As you should all know by now, I am a Sony guy first and foremost. I have been standing behind this company for 15 years waiting for them to unlock the holy grail of home entertainment, but sadley I think they are about to loose everything. This is a company that owned every catagoy of electronics, and entertaiment during the anologue era. A company that should have been able to lock down the digital era, and basically monopilize both industries. Instead, thanks to some of the worst managment in history, they are now looking down a long road, that they may not see the end of.

So what happened to Sony? The company left people in charge for to long, and those in charge now are complelty out of touch with what the consumer wants. The people in charge now still want to force consumers to be their pupets instead of finding out what it is they truly want. Another piece of the broken puzzle is the egos of the differant departments within the company. During the anolgue days each segment of the company had fell into its own corner. The movie guys in their place, music in theirs, software in thiers, and hardware in thiers. When the digital age emerged, non of the hot shots in each division wanted to colaberate, and now we stand were we are today.

Today Sony the pathetic remains of a company had the world in its hands, only to loose it thanks to power, greed, and idealist. They are standing at a fork in the road, no way back, and success on one side, and failure on the other. The road to failure is very simple. Continue to fight. Keep the same out of touch leaders, and give the consumer what Sony wants. The road to to success strangly is just as simple. Swallow the pride, and work as one. Put someone like Howard Stringer in charge, that is in it for the consumer.

Choose the road to success, and Sony has a chance to get back on top, and perhapps monopilize the industry for the better. It won't be as easy as it would have been if they would have done it back in the late 90's like they should have, but it can still be done. As Michael Jackson has said, "This is it". This is it for Sony. Do whats right for themselves, and the consumers, or it is over.

Yup a price drop would help but it's a recession.  As soon as the recession gets better then the economy will get better.

@kowenicki

Perhapps a price cut early is already figured in as part of the reason for the massive predicted losses. Or perhapps, Sony just plans to give people what they want from the PS3, and turn sales around by making it a more desirable product.

Give the people IPTV, Music dowloads, 3D, and Motion controls. That could be the anser to a huge sales influx, while becoming profitable.

Stringer is a pretty smart CEO. They'll get back on their feet and into the infinte glory fo the PS1 days.

Well, maybe not that strongly or quickly... but... *nostalgia*

IMO, they are too obsessed with DRM and that's why killed them over the years. They fell out of walkman business that way.

Very nicely written I feel the same way but I think Sony at the moment is in deep whole and they need to dig themselves out. I dont know how but that is why those CEO's are making those millions a year to make these tough decesions. I do know for a fact that Sony needs to start advertising their first party Exclusives like M$ they are loosing easy money on huge titles like KZ2,LBP,R2.

Apple has replaced Sony as the defacto portable electronics maker. Sony has virtually no stake in that arena anymore. They really didn't even put up a fight, which is sort of a sad thing considering how long the Walkman/Discman brands were relevant for. 

Sony still has sway in TV market ... but not the same extent it once was. Brands like Samsung nowadays command a lot of sway at retail, having a "Sony" TV is no longer really thought as something better than anything else. 

In the gaming market, Nintendo has become the "trendy" game company while Microsoft has committed themselves basically into forcing Sony into a losing battle of attrition for what's left of the hardcore gamer segment. 

The days when Sony could just show up to the console party and just wait for Nintendo and Sega to screw up and then take the lead are long over. 

Their film division is doing so-so (9% of domestic box office this year thus far). 

Sony is a brand stuck in the 90s. There's just something slightly archaic and dated about their designs and philosophy even though they still do make some good products. 

Yeah, it was kinda weird Sony just "let" the walkman business died.

Yeah that's what happens when you're making guesstimations on a gaming forum while the people at Sony know what is going on. The obvious is that a price cut is coming and it also seems I was correct in my thinking which is that Sony are willing to lose $100 per console sold to increase software sale and make up for that money.

Sony cannot just a number out of nowhere and say "13 million" as shareholders expect what is projected to be done. They obviously have something ready and I'm sure we will know in a couple weeks. It seems Sony have a taste for money again so yeah............E3 baby!

@RPG: More likely, a taste for losing money since they're predicting to lose money on SCE:

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?id=2154852

If they lose $100 on half of those 13 million consoles (assuming the price cut doesn't come that soon; the sooner the worse), that's $650 million lost right there. To make it up on software from a gained userbase of 4 million, each of those people has to give Sony $162.5 extra profit on software/accessories. That's not gonna happen, especially since many of those would have bought a PS3 anyway without a price cut (just at a later date).