http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/03/us-sony-finances-idUSBRE8921F320121003

"(Reuters) - Sony Corp (6758.T) CEO Kazuo Hirai has spent $1.8 billion in the past three months snapping up an assortment of businesses such as medical equipment and cloud gaming, leaving investors to worry he is blowing his firm's waning finances on a muddled plan to revive the fading giant."

No idea if anyone else saw it or posted about this (if so, feel free to delete this post), but thought it could be cool for a little interesting debate, at least. It's definitely going to make it interesting to see how the quarter that just passed will go. I didn't even realize they spent that much money on the So-net Entertainment deal.

i know nothing about any medical equipment but at the time of the gaikai buyout i heard nothing but praise from investors. to me, that particular buyout seemed reasonably prices with a good amount of potential. ..i hope so at least.

What matters is if this investment will profit, if it will, no problem.

I'm not so sure Gaikai was a good buy. After what happened to OnLive it's not looking good for cloud gaming. As someone who's broadband internet isn't fast enough I'm glad that it will be a long while before it takes off. I prefer buying games on actual media that I can hold. MS smartly didn't buy Onlive even though they have the money.

tagging

I think the main fear now of anyone putting any money into a cloud gaming on-live type account was after the scare that they were going to go bankrupt people realized that if that happens they have nothing, you have spent money for games you will never have access to again and there really wouldn't be any fair comeback, it's not like the xbox where if microsoft stopped existing tomorrow all the games on my shelf would vanish. I think the prospect of investing money into a gaming collection which could just dissappear is not gonna happen.

As a nuts games collector too the concept of cloud gaming is kinda nasty for me, gotta have the boxes on a shelf!

I think the deal they made for the music catalog was OK, but the Gaikai one was stupid. Microsoft just poaches staff and probably gets the same expertise at pennies on the dollar.

I'm in the same boat as you. I don't sell my games/consoles. I have everything going back to Atari. I have purchased only a few, when on sale, digital only games. I enjoy them, but I can't help but wonder if I'll be able to play them in 20 years like I can my NES games. I purchased Outrun 2 Online on XBLA. Sega pulled it because thier deal for the Ferrari license ended. I can still play it, but it's no longer up for purchase. What happens if I delete it? I don't know. Will it always be part of my account, no matter what? I hope so. Maybe it will come back with a new Ferrari license or replacement look alike cars. I'm happy that I can still play the game, but who knows for how long I'll get to.

At least my Outrun 2006 Coast 2 Coast for Xbox will work for as long as I have an original Xbox to play it on.

The thing I really can't stand about cloud gaming like OnLive is that you don't even purchase a digital copy. You just pay for a service like you would cable TV.  If you're playing a cloud game and it gets pulled it's like a TV show getting canceled. But you can't record the games like you can TV shows.

Sounds like Reuters posted that for the hits. Not a single one of those purchases were a bad move and if they can continue leveraging the right decisions now the company will be in a far better place down the road. The main issue is restructuring their waning sectors and selling off the terrible ones. TV is seeing a lot of changes, shrinkage mainly, and we have yet to see what kind of results those decisions will have on Sony's finances. Among that instilling cooperation between sectors, merging platforms together, and cutting the fat through lay offs and restructuring, Sony is having a dramatic change. People must remember that very little time has gone by since Kaz became CEO and results don't come until after the fact.

Hmm depends on what Sony does with the purchases. Hopefully they can prosper but hey every Giant has to fall maybe this is just the long and slow process of the end of Sony.