Sony report $2.9 Billion Annual Loss

[Skykid]

Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/ ... E020120202

Not to be alarmist or anything, but Sony haven't been properly ahead of the curve since the PS2, and even that success was largely on the back of 3rd party support brought on by its predecessor (if you're of the belief that the Dreamcast and Gamecube were perfectly good platforms.)

$2.9 Billion is obviously across the entire electronics division, not just games, but it's still an enormous loss.

[StarCreator]

Kaz literally just stepped into the throne this week (or at least it was announced he is going to be). Give him a little time to screw up first!

Big parts of the losses are the sale of the S-LCD venture to Samsung, and the wildly valuable yen wreaking havoc just like it is with every other multinational company based in Japan.

[Skykid]

Kaz literally just stepped into the throne this week (or at least it was announced he is going to be). Give him a little time to screw up first!

Lol, sorry. That was directed toward his work with the gaming division. If he's taking over as CEO who's taking the reigns on Playstation stuff?

[Jonathan Ingram]

Whoever it is who`s going to be in charge of Sony`s gaming division from now on, I hope they spend some time and money to reorganize SCEJ. While SCEA and SCEE have been expanding their already existing assets and acquiring new ones, SCEJ has been a complete joke this gen. The studio is completely out of touch with the gaming tastes of the Japanese demographic and hasn`t been able to launch a new successful IP since the PSX days with the exception of Demon`s Souls which they didn`t give a shit about. All they have left now is Gran Turismo and Minna no Golf(both of which have been losing in popularity since early 2000s) as well as a bunch of niche games like Patapon, Loco Roco and Gravity Daze. The fact that they haven`t even tried cashing in on Monster Hunter`s popularity and making an MH clone of their own at the time when many Japanese devs have been doing exactly that speaks for itself.

[Friendly]

Considering the awful position PS3 was in at the begining of this generation (1 year late, 599 Dollars), Kaz Hirai did a remarkable job of repairing Ken Kutaragi's damage. After all the worldwide install base of PS3 and 360 is equal now; who would have thought this possible 2-3 years ago.

Anyway, Sony REALLY needs some restructuring and re-organizing. Apparently the left hand doesn't know what the right hand does. And from what I've read, Sir Howard Stringer was quite surprised that even though he was CEO, he wasn't quite in charge (=departments making decissions without his approval). Maybe Hirai will have better luck as new CEO, given that he is Japanese.

[Skykid]

Well Kaz must have done something right to be moved into CEO position. To be honest I think I've got this backward, Kaz only took over from Kutaragi just after the PS3 launch, so all the poor marketing/hardware decisions weren't his fault.

Sorry Kaz, I'll edit my opening post.

[Friendly]

Ken Kutaragi, aka the "Father of the Playstation" first and foremost was (is) an inventor and a fan of technology, and not a business man. He pretty much single-handedly dragged Sony into the video-game business (after secretly creating the sound chip of the Super Famicom and trying to broker a partnership between Nintendo and Sony). Unfortunately, allowing him access to almost unlimited resources to create his PS3 (I think something like 4.5 Billion USD were spent on developing the Cell processor) wasn't exactly clever.

I know a lot of people don't like Sony, but their Playstation brand did a lot for us gamers; it broke Nintendo's strangle-hold and changed the unequal positions that console makers and game developers used to be in. Playstation forced the competition to use modern technology in game systems. In the olden days, game sytstems were made out of cheap and outdated computer components.

Competition is good. I wouldn't want either of the current big 3 to exit the console business.

[Skykid]

Ken Kutaragi, aka the "Father of the Playstation" first and foremost was (is) an inventor and a fan of technology, and not a business man. He pretty much single-handedly dragged Sony into the video-game business (after secretly creating the sound chip of the Super Famicom and trying to broker a partnership between Nintendo and Sony). Unfortunately, allowing him access to almost unlimited resources to create his PS3 (I think something like 4.5 Billion USD were spent on developing the Cell processor) wasn't exactly clever.

I know a lot of people don't like Sony, but their Playstation brand did a lot for us gamers; it broke Nintendo's strangle-hold and changed the unequal positions that console makers and game developers used to be in. Playstation forced the competition to use modern technology in game systems. In the olden days, game sytstems were made out of cheap and outdated computer components.

Competition is good. I wouldn't want either of the current big 3 to exit the console business.

This isn't a console wars thread Friendly, best to nip that in the bud eh?

You're right that Sony changed the face of the industry, although there's always an argument about whether or not the direction they pushed it in -- sidelining the Sega and Nintendo models to foster the mainstream industry of today -- was for the better. Ultimately it's all conjecture: shit changes and that's the way it happened, but by pioneering technology rather than creative gaming, I do miss the quality and soul of the software Sega and Nintendo used to create to sell their hardware, right up to and including Dreamcast.

[brentsg]

I blame people that just don't love 3D TV enough.

[Friendly]

Ken Kutaragi, aka the "Father of the Playstation" first and foremost was (is) an inventor and a fan of technology, and not a business man. He pretty much single-handedly dragged Sony into the video-game business (after secretly creating the sound chip of the Super Famicom and trying to broker a partnership between Nintendo and Sony). Unfortunately, allowing him access to almost unlimited resources to create his PS3 (I think something like 4.5 Billion USD were spent on developing the Cell processor) wasn't exactly clever.

I know a lot of people don't like Sony, but their Playstation brand did a lot for us gamers; it broke Nintendo's strangle-hold and changed the unequal positions that console makers and game developers used to be in. Playstation forced the competition to use modern technology in game systems. In the olden days, game sytstems were made out of cheap and outdated computer components.

Competition is good. I wouldn't want either of the current big 3 to exit the console business.

This isn't a console wars thread Friendly, best to nip that in the bud eh?

Eh, I thought that was a very reasonable anti-console-war post.

[ancestral-knowledge]

I don't even care if this shitty company goes down in the gaming segment. i don't like the PS3 and the fucking attitude they have towards their customers with shit like removing downward compatibility. Their credit card service sucks. they are the worst scum in the music business too along with Warner Media Group and various others suing companies and trying to control the internet. Sonys customer service is the worst. They even cannot get their security right and got hacked several times around the world. Enjoy typoing in your credit card information in a sony service (although payment via credit card is dumb from the beginning). The VAIO notebooks seem to have degraded too.

Oh yeah and the vita is a fucking joke. Fuck this downloadable crap culture.

And i blame Sony for being fucking douches not to let other companies like CAVE be able to release games on their platform and forcing ridicilous restrictions like 16:9 mode in every game etc.

They can suck my dick.



My Photo and Video CAM are excellent though. And my PS2 !

[Skykid]

Eh, I thought that was a very reasonable anti-console-war post.

It was, I just thought I'd flag an 'in-case' post before debate flared up.

Anyway, back to business, or lack thereof.

[louisg]

Ken Kutaragi, aka the "Father of the Playstation" first and foremost was (is) an inventor and a fan of technology, and not a business man. He pretty much single-handedly dragged Sony into the video-game business (after secretly creating the sound chip of the Super Famicom and trying to broker a partnership between Nintendo and Sony). Unfortunately, allowing him access to almost unlimited resources to create his PS3 (I think something like 4.5 Billion USD were spent on developing the Cell processor) wasn't exactly clever.

I know a lot of people don't like Sony, but their Playstation brand did a lot for us gamers; it broke Nintendo's strangle-hold and changed the unequal positions that console makers and game developers used to be in. Playstation forced the competition to use modern technology in game systems. In the olden days, game sytstems were made out of cheap and outdated computer components.

Competition is good. I wouldn't want either of the current big 3 to exit the console business.

This isn't a console wars thread Friendly, best to nip that in the bud eh?

You're right that Sony changed the face of the industry, although there's always an argument about whether or not the direction they pushed it in -- sidelining the Sega and Nintendo models to foster the mainstream industry of today -- was for the better. Ultimately it's all conjecture: shit changes and that's the way it happened, but by pioneering technology rather than creative gaming, I do miss the quality and soul of the software Sega and Nintendo used to create to sell their hardware, right up to and including Dreamcast.

Yeah, I'd argue that 1st party support often shows a certain kind of polish or ambition because it can make or break an entire platform. Sega and Nintendo definitely had their own personalities. Sony provided a system with, AFAIK, fewer design flaws than the competition at a time when almost nobody had a good grip on how to design a 3d gaming platform.

But, as I see it, Sony didn't learn from their successes: PSX was cheap and easy to code for, beating out Saturn and N64 which were expensive and/or hard to code for. PS2 sold on brand name, but it was expensive and hard to code for. Gamers enamored with the Sony brand snapped up the PS2, but I don't think they had considered that Nintendo and Microsoft would have made inroads by the time the PS3 launched. Or maybe they just thought the time was right to aim at older consumers that have cash to throw around on electronics, whether it's a nice hi-fi setup or an expensive HD movie/gaming setup.

I think the thing that broke Nintendo's strangle-hold was the 16-bit generation. They still did well, of course, but they no longer could make everything exclusive (I'm not sure if there was a court decision that went along with this or if developers just didn't see it as benefitting them any longer).

But failure is good! It seems like the console wars pattern is: hw dev becomes popular, hw dev becomes dicks to sw devs and consumers, hw platform doesn't do so well, hw dev rethinks things and tries again

[Blackbird]

I'm kind of unsurprised to hear that Sony's taking a beating. The LulzSec/PSN hacking scandal caused enormous damage to Sony's reputation, especially for online gaming. I know I will never use any of Sony's online services after this (I wasn't using them before, but definitely not now). Online gaming being one of the most lucrative gaming segments, that's gotta hurt them.

[BulletMagnet]

If memory serves, didn't Nintendo also post disappointing figures recently (not sure about MS)? Methinks all of the "big three" are in a bit of a slump right now, for a variety of reasons - I'd personally name the length of the current generation (people are starting to wait for whatever comes next...or are saying "heck with it" and updating their PC graphics cards) and the increasing popularity of casual/smartphone gaming as the biggest culprits offhand, but I'm not an expert.

[Skykid]

If memory serves, didn't Nintendo also post disappointing figures recently (not sure about MS)? Methinks all of the "big three" are in a bit of a slump right now, for a variety of reasons - I'd personally name the length of the current generation (people are starting to wait for whatever comes next...or are saying "heck with it" and updating their PC graphics cards) and the increasing popularity of casual/smartphone gaming as the biggest culprits offhand, but I'm not an expert.

Don't think anyone else matched $2 Billion, but Nintendo did post falls in Wii sales (which seem to have stabilised a bit now, alongside improved 3DS sales.)

Microsoft have no market in Japan, but I think they're doing well with Kinect everywhere else.

[louisg]

If memory serves, didn't Nintendo also post disappointing figures recently (not sure about MS)? Methinks all of the "big three" are in a bit of a slump right now, for a variety of reasons - I'd personally name the length of the current generation (people are starting to wait for whatever comes next...or are saying "heck with it" and updating their PC graphics cards) and the increasing popularity of casual/smartphone gaming as the biggest culprits offhand, but I'm not an expert.

Yeah, we're definitely in that between-generation lull right now

[Ed Oscuro]

News flash: The PC is not dead yet! Neither are mobile devices!

Actually, business foibles (I'm not really up to speed on this one) notwithstanding, Ken Kutaragi was the best thing to happen to Sony in the three decades surrounding the launch of the PlayStation, perhaps second only to their production of image sensors for digital cameras and cellphones (Walkman and the CD-ROM happened in the late 70s/very early 80s period, so the three decades surrounding the PlayStation series have had little else of as great an impact as the PlayStation series). The 3D hardware within the PlayStation may have been the work of a different group, as it was originally from 1980s work targeting graphics production for broadcast media, but it seems safe to say that Ken Kutaragi was the man responsible for bringing it together and not merely releasing a 2D system with a CD-ROM, as the other players were doing. Then he was around for the PS2.

I don't think the issue was so much that Sony sucked; Microsoft and Nintendo stepped up their games, with Microsoft arguably perfecting (even though it took Japanese gamers a long time to admit it) the HD graphics game, and Nintendo rushing into a totally different market that had been left completely open to them, which any of the players probably could have attacked but which Nintendo was best-placed to exploit (in that sense, the generic nature of PlayStation branding hurt them in this area). Also bad was the increasing perception that PlayStation consoles were unwieldy, hard to develop for, and even unreliable (aside from the apparently well-deserved PS2 criticisms, I recall there being at least a reported rumor that the PS3's Cell cores just might fail altogether after a while).

There were some visionaries at Sony, who saw perfectly well that the PlayStation (or any other system) could be a "go to it for everything" system. The company's "troubles" during the prosperous '90s look more like very forward-thinking, if incautious, investments (i.e. the movie studios) to make Sony a media-and-gadgets powerhouse. The need to try to tie movies and the set-top-box ideal together is still recognized. But perhaps Mickey Schulhof's example has haunted the company, and they haven't been as aggressive in promoting convergence (using the '90s terminology) as strongly as they should have.

In other news, I'm surprised Sir Howard Stringer has hung on as CEO for as long as he has. I don't have any sense of the accomplishments of his tenure, yet hear nothing like criticism, which perhaps makes him the quintessential Japanese businessman. For an expat Brit, I think Michael Woodford (formerly of Olympus) was much more effective, but that's an entirely different situation beyond the appearance of conformity.

For all his "Xbox 1.5" baloney, it seems that Ken Kutaragi was more right than wrong about the PlayStation 3 being a ten-year system after all.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

How is PS Move doing atm? I would guess its a complete failure since none of the gaming sites talk about it nowadays

[Skykid]

How is PS Move doing atm? I would guess its a complete failure since none of the gaming sites talk about it nowadays

It's shifted 9 million, which is about half of what Kinect has done. It's a cheaper peripheral too. Difficult to call it a failure, but there are no decent games to support it, so those 9 million people probably left it under the sofa to collect dust and are bitter whenever they think about it.

[GaijinPunch]

And from what I've read, Sir Howard Stringer was quite surprised that even though he was CEO, he wasn't quite in charge (=departments making decissions without his approval).

How could anyone be so high up in a Japanese company and be surprised by that? White people are never fully in charge. Look at Olympus... or what's left of them.

[Jonathan Ingram]

Difficult to call it a failure, but there are no decent games to support it, so those 9 million people probably left it under the sofa to collect dust and are bitter whenever they think about it.

Time Crisis 4, Razing Storm, Deadstorm Pirates, Dead Space: Extraction, House of the Dead: Overkill. The table tennis game from Sports Champions is wicked awesome. Killzone 3, Heavy Rain and Infamous: Festival of Blood are reportedly great with Move too. Coming soon are House of the Dead 3-4 and BioHazard Chronicles HD Selection.

[Skykid]

Difficult to call it a failure, but there are no decent games to support it, so those 9 million people probably left it under the sofa to collect dust and are bitter whenever they think about it.

Time Crisis 4, Razing Storm, Deadstorm Pirates, Dead Space: Extraction, House of the Dead: Overkill. The table tennis game from Sports Champions is wicked awesome. Killzone 3, Heavy Rain and Infamous: Festival of Blood are reportedly great with Move too. Coming soon are House of the Dead 3-4 and BioHazard Chronicles HD Selection.

I think a lot of those would be better with a lightgun... right?

[TrevHead (TVR)]

^ Considering LCD lightguns can be picked up for under £30, I can imagine quite a few Move users will be quite pissed.

Isnt there any (good) games that use the nunchuck and play like Sin and Punishment 2? (Shame Treasure hasnt ported it over)

[neorichieb1971]

None of the console manufacturers know what console gamers want. Console games are becoming hand-me-down PC games. You might as well buy a PC and play a better version of the game at half the price.


Honestly I wouldn't break my piggy bank for most games these days. If money is lost its not because of hardware though, its software. Consoles have no identity with gamers anymore.

Politics aside, games companies just make shit games.

[Drum]

Whoever it is who`s going to be in charge of Sony`s gaming division from now on, I hope they spend some time and money to reorganize SCEJ. While SCEA and SCEE have been expanding their already existing assets and acquiring new ones, SCEJ has been a complete joke this gen. The studio is completely out of touch with the gaming tastes of the Japanese demographic and hasn`t been able to launch a new successful IP since the PSX days with the exception of Demon`s Souls which they didn`t give a shit about. All they have left now is Gran Turismo and Minna no Golf(both of which have been losing in popularity since early 2000s) as well as a bunch of niche games like Patapon, Loco Roco and Gravity Daze. The fact that they haven`t even tried cashing in on Monster Hunter`s popularity and making an MH clone of their own at the time when many Japanese devs have been doing exactly that speaks for itself.

Sony Japan seems to specialise in oddities/curiosities while Sony America gets on with the business of reacting to trends and stuff. It was not a good generation for the kind of stuff they did, retail-wise.

Isnt there any (good) games that use the nunchuck and play like Sin and Punishment 2? (Shame Treasure hasnt ported it over)

Nintendo owns S&P.

[Barrakketh]

If memory serves, didn't Nintendo also post disappointing figures recently (not sure about MS)? Methinks all of the "big three" are in a bit of a slump right now, for a variety of reasons - I'd personally name the length of the current generation (people are starting to wait for whatever comes next...or are saying "heck with it" and updating their PC graphics cards) and the increasing popularity of casual/smartphone gaming as the biggest culprits offhand, but I'm not an expert.

Nintendo took a big hit from the 3DS price cut, since they had overpriced the thing and that had hurt sales. The price cut hurt them in the short term, but the result of the price cut and games currently available has the 3DS doing as well (actually, I think a little better) than the DS at this point in its lifetime. That and the strong Yen since most of their most their sales (about 80%) is overseas, but they can't really raise the price because consumers won't react well to it.

Sony's going to need something to help the Vita in Japan, the last Media Create numbers I looked at had the Vita being outsold by the PSP. Ouch.

How is PS Move doing atm? I would guess its a complete failure since none of the gaming sites talk about it nowadays

It's shifted 9 million, which is about half of what Kinect has done. It's a cheaper peripheral too.

It's cheaper for a single player, but what about for 2-4 players? You can buy a standaone Kinect for $100. A starter bundle for Move is $25 cheaper, but you might want the "nunchuck" (Move navigation controller) which will cost $25. And you're looking at $28 for each additional "remote".

[Estebang]

A Monster Hunter Vita game has been confirmed for the second half of the year (probably a G version of MH4), so I'm not too worried about the Vita's prospects. MH is pretty much Japan's Call of Duty at this point: 3G single-handedly accounted for a huge boost to 3DS sales.

I'm increasingly doubtful that there will ever be a PS4.

[Drum]

A Monster Hunter Vita game has been confirmed for the second half of the year (probably a G version of MH4), so I'm not too worried about the Vita's prospects. MH is pretty much Japan's Call of Duty at this point: 3G single-handedly accounted for a huge boost to 3DS sales.

I'm increasingly doubtful that there will ever be a PS4.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

[Friendly]

A Monster Hunter Vita game has been confirmed for the second half of the year (probably a G version of MH4), so I'm not too worried about the Vita's prospects. MH is pretty much Japan's Call of Duty at this point: 3G single-handedly accounted for a huge boost to 3DS sales.

I'm increasingly doubtful that there will ever be a PS4.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Indeed. Some people don't seem to get that Sony's Computer Entertainment division is the most profitable part of the company. The current losses are mostly caused by their TV department and a strong Yen.

PS.
Maybe the next Playstation won't be called "4", because 4 = shi (death, unlucky number).