Sony Corp., the Japanese electronics and entertainment company, is headed in the right direction although its comeback is not yet complete, its chief executive said Thursday.
Kazuo Hirai told reporters that Sony is now more nimble and focused under his leadership which began nine months ago. Sony has lost money for the past four years, and has fallen behind powerful rivals such as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. in profitability and innovation.
Hirai acknowledged Sony had gotten bogged down in its sprawling bureaucracy, and stressed he is making a point of personal involvement in product development to make sure good ideas don't get squelched.
"I'm shepherding several of those projects personally myself to make sure that it doesn't get held up in the bureaucracy, or it doesn't suddenly fade away in the approval process," he said at Tokyo headquarters.
Like other Japanese electronics makers, Sony is taking a beating from Chinese, Taiwan and South Korean rivals that offer products at much cheaper prices. Hirai said Sony will target customers willing to pay more and won't get sucked into a price war.
The make of Bravia TVs and PlayStation 3 game machines reports earnings next month for last year's final quarter. The numbers are expected to highlight a Sony midway through its recovery.
Sony has recruited Bungie's head of revenue Jaremy Rich to head up its live-service gaming division, Rich has announced on social media.
Please do not put Destiny’s monetization into Sony’s first party games. The monetization is what’s driving players away from Destiny.
I mean, this person made some pretty bad decisions at Bungie. I hope they've learned from them because I definitely don't see those type of ideas as good for PlaySation in general.
Ps5 gamers in 2023 seemed to play more live service types of games, so regardless to how people feel about them, numbers don’t lie and Sony is going where the money is. I mean look at the excitement around Helldivers2, people are showing that they want live service games.
How do you kill a franchise that already been killed?
Destiny’s grind, cash-in-on-playbass-cha-Ching, and pop-culture-insertion mainstream-me-too bs totally killed any rep Bungie had. Sony/Bungie, if you are doing this to ward-off players, it’s already working.
Sony has patented to add multiple dialogue modes to let players switch between how many conversations with NPCs they want in the game.
Sony is like the only ones outta the 3 that has atuff like like this pop up changing thing in ways.
Genuine Enabling Technology was seeking damages, claiming the tech allowing PlayStation consoles and controllers to communicate infringes its rights.
Sounds like patent trolling they tried the same thing against Nintendo with the same pattern.
Motion and control input traversing over higher and lower frequencies seperate from each other allowing the controller to do both
So to recoup the money Genuine is going to take on Nintendo or Microsoft next. I hate patent lawyers they are some of the worst bottom feeders out there.
To me, it seems Hirai has really kicked the ball out of the park. Sony did so much last year, it's unheard of. Sure, there are plenty of things that remain to be done, like making a profit, but hey, I won't be surprised if they get there eventually!
He's sped up the company and he's drifting around the difficult turns. Ridge Racer has taught him well.
Now that the company is in good hands, it will move forward again.. The previous idiot really ruined their great name.. In gaming, over priced tvs, tabs, cameras, etc.. I know hes leading sony teams to create a unified ecosystem w all sony products.. Kinda like apple has but the sony way.. I will continue my support for PS & if they make it worth my money, itl expand beyond that into tvs, tabs, cameras, phones, etc
Well things certainly seem to be moving in the right direction. Earnings per share showed Sony was losing almost $5 per share just a year ago, and the most recent report (not this one coming up in a couple of weeks) showed the company was almost out of the red with a loss of only 0.20/share. I don't care who you are, that's obviously tremendous improvement.
And with the foreign exchange rates stabilizing and projected to continue, this should help mitigate the losses due to selling to the US and Europe. At one point after the market crash, the yen was up 25% compared to the Euro and US dollar. So for every dollar spent overseas, Sony was losing 25% revenue compared to the year prior. That's huge.
Part of the problem has also been Sony's reluctance to outsource development outside of Japan to cheaper asian markets to the degree of their competition. In staying loyal to their Japanese workers, they weakened their position due to the costs of doing business in Japan. They've started outsourcing the past few years finally, which is good for the company in order to stay competitive, but you've got to feel a bit sorry for them losing that particular battle. No one likes to see a company forced to outsource, but that's the global marketplace for ya.
Another issue with being as large as Sony, after time you tend to become bloated, with your hands in too many things. They've also come a long way in terms of focusing their product offering, and there's still much to be done. Sometimes you have to contract to expand.
Ultimately though, they have to be happy with how the PS3 performed last year compared to it's competition. The entire industry was down but PS3 sales and software managed to more or less keep pace with the year prior (from what we saw reported Jan-Sept) while their competition saw year over year sales fall by almost half.
Hitting the 70 million milestone and, if industry reports are correct, ultimately taking second place globally despite being nearly 9 million consoles behind the 360 after their first holiday season just proves that despite the PS3's higher price point, demand has always been there. I never understood that myth that the PS3 botched it's launch or got off to a slow start that we hear parroted so often in the media despite numbers showing otherwise. Sales of the PS3 may have been on pace with the PS2 at the start, but the worst recession in a generation tends to put a bit of a damper on sales when you're the most expensive console on the market, and the PS2 dropped below $199 so quickly you really can't compare sales of the two. Given the market and economic environment, I'm honestly surprised the PS3 sold as well as it has, and continues to sell even 6 years in.
I wish Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo the best of luck leading into the next gen. Hell, here's hoping the next few years are more profitable for everyone in the industry.
Edit: Kinda puzzled by the disagrees. Everything I mentioned is easily verified with a simple google search. If you want to offer a counter point, feel free to hit me up on PM (only one bubble for years so can't really talk here). I'm always up for a spirited debate about the gaming industry. Cheers!
I really do love Sony, not just the PS3 I have a Bravia, ipod dock, headphones, blu ray player. Always solid, well made & reliable.
If 4K OLED or that Xperia Z is any indication then maybe Sony is ready to join the ranks of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Vizio, etc. I think that would be best really. If you could but some Sony hardware behind some really impressive software I think many people would flock to it.
Sony at CES was actually impressive only really upstaged by Nvidia and that isn't really fair because the Tegra 4 is a real beast.