and goodness, I remember when I used to read Kotaku daily. How far they've fallen.

Has the author of that article been asleep for the last six years?

How is the fact that the PS3 is in third place overall anything new or interesting? It launched at $600, it was losing money, it had a paltry lineup for a good couple of years, and the 360 had a bunch of exclusives of convenience from before the PS3 came out. It then caught up with the 360, and the gap increased and decreased, and nowadays it's often the best selling of the home consoles.

None of the above warrants a mention in an interview, let alone an entire article.

It's a sliding scale really. Where you sacrafice one to move along another to find some sort of equilibrium.

And how did Sony not benefit from BluRay? Keep in mind that their TVs only started to do poorly recently.

kowen kinda stole my thunder, but they are a MUCH bigger failure this gen in the "making money" quest than the "arbitrary sales war" quest.  In fact, the whole "making money" thing is something that the seeming majority of Sony fans on this site don't want to even discuss.  Why?  Because it's been THAT huge of a failure in that regard.  

The PS3 was a deeply flawed project for a business to undertake.  It was birthed in arrogance and has contributed to a near total financial collapse of a once dominant company.  The fact that they've still eeked out some great gaming experiences out of it is a testament to a dedicated fanbase and some very talented developers.  I'm really curious to see what they could possibly do next gen, as the direction chosen for the PS2 and definitely PS3 just won't cut it next gen.

What's confusing them? The second sequel is always a disaster. Godfather 3, Spider-Man 3, N64, PS3.

I think they thought they would get more of substance from the man. Specifically some frank honesty about how this generation played out. This would be the logical time to be owning up to past failures, and assuring their current customers that they wouldn't repeat those errors again in the future. The only failure on the interviewers part really was giving Sony more credit then was due. Basically they expected some common sense.

The same common sense we would expect from anyone in real life. Who had fucked up badly, and already gotten their ass chewed out over the whole thing. How fucking hard is it really to just say this is how we fucked up, and this is how we aren't going to fuck up in the future. Not only does spin not help move the product at this point in time. It makes Sony look intellectually dishonest.

They were handed a golden opportunity to earn some much needed forgiveness from disenfranchised gamers. Many of which just want to be told that they were right. Instead of taking that opportunity however they slapped the open hand, and tried to spin it again. Which hasn't worked for them at all this generation. Spinning the console right now isn't going to sell more units, but getting some credit for good behavior could have paid out some real dividends.

I don't know about you guys, but I did get something from that article. Sony isn't sorry about what happened, or even sorry that they got caught. They really don't seem to believe they screwed up at all. Which means they must think it was what the other guy did right. That means they aren't going to change their corporate culture at all to stop this generation from happening all over again. I expect spin early on, but this late in a generation. That is just plain outright denial. Mark my words Sony isn't done fucking up yet.

Not what I remember at all. Bravias were one of Sony's biggest money makers at the start of this gaming generation (2006-2008), but have fallen as they spend way too much on R&D and don't competitively price their products to match Samsung and LG.

@ Darth

I'm not really sure what thunder there is to steal. I'm not arguing for any point, just pointing out that 'winning' isn't what any of the big three companies are focused on. It's just a byproduct of their efforts.

EDIT: After looking for numbers, I see a smarthouse article that talks about their losses, but I have no idea what division/numbers they're sourcing.

Where all is rosy? I'm not sure if that could even possibly apply today as I said I thought they were proftiable four years ago. I was right about the decline though, but not only in profitability but also in market share/sales.

@outlawauron

It is fairly easy to be profitable when you hide your losses behind massive gutting. Sorry the politically correct thing to say would be comprehensive restructuring via selling off assets to facilitate cash flow into future development. In a nutshell Sony five years ago, and before was selling off large chunks of their portfolio, and taking out massive loans. I did the math a few years back, and Sony had literally set aside five billion dollars for their loss leading strategy with the PS3. Which as it turns out wasn't anywhere near enough when they had to drop the retail price twice in the first year to keep the console alive.

Anyway Sony looked good five years ago, because they had just sold billions of dollars of assets which obviously don't have overhead. It wasn't that they were really making profit off their business. They just threw a garage sale, but they were still coming up short at their day job. Sony has had problems for about a decade. When Stringer came on board the order of the day was selling assets to cover losses.

Just a few links to provide proof for my assertions.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/76590-Sony-Sells-Financial-Stake-to-Fund-Games-Unit

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ac.REUfeFG9Q

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/23/BUGESHCVKC1.DTL

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2006/12/04/daily32.html

Interesting read. We often hear that the PS division is "the one working part of Sony" or something like that (really their bread and butter seems to be Columbia-Tristar/Pictures Television/BGM at this point), but this helps show how SCE's missteps have hurt Sony as a whole.