Sony launches crowdfunding platform

[mjk45]

Azzanation said:

Slarvax said:
Imagine they put up something like the Virtual Boy: Destined to fail. Even though it failed, there were still 2 million people that bought it. Of those 2 million, I'd say close to 100k would be willing to crowdfund it. That's why I believe this is a bad idea.

No matter which product or cool idea some employee had, there will always be a bunch of people that think it rocks and it should reach the market... the problem is that those excited fellas don't understand the market. In my opinion, you can't trust the consumer on what they think is cool for the market.

In fact, if your cool product wasn't approved or something, there is a reason for that. Isn't someones job to analize if there is a market to sell some products? Will they get fired/replaced by this?

I agree, you cant judge the market on what the people want because people dont know what they want, they only think they know what they want. It takes alot of studying the market and history lessons to learn what can make or break the industry. I for one dont trust the community because everyone wants different things. Ill leave the thinking to the company who is suppose to have employees to determine what the market needs. 

I might be wrong here but this sounds like Sony looking at an avenue for Projects from Sony employees rather than Sony R&D itself ,  quite often a lot of staff especially those with an engineering /science background in large companies with a product based focus find that a lot of their employees , some times it one person or it might invole a collaboration .

These projects/ideas may have come about from an earlier project or their field of expertise or  something else (the paths to conception can be myriad) ,but because  they don't fit into the normal R&D structures a lot of these type of projects never get see whether they have a viable future let alone get an opportunity to be funded. sure there would be examples of products or ideas that have escaped this trap but it's usually through happenstance .

My reason for liking the look of this is it gives people working at Sony a pathway to gauge their inventions and the public gets to decide whether they see enough potential to take a risk and  back them.
Sony also wins because they get to see and make decisions on these projects (a lot that maybe wouldn't have seen daylight) in a more comprehsive manner.