“Sony forecast a record $6.4 billion net loss for the business year just ended, double earlier forecasts and a fourth straight year of losses, inflated by writing off deferred tax assets in the United States.” Cry me river, Sony. You wasted my favourite format of all time (MiniDisc), so I consider this proof there might actually be a god after all – and she really likes doling out karma.
Good for you Sony!
I really hate it for those 10,000 who are losing their jobs over this. That said, I’d love to see Sony restructure in the wake of this loss, shifting their focus away from DRM and proprietary formats like Memory Stick and (for the love of all that is good and holy) stop making those shitty Vaio laptops that I hate working on!
After resurrecting my sister’s old Vaio three times, I have come to the conclusion that the extra $300-500 you pay above the price of a similarly equipped laptop from another maker, is Sony’s way of saying “screw the customer as much as possible”. It’s that kind attitude that will spell the end of this once great company.
Why can’t they just go back to making great sounding studio recording gear again?
Because it requires investment and work and research which wreaks havoc on the quarterly bottom line.
Not exactly, Audio Equipment makers have gone cheap, for profit, and in order to add the features people want at an afordable price (iPod Connect).
If you listen use older sound equipment you will find as many have that it sounds better.
I feel bad for those people too, but not for Sony. They’ve needed a wake up call for a long time now. You’d be hard pressed to find a more customer hostile company. Some people ban MS products from their homes, I ban Sony.
While not banning Sony products, they do get a lot of negative points for being Sony products which means they need to be much better than the competition to be considered.
Otherwise, I have a great business plan to save Sony: “Stop screwing your customers, they might come back”… But somehow, given that their new CEO comes from the playstation division… I have doubt he will follow that idea.
The new CEO was the one that originally pushed the PS3 to be more open, boot Linux.
At the same time he was so arrogant that claimed people would simply get a second job in order to pay the $600 Sony initially asked for the PS3.
That wasn’t the CEO of Sony, past or present. It was Ken Kutaragi the architect of the psp/ps3 that said that. He is no longer with Sony, which might explain some of the weird rumors of the next PlayStations specs.
You must be too serious to consider a joke as “arrogant claim”
Nope, they can’t be good enough, I didn’t have the spare cash to get a PS3 till just about the time that they started getting stupid, now no matter how much I want to play Metal Gear Solid, Armored Core, Devil May Cry, Uncharted, Heavy Rain, The Last Guardian, Soul Caliber and many more, but nope, can’t do any of that.
I won’t give Sony or Microsoft a dime on principal, let alone risk my bank account on their extremely shoddy networks.
Kivada,
“I won’t give Sony or Microsoft a dime on principal, let alone risk my bank account on their extremely shoddy networks.”
Yes that was very unprofessional and disappointing. However to be fair, much more blame needs to be directed to the banks/credit card companies themselves for refusing to modernize their practices. Your funds should never be vulnerable to unauthorized third party charges in the first place.
Public key encryption was invented in the ’70s, it’s 2012 and the banks are still not making use of it. If the banks took security seriously, I’d be able to buy even from untrustworthy sellers with confidence that my bank account would remain safe.
PS3 is a game console. It can play games.
Sony also planted a root kit on your PC, about 7 years back, they put out this audio cd, if you played it on your pc it installed a hidden directory, that’s hidden from the OS, not just normal hiding. Some malware started using it to hide, and it was a huge deal.
That game console you’re talking about? It used to run linux, and Sony took it away. It used to have backward compatibility, Sony took it away. Basic, highly advertised functionality. It be like you buying a car, and then Toyota turning off your radio remotely. If I pay for something, it damn well better be there when I get up in the morning.
And then there was the totally comedic way it handled that massive hack a year or two ago.
Sony, the company that keeps on taking.
It was originally sold as a complete home computer system, Sony certainly has the content to have take on iTunes, Steam and Hulu/Netflix, but no. They got stupid very quickly, they should have tried to tie into their photography and video divisions as well, they should have gotten a photo editor and ported Vegas to the PS3, it’s plenty powerful enough if they used the Cell to it’s full potential, thoguh it would have helped them allot to not gimp it’s ram so much.
Has Xbox Live had a security breach? Haven’t heard of any. Can you clarify?
http://kotaku.com/5873604/is-microsofts-xbox-live-hacking-problem-w…
But then theres all of the stupid crap Microsoft has done over the years as well as their piss poor history on security that makes me even more wary of them then I ever was about Sony.
From the description, Xbox Live wasn’t hacked. Somebody gave away their credentials in a phishing (external attack) that was completely unrelated to Microsoft, and then the thief used the credentials to move Live credits around.
tl;dr — Microsoft screwed me over and are as bad as Sony and Apple in my eyes now.
—–
Until recently I had an Xbox Live Gold subscription as well as a Zune Pass for the music software on my phone. Both services were top notch, but I had an interesting experience with the billing department. And I mean interesting in the Chinese proverb sense.
About one month after starting the Zune Pass (which was six months into my XBLG sub) I began seeing a double billing entry on my bank statement. As in, they were charging the $9.99/month for Zune Pass and it was labeled as such, but my XBLG sub jumped from $9.99 to $19.98. As I only had one Xbox and one XBLG account, I of course wanted to get to the bottom of it and get my money back. I tried calling billing support, but never got through. I tried emailing and never got a response. I also read about two class action lawsuits in progress against Microsoft, one regarding the double billing and another having to do with difficulty cancelling accounts. So finally, last month I sold my Xbox (for reasons other than this issue) and cancelled both services via the billing page…or so I thought.
Well, come this month I have had yet another charge for the Zune Pass service which I had cancelled five weeks before, on the first day of March. So once again I go on their support site, at 4am from work, and this time there is a link to “live chat support”. After groaning for a while, as I’ve never had any luck with such “live” chats with computer AI, I gave it a shot. I could tell immediately that it was a real person and not a bot, and when I explained my issue he asked if he could call me. I gave him my cell number via chat and within minutes my phone was ringing.
At first he tried to say it could be a bank error or perhaps I had an old credit card on file, but when I mentioned the class action lawsuit he said “Okay I have just reversed the charge and deleted all of your subscription information from the system. You will not be charged again under this Live ID for any Microsoft service unless you sign back up, and you will see the money back in your account within 72 hours.”
While I am impressed with this CSR’s prompt and courteous service, I am appalled at what I’ve been reading about so many thousands of customers getting the run-around regarding the double billing and cancellation issues. I’m certainly never giving Microsoft another dime, and I told the CSR as much before ending the call, not that it matters to him. I’ll continue to run Windows 7 on my PVR machine as I bought that license nearly two years ago, and WinXP on my netbook for the same reason. But I will not buy another Microsoft software or hardware product as of last week. Any new computers coming into my home in need of an OS will run something Free or else not run at all.
I know I’m just one person and not even a blip on their radar, but Microsoft has just joined Sony and Apple on my list of companies I will not support any more, in return for the way they treat their greatest assets.
Speaking of DRM, back in the early 2000’s a co-worker of mine tried to return a Sony digital music player because he couldn’t load any of his music on there. It required that you insert the CD in order to load the song onto the player. The store wouldn’t take it back because of the sign stating all sales of Sony potable digital music players were final.
I used to love and admire Sony once very much. I’ve got lot of their different gears. Some of them I refuse to replace (MZ-RH1, TA-E2000ESD) but Sony has changed. They are so much into “controlling” (forbidding) customer’s expectations. They still make things that I like very much (MDR-NC300D, KDL-NX710, ICF-C717L, …) but they behavein a way to discourage me from buying. Some things cannot be obtain easily (STR-DA5600ES) or they cripple the functionality beyond reason (PS3, codecs in BDP-S780, USB connectivity in my previous NetMD and HI-MD devices, …). On top of it, when I remember having them install spyware on users; PCs, I cannot recognize the company which once defended users rights in courtroom (users of Betamax VCR are allowed to make recordings as they wish and that’s not piracy). I am not surprised what has Sony come to, but it’s surprising if their executives are suprised. |It’s them who should see the concequences of the bad decisions they made. Sony does not care about its customers any more. Inevitably, the customers will stop caring about Sony. It’s great to see occasional exclusive products (CDZ-1, TA-ER1, Sountina, SS-R1, …) but they are doing bad things in a mass-market segment. Still I think will remain powerful, but the lesson should be clear: eventually, arrogance does not pay.
http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/the-onion-sonys-piece-of/305…
…from the onion.
Sony, in the past 15 years that I’ve been watching, have consistently made one stupid decision after another. Proprietary formats that are too expensive for other companies to use aren’t a business model at all, they’re an anchor around your neck. Taking features away from something bought and paid for, regardless of whether the mass market uses them or not, creates a negative public image. If they were really concerned about the homebrew scene killing the DRM on their games and leading the piracy, they should have changed the environment Linux was in, slightly, upped the security on it, and disguised it by adding “features”.
Let’s not even get into their Memory Stick format, or their insistence to use UMDs on the PSP, knowing full well that mechanical drives drain battery ridiculously fast. I seriously couldn’t use my PSP for an extended period without having a power point on hand. My DS, on the other hand, I’d charge every couple of days. Yes it was a less power hungry device because it had less powerful hardware, but as soon as I started pirating PSP games, or running emulators, suddenly the battery life of the PSP became more useful. I think the UMD was largely to blame, for about a third of the battery loss. I’m honestly surprised Blu-Ray took off, given Sony’s history with proprietary formats. Beta, Mini Disc, UMD movies, Memory stick movies, each one all but deliberately run into the ground by management decisions, but very technologically viable. Even if it were on a proprietary Sony memory card, I would love to have movies on memory sticks, no more scratched DVDs!
The Sony of today thinks of itself as just like Apple, which is actually not unreasonable, there was a lot of cross pollenation of ideas between the two companies. Apple always trying to work more like Sony, Sony trying to be more like Apple. Unfortunately, before you can be Apple, you need an established base of die-hard fans who’ll stick with you through the dark days, and you need a great foe, for an Us And Them mentality. In this case, Sony’s surface area is too large for their Them to be Microsoft. I think Samsung opposes them in more markets, but they’re not really Them material. Sony has the Dark Days coming, I’m sure, whether they’ll survive them, I don’t know. Whether they’ll rise again, I don’t think they can, but I’m open to surprises.
It is easier to say than do.
Linux was a thin wall in a system security.
Once it cracked, there was no way back. Sony stupidly relied on a “good behavior” of developers. But you can’t just satisfy everyone.
To their best, they should not ever give access to CELL, but Sony tried to support homebrew on PS1(Net Yaroze) and PS2(PS2 Linux), so PS3 Linux was a logical move on their side.
I, as CELL developer, was upset with Geohot actions, because it was clear that Linux will be his victim.
“Slim” systems didn’t feature linux at all. Nobody said “you can run Linux on them”, but later “crippled” it. So you had no “features” to lose.
Nobody blocked “Fat” system from linux. Until said actions.
Edited 2012-04-10 21:52 UTC
NOTE: Off-topic.
Um so you never believe in a Christian God either?
And god has a gender?
Anyway, BTTT, I’ve heard minidisc in the late 90s, but it is very expensive.
Edited 2012-04-11 02:52 UTC
It’s just Sony being Sony. Great engineers, terrible management.
Anytime they cripple their products more, I start to think “Aw, come on, this is the last time I buy anything from them”. And then they release something like that Xperia Mini Pro which I’ve bought yesterday, as a reminder of how much more other tech companies suck.
And most of the people layed off are most likely to be on the engineering side. (Sony keeps being Sony )