Sony last quarter fiscal results are out this week?

They need to put out a lot more movies. They need another Spiderman 3.

It is a in house culture war. I could see a 50/50 chance of Sir Howard staying. Still, they need him to compete in the global market by appearance; or they could figure out that they don't and put him on the beach.

This is quite tragic if it is true. Entrenched lower management needs to comprehend why Stringer is the CEO in the first place. Why Sony actually hired a CEO outside of the Japanese ranks, and the answer is Stringer is very good at what he does. How Sony had done things for years was not good for the company, for its consumers, or for its investors.

Stringer was brought on board to beat the company into shape. What did they think this meant. It is the toughest kind of love, and you just have to grin and bear it as you pay for the excesses of the past. Tragic though it is it is hardly Stringers fault that Sony got fat, soft, and over indulgent.

We talk on this all the time in these forums. How reckless Sony has been in business. I respect Stringer during this console war he said two things that show an acute understanding of the situation that the previous management obviously lacked. He argued that the format war should have been averted, and that Sony should not be involved in building and designing processors.

Both cost Sony dearly. Had a format compromise been reached Sony wouldn't have had to churn ungodly amounts of money into winning. They may not have made as much, but they wouldn't have risked anything. Finally being an end product supplier is preferable to being the sub component manufacturer. At the tail end you can always go with the winner. Whereas they lost on both ends. Better to lose on one thing rather then double your losses by being pot committed.

Had Stringer been on board just a few years sooner. Sony could have saved itself five or six billion dollars in losses. Brought on by overly aggressive management.

well gaming division will turn profit this year and be in better shape in 2010 thanks to GT5.

the main line of sony loosing money would be sony ericsson.

no idea their movie division but a good movie comming soon?

The gaming division will probably only be profitable this year if the yen weakens AND they don't make price cuts. If your revenue drops 10-20% when you weren't even making a profit yet, it's pretty hard to get profitable in the short term. Not to mention that PS3's increase in software sales is at least partly countered by PS2's and PSP's decrease.

PS3 hardware cost reductions should help a lot, but IMO probably not enough to counter those factors. All will be clearer when the next financial report comes.

Put out too many movies at once though and you screw yourself... because people only have so much money... then you canibalize your "full price sales".. because retailers aren't going to just quadruple the number of blu-rays they buy because you quandruple your releases.

OR You're forced to keep your movies at full price longer... which is going to frustrate the consumer who might just opt for the cheaper DVD options if they feel like Blu-ray movies never come down in price.

Tricky stuff that.

Well, first party releases make Sony far more money per title than third party stuff.  LittleBigPlanet is selling at a nice pace (it's tracking well above any of Sony's Holiday 2007 releases, for example), and Killzone 2 will probably be Sony's best selling first party title since GT4 (though it may not break MotorStorm's numbers, but MotorStorm was probably Sony's most heavily bundled game...ever).  This should help in offsetting the decrease in ps2 software numbers. 

If GT5 hits next year, it'll be a very good year for SCEWWS.

Also, PSP's software fluctuates weekly compared to the previous year, but overall it's doing better than last year (compare January 9th's worldwide software sales to January 11th's last year), thanks mostly due to the PSP's resurgance in Japan.  Over the holidays, some weeks it was 1-200k below last year's numbers, and some weeks (Dissidia's release week) it was above last years numbers.

Of course, hardware costs are still the big question here.  I agree with the bolded part of your post 100%.

Tv's are commodities?

Software for gadgets?

Blu-Ray?

At this point they were warned, consumers showed their might before with compact disc's but oh well.

Cutting the fat means cutting productivity? Sony may have gotten too complicated for it's own good. I don't believe that their problem is with 'premium' products but with the products themselves.

Gaming specific - the question would be.

Would Nintendo succed by selling an HD Wii? Could the Nintendo survive with a Wii that costs $350? Would they still be fighting the battle down stream? Historically - no, but common sense sais yes. V_V

no, next week on the 29th.

This week they'll (hopefully) release details of their planned restructuring.