I was just reading about Samsung's record profits this past quarter and it begs the question, why is one of Sony's main competitors doing so well while Sony struggles in almost every market it's competing in? Even with videogames they have to sell their system at a loss and with what must be the most expensive internal hardware just to compete. It begs the question, do these guys even think about some of the boneheaded moves they have been making the past few years?
Here are just a few that simply make no sense:
1. Adding Netflix to the Playstation 3 for free. It's great that Sony seems to like to give almost everything away for free or at a loss but what was the point in pretty much handing over their marketshare leadership to Nintendo and losing so much money helping Blu-Ray if they're going to end up helping its competition for free? Blu-Ray is one of the few bright spots for Sony, even though they're facing anger over Blu-Ray fees, so why in the World are they working against those adopting the format by supporting the competition?
2. Ensuring that the PSP relaunch was a disaster by following the same idiotic pricing mindset that already proved to be a disaster with the Playstation 3. This was supposed to be the year that the PSP would regain momentum in North America and Europe and now we're seeing amazing low sales of both the PSP Go and PSP games. Just looking at Gran Turismo PSP sales must be driving some third-parties that believed in the new launch to just shake their heads and wonder how they were taken yet again by Sony.
3. Stating that they purposely made the Playstation 3 harder to develop for. Was anyone at Sony not drinking the Kool-Aid long enough to realize that making it more costly and longer to develop for would also affect their own first-party game development? Why didn't they just go with more traditional hardware that would have been cheaper and easier to develop for? It's hard to imagine how many hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars could have been saved in the process.
4. Giving away online for free. Sure it made a good bullet point against Microsoft but one has to wonder if they understand how much money they have thrown away because of it. It's much harder to make people pay for something after they're used to having it for free. Also what happens years from now when the Playstation 3 reaches a price point where people that only buy used games pick it up and Sony still has to support them?
5. Allowing both Nintendo and Microsoft to be in the media spotlight over their motion control schemes while Sony pitches theirs to the same crowd that already bought the Playstation 3. When was the last time you heard anyone but the gaming media talk about Sony's motion controller? It's supposed to be coming out in six months and it has the buzz of non-alcoholic beer. Does someone at Sony think that Resident Evil 4 on the Wii was reponsible for that console's success because that it the only game we're even hearing much of anything about.
I could go on about their rapidly growing losses in cell phones or their amazing loss of the portable music market to Apple but since this is a website devoted to videogames it goes a little too off-topic. For those Sony supports and even other out there, is there a method to Sony's madness, and if not what is going on with them?
