Global UP! - Everything up (software and hardware) - March 3rd (Vita = 167k)

[binary solo]

Hyruken said:

I can't be bothered to re-quote everything as it will turn into a mega quote thread.
But I will respond to your "cherry picking" thing. In light of that report I find it very ironic that you would say I was cherry picking when you picked the one positive while ignoring the rest of the report which was very damning.

For example you ignored these from that report

"The likelihood of a strong recovery in Sony's earnings is low, due to a massive erosion of prices, falling demand, and harsh competition."

You do realise you highlighted the wrong word there right? The important word there is "strong". The likelihood for a strong recovery is low. They don;t say the likelihood of a recovery is low. So there could be a high likelihood of a modest or weak recovery, but a recovery nonetheless. glass half full and all that. Though in Sony's case it might only be about 30% full.

I'm no business analyst, but poor performance in one division only means there isn't systemic failings throught the company. Loss through 1/5 divisions is far less serious for a company's prospects than losses through all 5 divisions. It's still serious, but not so serious that you can start writing the company's obituary.

Some companies also run businesses with separate divisions like semi-autonymous entities. On occasion it's good practice to avoid cross subsidy (or the reverse) by forcing a profitable division to take account of the poor performance in other divisions in its business strategy. If you force that sort of consideration on a good performing division then you can hamstring performance of that division in the medium to long term. Establishing an install base is vital for consoles, for software revenue and for 3rd party support. If 3rd parties leave PSV in droves PSV is dead, if SE decide PSV is too weak for it to get a Monster Hunter title that's a major hole in  PSV's library which 1st party SW can't hope to fill. Therefore is PSV falls to 3DS pre-cut numbers the division management need a relatively free had to do what it takes to revive sales. If they have to worry about how bad TV sales are going to be as part of their PSV strategy then PSV's fate is looking shaky.

I think Sony will pack in a memory stick with every PSV, because that's one of the key criticisms it faces. I don't think the $250 price tag in itself is facing a lot of resistance, it's the fact that you don't get a practically functional unit for that price, which I think is their mistake. If they are breaking even on PSV then they can probably afford the loss they take for giving away the smallest memory stick (if the memory stick is $20 and it's a high margin product then they are probably only losing $5-7), that way they can afford to do some game bundling deals too. I think I'd be looking into something like that rather than a price cut this year, or at least do that at E3 and if sales don't pick up enough then do a price cut for the holidays.