Sony instigates competition among its own devices... again.

[sonicfan1373]

Sony has an interesting strategy that will slowly make more sense as time goes by. One thing that Andrew House stated that really sticks in my mind was that our approach to living room entertainment is very outdated; to me that conjures up an image of my own personal living room space which is filled with consoles, streaming devices, home theatre system, and a bunch of other boxes. I feel with the power of Gaikai as well as other partnerships and first-party services Sony is attempting to reduce the mess in our living rooms by creating one device that does it all. For example, I feel that Sony's grand plan is that one day you purchase a premium Bravia television and that does everything you want at the centre of your living room. Similarly, you can then switch to an Xperia mobile device when you leave your living room space and again have access to everything you need right there. This is akin to the vision Apple had with the iMac (one device with everything built in, no mess, no complications) and with their entire eco-system of products but Sony is making a bolder move.

So rather than viewing this as competition between devices I see it as more of a choice for consumers of what device fits their living space best without having to compromise what they get in terms of software and services; anyways, Sony is making losses on most of its hardware so they might as well sell you fewer devices that fit your life and get the money back through all of their services and software.

I do not know how this will work out for Sony in the future, the idea in itself is great, but as always the execution and practicality is where it counts. Personally, while I am skeptical about certain aspects of their strategy at this time (specifically with the practicality of Playstation Now), I see a lot of room for improvement in the future, and I can see this strategy working especially well for Sony because they have a lot of devices on the market that give people a lot of choice and they have first-party services and third-party relations to back-up their devices.