SONY...The most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world...Historically noted for creating its own in-house standards... Name synonyms to Reliability with Passion for Innovative Technology is reeling under sever pressure. A company with Annual sales of $69 Billion and employing over 160,000 people is looking for a break thru. Can its flag ship launch of PS3 with Blue Ray technology save "Sony World".
Play Station Launch Story:
Sony's trouble story began earlier this year, when the wheels were falling off the train when Sony started delaying the release of the new PlayStation 3. The first excuse Sony made was that licensing issues were causing the delay from Spring 2006 to November 2006, but that was not the real reason. At Long last when Sony Play station 3 (PS3) was released, on Nov 17th, Sony had horrendous shortage of game consoles to sell. Sony made the best of the bad situation or at least made sure that the launch got plenty of hype.
Technical details:
Technically PS3 is a very impressive creation. Sony took two radically new technologies and successfully incorporated them into a consumer product. The heart of the PS3 is a new Cell broadband engine processor, a joint development Of Sony, Toshiba and IBM.Games are delivered on Blue Ray Disc’s, a high definition DVD that can handle up to 50GB of data. The combination of a super fast processor optimized for Graphics and almost unlimited data storage allows game designers to achieve realism unprecedented in the console of games. The PS3 can play high definition Blue ray movies as well as normal DVD's... but will that be good enough?
The bottom-line Question becomes...Will the consumers find the PS3 worth $200 more than Microsoft Xbox 360?
Sony could have made this equation easier, if it used a month that the PS3 was delayed, mainly by problems in making the blue ray drive, to get the online component of the Play station experience (Play station Store) into shape. Its failure to do so is a major mystery. The most important component of the online experience will be multi player gaming and this is becoming major strength of the Xbox. Sony made a good move by making the Play station network free, while Microsoft charges $50 per year for Xbox Live...but will take a while as the sale of lot more PS3's before we could tell how good there online gaming is.
Sony clearly blew it with other network features as well. The Play Station Store is mainly a way to download games and high definition movie trailers, but the browser interface is very awkward to use. Strangest of all, the PS3 is devoid of the software required for connecting to other devices in the home like computers of other devices. For example if u want to play music on PS3 u have to connect a memory card and a external hard drive or a player such as an I-pod directly to the console and transfer the songs from the device to the consoles hard drive. The same is true for movies or other video and forget about playing any copy protected media such as songs purchased from I-tunes. Even if Ur the one of handful of people who bought the music from Sony connect store. They won’t play in PS3 and this is very odd.
Financial Details:
The future of Sony CEO Howard Stringer rest on the success of this shinny black PS3.
Sony is far behind its competitors in the fast growing LCD flat-screen TV market and has lost its decades-long edge in portable music devices to Apple Computer's I-Pod players. With the failure of its TV, Music electronics businesses and its up-and-down Movie business, it has relied more and more on the video game business to keep profits up. But now even its video game business can't save the company. In fact, it's the video game business that could put the whole company right down the toilet. Here is it why
Play Station Launch Story:
Sony's trouble story began earlier this year, when the wheels were falling off the train when Sony started delaying the release of the new PlayStation 3. The first excuse Sony made was that licensing issues were causing the delay from Spring 2006 to November 2006, but that was not the real reason. At Long last when Sony Play station 3 (PS3) was released, on Nov 17th, Sony had horrendous shortage of game consoles to sell. Sony made the best of the bad situation or at least made sure that the launch got plenty of hype.
Technical details:
Technically PS3 is a very impressive creation. Sony took two radically new technologies and successfully incorporated them into a consumer product. The heart of the PS3 is a new Cell broadband engine processor, a joint development Of Sony, Toshiba and IBM.Games are delivered on Blue Ray Disc’s, a high definition DVD that can handle up to 50GB of data. The combination of a super fast processor optimized for Graphics and almost unlimited data storage allows game designers to achieve realism unprecedented in the console of games. The PS3 can play high definition Blue ray movies as well as normal DVD's... but will that be good enough?
The bottom-line Question becomes...Will the consumers find the PS3 worth $200 more than Microsoft Xbox 360?
Sony could have made this equation easier, if it used a month that the PS3 was delayed, mainly by problems in making the blue ray drive, to get the online component of the Play station experience (Play station Store) into shape. Its failure to do so is a major mystery. The most important component of the online experience will be multi player gaming and this is becoming major strength of the Xbox. Sony made a good move by making the Play station network free, while Microsoft charges $50 per year for Xbox Live...but will take a while as the sale of lot more PS3's before we could tell how good there online gaming is.
Sony clearly blew it with other network features as well. The Play Station Store is mainly a way to download games and high definition movie trailers, but the browser interface is very awkward to use. Strangest of all, the PS3 is devoid of the software required for connecting to other devices in the home like computers of other devices. For example if u want to play music on PS3 u have to connect a memory card and a external hard drive or a player such as an I-pod directly to the console and transfer the songs from the device to the consoles hard drive. The same is true for movies or other video and forget about playing any copy protected media such as songs purchased from I-tunes. Even if Ur the one of handful of people who bought the music from Sony connect store. They won’t play in PS3 and this is very odd.
Financial Details:
The future of Sony CEO Howard Stringer rest on the success of this shinny black PS3.
Sony is far behind its competitors in the fast growing LCD flat-screen TV market and has lost its decades-long edge in portable music devices to Apple Computer's I-Pod players. With the failure of its TV, Music electronics businesses and its up-and-down Movie business, it has relied more and more on the video game business to keep profits up. But now even its video game business can't save the company. In fact, it's the video game business that could put the whole company right down the toilet. Here is it why
Research firm iSuppli has reverse engineered the PS3 and has estimated that it will cost Sony $805.85-$840.35 for each unit sold. The materials price estimates do not include marketing, software development, or other costs, which will push Sony's total cost per console even, be higher. With Sony pricing the console at $499 and $599 depending on the model, it means that they will be eating a loss of between $241 - $306 every time someone buys a new console. In contrast, the materials cost for the Xbox 360 is estimated at only $501, and should continue to drop as the console ages. While Sony pays $200 to $300 for each raw Blue-ray drive, Microsoft pays only $20 for the simpler DVD drives. Of course, the single most costly item in the PS3 is the Blue-ray drive. Blue-ray would add at least another $200 or so to the price of the machine. And this cost is intended keeping in view promoting Blue Ray disc's which is a long term objective is for Sony.
Although the PS2 captured more than a 70 percent share of the previous generation of console sales, with Microsoft already predicted to sell 10 million Xbox 360 consoles and Nintendo selling 4 million of its new Wii consoles, Sony plans on making 6 million PS3 units before April. Let's say that they sell every one of them at full retail price. With what we know about the materials price -- particularly the price of Blue-Ray players -- let's say that they will lose only $270 for every PS3 they sell, The loss would be to an amount of $1.6 billion.
The bad news for Sony this year isn't restricted to video game competition. The company is also liable for a large share in the laptop battery recalls being conducted by Dell and Apple. Nearly 6 million batteries have been recalled in the past two months -- all of them manufactured by Sony. The battery fiasco alone could cost Sony as much as $500 million.
Devoting its cash reserves to losses in the video game and computing sectors, with no guarantee of future profits for another two years, could send the company's stock into a tailspin, once its investors realize the full measure of the grave situation for the company.
Although the PS2 captured more than a 70 percent share of the previous generation of console sales, with Microsoft already predicted to sell 10 million Xbox 360 consoles and Nintendo selling 4 million of its new Wii consoles, Sony plans on making 6 million PS3 units before April. Let's say that they sell every one of them at full retail price. With what we know about the materials price -- particularly the price of Blue-Ray players -- let's say that they will lose only $270 for every PS3 they sell, The loss would be to an amount of $1.6 billion.
The bad news for Sony this year isn't restricted to video game competition. The company is also liable for a large share in the laptop battery recalls being conducted by Dell and Apple. Nearly 6 million batteries have been recalled in the past two months -- all of them manufactured by Sony. The battery fiasco alone could cost Sony as much as $500 million.
Devoting its cash reserves to losses in the video game and computing sectors, with no guarantee of future profits for another two years, could send the company's stock into a tailspin, once its investors realize the full measure of the grave situation for the company.
Here is how u can save Sony:
If u are also a great fan of Akio Morita after reading the book Made In Japan like me..
Stop complaining that the PS3 costs $600. In order to cut down on its losses,-- it'll require that you buy two games in order to get a machine. That'll boost the price for you to around $725 or so.
But there's more! Want an HDMI cable? That'll be another $100 to $125. Now we're at $850 or so.
If u are also a great fan of Akio Morita after reading the book Made In Japan like me..
Stop complaining that the PS3 costs $600. In order to cut down on its losses,-- it'll require that you buy two games in order to get a machine. That'll boost the price for you to around $725 or so.
But there's more! Want an HDMI cable? That'll be another $100 to $125. Now we're at $850 or so.
You've got a Blue-ray player, so you'll want a few Blue-ray movies -- Sony titles only, of course. Buy six of them while you're at it! At an average list price of $25 each, we're talking another $150. That pushes our total price to an even $1,000.That'll go a long way to saving Sony.
Now who's going to save you?
Now who's going to save you?
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