Wall Street Journal on Sony.... Ouch!!!

[senseinobaka]

bdbdbd said:
@senseinobaka: Official line may differ largely from reality. If there's no R&D for PSP2 or PS4, you can be quite sure there will be no such things.
Sony is propably aiming 2011-2012 for PS4 release, so if they don't have the R&D going already, they are going to be very late.

R&D isn't something you "just start when you need it", it's a continous process. PSP3000 required R&D, removing the BC from PS3 required R&D, PS3:s white colour required R&D, new power brick required R&D, cutting the power consumption required R&D and even the different bundles require R&D and the list goes on. If Sony didn't have R&D going for PS4 and PSP2, their R&D costs would be down a lot. Things don't "just happen" you know.

We agree, R&D is a proactive measure but we are taking about 2 different endeavors. I'm talking about large-scale R&D into new technologies and marketing strategies. This kind of R&D is traditionally started several years before a console launch and costs 100's of millions per year. You are mentioning fairly simple changes that dont require factory retooling, new tech, and vastly new components.

  
If game developement is outsourced, why does Sony own so many studios? If Sony has a large number of studios and all they have in the studios is executives, you can be damn sure that layoffs will happen, since all they'd do is pay for byrocracy for nothing (=high administrative costs).

Sorry, I didnt mean it that way. Sony employees are at an administrative - executive level. So sony will not be laying off those needed to run the game division. Manufacturing is outsourced, Sony outsources development to 3rd parties by function as a publisher, and sony owns lots of studios as you mention. However, if sony cuts the budget to their owned studios then we will here of layoffs from them, not from sony. ie. Naughty Dog (I believe sony owns them) will layoff x amount of employees. I personally doubt that this would happen since software remains their profit generator.

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