best part of the Kutaragi years were that Sony's gaming division had a singular focused vision that everyone was in line with. Since then all that's seemed to happen is the addition of more and more cooks into the kitchen.


Metalmurphy said:
How is that a reaction if they were the first? Yes I agree that they "let it die", that IS my whole point. It's not that they're not innovative, it's that they don't properly support it.
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I'm not arguing that it wasn't innovative. I'm saying that they were not proactive about entrenching it in the market and as such fell behind.


Metalmurphy said:
Agreed, still doesn't mean they were lacking the innovation.
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Unfortunately, it does. Innovation means nothing without implementation. Sony did nothing with what they had until it was already established. By that time Move was nowhere near innovative in the marketplace.
 
[Nintex];34049406 said:
You just described Microsoft and they make billions a year.
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Microsoft's kind of a special snowflake. They make money in ways no one can really copy these days, essentially by being at the exact right place at the right time in a way that isn't likely to repeat itself (and Bill Gates & co. made sure they were at those places, so they deserve merit).
 
So many insiders with intimate knowledge of both Sony and the individuals involved.
Thats why I come to NeoGAF
 
Marco1 said:
I don't understand the importance of unifying the playstation brand within sony products.
Keep the PS4 a games machine, a monster gaming machine, nothing else.
I can't help but feel sony is as close to finished as they ever were and that makes me sad.
As much as I dislike PS3, I hate the thought of a MS future.
Thank god for nintendo.
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imCSGv2p5VWVK.gif
 
[Nintex];34049406 said:
You just described Microsoft and they make billions a year.
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Pretty much because of Windows; not so much because they have a bunch of separate fiefdoms working away in other areas. The latter probably isn't a good idea even if the urgency to change that mightn't be as strong in one company as it is in another.
 
I wasn't claiming to have insider knowledge on the culture at Sony or anything, but you can definitely discover a lot about a company when you're looking into investing in them. After a few hours research, it can be quite clear what their flaws are, especially when most of this information is required to be available to the public.

LiquidMetal14 said:
Half of us work for financial firms and lawyer farms too!
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I'm not sure if this was sarcasm, but I actually do know of many business professionals & lawyers that are on GAF. Professionals can be gamers too!
 
DeaconKnowledge said:
I said this earlier but i'm no expert on Sony's internal culture outside of their games division and even that is of the armchair executive variety. That said management, or to be more specific, over management, has been Sony's problem of late.

The Best part of the Kutaragi years were that Sony's gaming division had a singular focused vision that everyone was in line with. Since then all that's seemed to happen is the addition of more and more cooks into the kitchen.
Click to expand...

Yep and Kutaragi kept the PlayStation division and its engineers seperate from the bloated mess that was Sony corp. he saw it coming all along and wasn't liked by his bosses when he went public with it.
 
spwolf said:
nothing is being rebranded... it is contract manfuacturing. Just like what Apple does.
Unless you think Apple is just rebranding other products :-).

Even Samsung sources 40% of their LCD's from 3rd party Taiwanese companies.

That way you let Chinese and Taiwanese vendors competing for your business, and lower your manufacturing prices. High yen is making anything coming out of Japan a losing prospect.
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It really depends on the product, for a TV if the panel is made and designed by x company and the electronics by y company the product for me is actually made by x and y and just rebranded.
Of course it's just a point of view. The main point here is that they get rid of manufacturing costs although in this way the competion is shifted away from technology to services.
 
Angry Fork said:
I didn't mean that. Even if they screwed up with PS3 they still turned it around. I'm okay with saying Kaz fucked up PS3 too, but PS1 + PS2 + PS3 turn around is worth more than PS3 launch (and Ueda leaving, which sucks but is something else entirely).
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What did Hirai even do to turn the PS3 around? The system was designed so that the price would drop as quickly as it did, so I don't really think he deserves credit for that. And Harrison/Yoshida deserve the credit for all the high quality exclusives the PS3 has gotten from their first and second party developers. So that leaves what exactly? The Slim release? I will actually give him credit for that, as it came at exactly the right time (compared to the PSP revision, which was way too late) but that's really it.

But on the other hand, the PSP has been dead in the west for years, PSN is a mess and unprofitable and Qriocity is dead in the water. Sorry but I don't really see much promise in his leadership.

obonicus said:
What exactly makes you think Yoshida understands the market? Not to knock the guy, but almost every time he's talked, he's talked about games.
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He had a lot of input into the Vita's design, especially on the software side of the system (the OS and built-in Apps).

Noshino said:
Notice that I said "tech" not just hardware.

And Sony's problem isn't just software wise, there are a lot of problems with their hardware. Not just on the innovation side (they still have it, I know it, but they don't release shit) but also on their QA, which has dropped substantially. These is the kind of stuff that wouldn't have happened during the Ibuka, Morita, nor Ohga days, and Im sure as hell that Kutaragi wouldn't have let it either.

Also, Kutaragi, iirc, was very forward thinking on the software side.....(I'm at work right now, I ll look up sources later today)
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Fair enough.

I can remember Kutaragi saying a lot of things, sure, but the reality never seemed to match it. I mean, if he were really forward thinking in regards to software, why on earth would he release the PS3 with an OS that lacked so many basic features and yet wasn't designed to have any major additions? We were incredibly lucky to even get in-game XMB added to the system, but custom soundtracks and cross game voice chat were clearly a bridge too far. It all seemed so very short sighted.

Edit: Just realised it sounded like I was saying custom soundtracks and cross game voice chat were actually added when they weren't.
 
bob page said:
I wasn't claiming to have insider knowledge on the culture at Sony or anything, but you can definitely discover a lot about a company when you're looking into investing in them. After a few hours research, it can be quite clear what their flaws are, especially when most of this information is required to be available to the public.


I'm not sure if this was sarcasm, but I actually do know of many business professionals & lawyers that are on GAF. Professionals can be gamers too!
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No doubt. Doesn't stop me from disagreeing with you :P
 
Angry Fork said:
What? If you compare it to PS1/PS2 it's a failure but not on it's own. It's like 3-4 million off from the 360 would you consider the 360 a failure too?
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Oh sweet, another thread where hardware units sold is the only measure of success and things like profit don't matter.
 
LiquidSolid said:
I can remember Kutaragi saying a lot of things, sure, but the reality never seemed to match it. I mean, if he were really forward thinking in regards to software, why on earth would he release the PS3 with an OS that lacked so many basic features and yet wasn't designed to have any major additions? We were incredibly lucky to even get in-game XMB added to the system, let alone custom soundtracks and cross game voice chat. It all seemed so very short sighted.
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He had his head in different clouds...SCEJ wasn't very attuned to the more client facing needs or wants from a network. He was off thinking about longer term futures of distributed software and all that jazz.

That said, Sony did seem to have a decent vision for where to go with the OS (circa GDC 06, IIRC), but the competence or execution didn't match to bring that to life.

But you can't really come down too hard on Kutaragi because execution didn't always match his wildest imaginings. If it NEVER seemed to match, per your post, then maybe you could, but obviously the man made some of the very key stuff in his head happen, and happen very successfully. I mean, he only redefined how to do business in the videogame industry, and what the market for videogames could be...(and that, actually, more than any of his tech stuff, was probably his biggest accomplishment).
 
bob page said:
As usual, GAF is letting their personal opinions cloud concepts that should be pretty clear.

Let me reiterate: Sony is not a LEADER in ANYTHING. They have their hand in too many portions of the industry and aren't particularly good at any of them. Right now, they need to focus on something their good at and stick with it.
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Bingo, Sony's mindset is of an engineering company which is "build it and they will come." The issue with that mindset is that it doesn't build brand equity because it is not being aimed at a particular market. Sony is an electronics company, but they are currently lost in the wilderness with no strong central vision that can be used to create a compelling marketing strategy to increase sales. In contrast, Apple has a strong focus on their core competencies and builds a strong marketing campaign around it.

In the past they were able to use quality to build a premium brand. Unfortunately competition has lowered the gap in quality between them and Sony, this issue is exacerbated because one of its biggest competitors outspends Sony in terms of R&D investment and they have succeeded moving customer perception from a cheap brand to a premium brand (I am talking about Samsung if you couldn't tell).

With Sony's position, focusing on what they are good at and consolidating product lines will make them a stronger company. Here is hoping that Kaz will be the person who does that.
 
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