Sony says

January 21, 2005 4:40 PM

Sony fesses up and admits that they've screwed up in the past. But they say they're sorry, and they promise that they'll stop hitting consumers with ATRAC, half-baked PSX units and flawed PlayStation Portables.
posted by riffraff (31 comments total)

Hey Sony, we forgive you.
posted by riffraff at 4:55 PM on January 21, 2005

You probably mean ATRAC3, and not ATRAC.

ATRAC is the compression used in the original MiniDisc, which despite never catching on in the USA, remains very popular (more so than tape) in Europe and Japan.

For this purpose, it's an excellent codec. ATRAC3, which is similar but supports variable bitrates, and Sony tried to jam into other formats, was probably a mistake.
posted by Mwongozi at 5:01 PM on January 21, 2005

Sony exec adds, "...Oh, add to that list Betamax and Memory Sticks."

Man, they had the perfect opportunity to take over the entire market. They could have done what Apple did, only better. Think about it: they have a knack for good design and miniturization. The word Walkman was synonymous with "portable cassette player." You know how hard that is to do?

They could have offered their Sony Music division for download online at reduced rates, and the rest a buck a piece. Then bundle it with a player that supports the most popular digital music format on earth. HOW FRIGGIN' HARD WOULD THAT BE? Now they want some market share? Hey Sony, go to hell.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:19 PM on January 21, 2005

Ah, sony. The company with solutions to problems that don't exist. They're in a bind because people want things that are stylish and expensive (iPod) or not-ugly and cheap (Samsung). What's a company with 1% profit margins to do?

Sony/Columbia should either be spun off or I should be able to watch Spiderman online on my Viao PC by going to sony.com. Otherwise we have a conglomerate that's just spinning it's wheels in place.
posted by metaldark at 5:22 PM on January 21, 2005

I'm a moron. I obviously don't own a Vaio.
posted by metaldark at 5:24 PM on January 21, 2005

metaldark has it right. when our corporate masters compete amongst themselves, we lose out as much as they do.

I think sony does now finally make mp3-capable cd players. er, too late there guys.

my next dap will support musepack/mpc/mp+ as well as flac, gorrammit.
posted by dorian at 5:38 PM on January 21, 2005

Otherwise we have a conglomerate that's just spinning it's wheels in place.

I totally agree. Sony always seems like a giant who's left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
posted by menace303 at 5:41 PM on January 21, 2005

I sit corrected on the ATRAC3 bit. Thanks for the heads-up, Mwongozi :)
posted by riffraff at 6:10 PM on January 21, 2005

This reminds me of when Fox News sued Fox TV. Heh.
posted by mullingitover at 6:30 PM on January 21, 2005

Did he apologize for NetMD? Because somebody really should.
posted by euphorb at 7:18 PM on January 21, 2005

posted by gwint at 7:33 PM on January 21, 2005

Even better if it's not logarithmic:


posted by Bugbread at 7:51 PM on January 21, 2005

Ah yes. ATRAC3. Sony's attempt to reduce music piracy by making it annoying to listen to music in general. I love my NetMD and the two albums I put on there 6 months ago, still on there as I haven't had the patience to change 'em yet.
posted by jimmythefish at 7:53 PM on January 21, 2005

Except that, unlike Apple, Sony actually tends to make products that don't break within the first month of use...
posted by cmonkey at 7:56 PM on January 21, 2005

sony does now finally make mp3-capable cd players

Well, my kitchen counter MP3 player is made by Sony. But I have to admit, I did wonder what all the "ATRAC3plus" fuss on the unit and in the manual referred to!
posted by Zurishaddai at 8:02 PM on January 21, 2005

Except that, unlike Apple, Sony actually tends to make products that don't break within the first month of use...
posted by cmonkey at 7:56 PM PST on January 21

Ladies and gentlemen... Chewbacca is from Kashyyk but he lives on Endor. That does not make sense!!!
posted by basicchannel at 8:04 PM on January 21, 2005

Except that, unlike Apple, Sony actually tends to make products that don't break within the first month of use

Sony's products, in my experience, have this incredible knack for dying just after the warranty runs out, whereas Apple's run for years and years.
posted by kindall at 8:06 PM on January 21, 2005

Even better if it's not logarithmic

Apple's always been a momentum stock. Good to own for short periods of time, and good to short on the downward slide, but an absolute *disaster* for long-term holding. Apart from anything else, Apple dilutes its own stock drastically every few years with honking great options grants (that it has fought tooth and nail to *not* expense because that would reduce profits (last year by around 40% for example)), and of course, there's also its persistent problem with sustaining a coherent growth story for more than 5 years or so.







I decided not to put these charts into linear scale because that would be *too* humiliating for Apple.
posted by meehawl at 8:38 PM on January 21, 2005

Jesus, my point was to show the relation between a company that saw the mp3 revolution and ran with it vs one who didn't. On the other hand, boy do MSFT and DELL look flat the last few years.
posted by gwint at 8:48 PM on January 21, 2005

I decided not to put these charts into linear scale because that would be *too* humiliating for Apple.

Aw, you're no fun.


Sorry about possibly breaking the h-scroll, but on the small graph the blue line looked almost completely flat.
posted by Bugbread at 8:53 PM on January 21, 2005

Weren't we talking about Sony?
posted by mr_roboto at 10:40 PM on January 21, 2005

Yes. Yes we were.
posted by Tlogmer at 11:30 PM on January 21, 2005

So what does this tell us about capital markets' abilities to price and reward innovation and technological breakthroughs?

Oh wait...
posted by metaldark at 11:30 PM on January 21, 2005

The American PSP launch should be a laffer. The system (if u wanna call it that) looks like a thin piece of poo, very likely to not work in 6-12 months.

I bought a launch ps2 the day it came out and sure as it died a slow death about a year later, along with about 4 million other units worldwide.

Even Sony's HDTV's are falling behind Samsung, which offers less expensive monitors with better picture quality.
posted by AMWKE at 2:24 AM on January 22, 2005

Comparing AAPL with breakout stocks like MSFT and DELL and saying they represent "the market" is not really fair. Here's AAPL vs. the S&P 500:


posted by grouse at 2:44 AM on January 22, 2005

From grouse's chart, it looks like we've still got two more years before the bust.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:43 AM on January 22, 2005

Vaio's are awesome laptops, my sony cd changer has mp3 playback i have had it for several years. All my sony products still work years after originally buying them. Their cameras are phenomenal, and their new monitors are pretty ridiculous.

16 ms response time.

Now vaio desktops are utter shite and i wish that the ps2 had zero market share so the x-box would get all the games instead. I'm a bit of a zealot but sony has always provided above par electronics for me, and im glad to see some acknowledgment that there entertainment division has no business telling their electronics division what to do.
posted by sourbrew at 6:58 AM on January 22, 2005

sourbrew - I have one link for you: 12 ms response time, and cheaper.

I always thought Sony's Vaios had a bit of style and flair to them, but never enough to command the premium prices they're asking.
posted by falconred at 8:34 AM on January 22, 2005

AMWKE: I bought a launch PS2 within days of their release, too. Mine is still working fine. But that doesn't mean that Sony products are indestructible, same as your experience doesn't mean they're all crap. I won't be buying a PSP, even though it looks pretty cool, because I don't particularly want one. I'm sure most of them will still work after 6 months, but, like anything new, some of them will have broken.

Sometimes things break. Sometimes they don't. That's life, dude.
posted by ralphyk at 10:24 AM on January 22, 2005

Well, to get back on topic...

This is good, because a major media corporation has found out the hard way - by people voting with their wallets, like good capitalists should - that consumers don't want DRM on their media files, especially if it's proprietary.

The other major media corporations, hopefully, will notice that and adjust business models accordingly.

It's probably worth mentioning that Apple's iTunes Music Store DRM on its AAC files is relatively unobtrusive - though I know it annoys many people on principle. However, for people (like me) who listen to their music only on their iTunes-enabled computers (heh... I actually have 3 in my apartment, using one as the main server and the others reading the shared music if necessary - such a nerd) and on their iPods, it's invisible, doesn't affect my experience at all. I may even get that AirPort speaker receiver thing to run it into my home audio system (which is all Sony... heh). I know some people are uncomfortable with it but compared to Sony's DRM, WMA DRM and others, it's almost a non-issue, even if you are a PC+iPod user.

metaldark: "Sony/Columbia should either be spun off or I should be able to watch Spiderman online on my Viao PC by going to sony.com. Otherwise we have a conglomerate that's just spinning it's wheels in place."

Preach on, Brother MetalDark... from your lips to Sony's ears! Imagine if Sony offered full online access to their entire catalog for $4.99/month? Practically everyone on earth with high-speed would sign up, me included.

Attention Sony: 100 million subscribers = $500 million per month. You are more than capable of reaching that number worldwide... hell you'd probably get than many signed up in the US and Japan within 2 months.

Think about it. Make it easy and cheap for people to see/hear your content online and almost all of them won't bother to steal.
posted by zoogleplex at 10:50 AM on January 22, 2005

I tend to buy a lot of sony stuff, I even have a NetMD player, wihch I thought might play mp3s but It was too pretty to return after I found out it wouldn't. Still, it's small size made it a good workout music player.



My playstation2's laser got dirty and I had to tare the unit apart in order to fix it (mostly because I didn't have the tiny screwdriver needed to take off the lid of the DVD drive).



And sony's CD players have been able to play mp3s for a long-ass time. But they don't support it anywhere else, which is annoying.
posted by delmoi at 11:48 AM on January 22, 2005