From HDTV UK:
More scintillating Blu-ray sales figures, with news that Ireland is one of the fastest growing markets in Europe for the Blu-ray format.
[Read HDTV UK: Ireland sees tenfold increase in Blu-ray sales]
With the recent demise of HD-DVD, the success of Blu-Ray as the next generation successor would seem assured, yet many pundits are wondering if the format has long term success. They quote recent reports that Blu-Ray will be superseded in the near term by high-def download services and that there isn’t really a future for the format. Yet despite these reports, Blu-Ray is starting to show significant traction. Samsung recently announced that they were significantly increasing their forecast for their Blu-Ray business. The argument against Blu-Ray is that with the music industry clearly going towards digital downloads the movie industry must surely follow suit. Yet there are some clear differences as to how both segments of the entertainment market work.
Dan Moren in a blog post on Mac User about Sony’s purchase of Grace Note writes:
“…if Sony follows its usual game plan, expect it to turn Gracenote into a qualitatively better but ultimately unsuccessful proprietary format.”
This is a pretty common misconception about Sony that’s been floated by gadget blogs and others in the technology press. However, it’s simply not true to say that much of what Sony invents turns out to be unsuccessful. I don’t blame Dan at all for the comment because for some reason this seems to be the general perception. But lets look at the facts.
The most well known perceived failure of a Sony format is undoubtedly that of betamax. The consumer format, although of a higher quality was ultimately killed by competition from VHS. VHS is considered to have won the war because it had a less strict licensing program and the format could record for longer duration. What people don’t realise however that there is more to this story. A professional version of Betamax, Betacam went on to become the dominant broadcast format, and its successors Digital Betacam and now HD-CAM are used in virtually every broadcast facility in the world. So while the original Betamax format may have been a failure, what it ultimately led to has netted millions if not billions of dollars for Sony over the years.
Lets take a look at some of Sony’s other formats.
There’s the Compact Disc which they co-developed with Philips. You could hardly consider it a failure. Then there’s Minidisc. While Minidisc never took off as a distribution format, as a playback and recording format it was very successful, at least until mp3 and the iPod became dominant. Minidisc is still one of the primary recording formats for jingles and commercials at Radio Stations around the world, having replaced the traditional cart system. It is also still widely used for field audio recording along with DAT (Digital Audio Tape, which Sony also invented) Incidentally, Sony’s ATRAC format, which gets a lot of grief for being a failed competitor to iTunes, was not a download format to begin with. It started as the compression standard used on Minidisc. So while ATRAC did fail as an online delivery format, it is unfair to blame ATRAC itself. It was Sony’s Connect Store that was a failure, not the format. Incidentally, both Minidisc and ATRAC were licensed to other companies.
Sony’s failure to capitalize on the music download market was an unfortunate shortsighted decision based on a management that had become too blinkered by protecting its many devisions. Sony paid for that mistake and the once proud Walkman brand was delegated to second place by the increasingly popular iPod. But that does not mean that the Walkman was never a success in the first place. Technology eventually moves on, and just because new technology replaces an old one that should not invalidate the success of the older one in the first place.
What else has Sony been responsible for?
A recent success for the company is Blu-Ray. Devised as a high definition replacement for DVD, Blu-Ray was developed by Sony, and has so far been successful and looks to grow that success considerably. Many people who had speculated that Blu-Ray would fail based their suspicions on nothing more than this very stereotype, that Sony’s formats are all doomed to failure.
The Playstation is another highly successful brand for Sony. It became synonymous with gaming for a decade, taking over Nintendo’s mantle. Nintendo may have returned to the forefront with the Wii, but the Playstation 3, which some consider to have had a rocky start seems to be gaining considerable traction, and is still a highly recognized brand. Sony also had a minor part in the development of DVD (After abandoning their own disk standard, they joined forces with Toshiba for a unified universal format which became DVD). Video 8 and Hi 8 Were highly successful camcorder formats in the Analogue era, both having been developed by Sony. In the digital era they developed consumer camcorder miniDV format, as well as the newer High Definition version, HDV. They invented the Trinitron, the first flat screen TV (The Tube - not the LCD or Plasma.) Sony and Philips also jointly developed the Sony-Philips digital interface format (S/PDIF) The format is used for transmission of digital audio used on virtually every audio device with a digital out (Including the Apple TV). Sony also invented the now defunct 3.5inch Floppy Disk, that was the primary disk format around the world for at least a decade.
It is often argued that Sony’s Memory stick format is not successful because there hasn’t been wide spread adoption of it by other companies, but the sheer number of Sony products that use memory stick alone and the volume at which they sell make the format a success. If the lack of third party adoption is your only measure of success then by that measure iTunes should be considered a massive failure.
The perceived lack of success of Sony’s UMD format is another misconception. The idea of movies on UMD was certainly a failure. It was doomed from the start because both the distributers and retailers jacked up the prices to ridiculous levels, where it was often more expensive to buy a poorer quality movie on UMD than it was to buy the DVD. Yet the disk format itself is used for the distribution of PSP games. The PSP has been a huge success so for its intended task, UMD has been reasonably successful, just not for movies.
Sony, like Apple in many ways has always been an innovator. It is constantly inventing products. Some of them succeed and some of them don’t, but at least they try. It doesn’t wait around for others to come up with something and then adopt it, it is out there pushing the boundaries of technology. Like I said earlier success and failure in the technology world comes in cycles. Sony has had some dramatic failures but also some great successes, but they never stand still.
I have always had a great respect for the people at Sony, because they are not afraid to invent for the sake of inventing. I’m not saying that the management at Sony have not made some bad decisions over the years but what large corporation hasn’t. There was a time when IBM was king of the computing world and when the Apple II was the dominant personal computer. One of the world’s biggest Airlines used to be Pan-Am, one of the most popular formats for photography was the polaroid and the biggest name in video games was Atari. Sony has made its mistakes but it never stopped innovating. It always bounces back and the geniuses at the company always keep inventing.
The funny thing about formats is that only seem to be considered proprietary if they are unsuccessful. If a format is a success it’s considered a standard. And Sony have contributed more standards over their lifetime than any other company I know of.
(Source: Wikipedia)
[UPDATED to fix numerous typos]
Technorati Tags: Sony, Technology, Blu-Ray, Minidisc, Playstation, Broadcast
From Ripten:
Home was revealed some time ago now, but the vast majority of users haven’t been able to experience the ambitious virtual environment yet. Those eagerly awaiting the opportunity will have to wait a bit longer still, says Sony
[Read PS3 Users Have To Wait Longer For Home]
Technorati Tags: Playstation, Sony, Home, Virtual, Online, Internet
From The Washington Post:
Sony Corporation of America, a U.S. unit of Japan’s Sony Corp (6758.T), said it would buy digital media company Gracenote Inc for about $260 million plus other consideration.
[Read Sony to buy Gracenote for $260 million - washingtonpost.com]
Not exactly sure what’s behind this decision but it’s interesting.
You don’t even need words. Just brilliant as always. Advertising like no other.
Click here for a downloadable version
The latest firmware for the PS3 is now live and ready for download. The new firmware offers some important updates bringing blu-ray 2.0 support to the PS3, and even better, it finally gives the playstation multi disk resume, so you can stop play in the middle of a dvd or blu-ray and then pick up where you left off later, even if you change the disk. This is a feature I had sorely missed on an otherwise excellent player. For more details of what’s in the update see here.
From: PS3 Attitude
Phil Harrison is standing down as President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios. Kaz Hirai (President of SCEI) will assume control of SCEWW after Phil moves on, which is as soon as 29th February.
This came as a bit of a shock I must say. Phil has been pretty much the face of the PS3, certainly from the games aspect since it came out. Oh well, we wish him all the best in his future endeavors.
From the Financial Times…
Paramount is poised to drop its support of HD DVD after Warner Brothers’ recent backing of Sony’s Blu-ray technology, in a move that will sound the death knell of HD DVD and bring the home entertainment format war to a definitive end. Paramount and DreamWorks Animation, which makes the Shrek films, came out in support of HD DVD last summer, joining General Electric’s Universal Studios as the main backers of the Toshiba format.
However, Paramount, which is owned by Viacom, is understood to have a clause in its contract with the HD DVD camp that would allow it to switch sides in the event of Warner Bros backing Blu-ray, according to people familiar with the situation.
Please god tell me this is a mistake. I like Sony, I really do, almost as much as I like Apple, but this is just [insert expletive here] nuts. This is right up there with the whole root kit fiasco. So please please tell me this is wrong….
DRM free music from Sony BMG will be available from January 15 to those who purchase a plastic card called the “Platinum Music Pass” for the album they want from a retail store for $12.99. Buyers will then have to visit MusicPass.com and enter a code to download the DRM free album they selected in the store.
[Read Sony BMG Confirms DRM Free Music, But Will Force Customers to Visit A Store To Buy It]
Toshiba have issued a press release in response to Warner Brother’s blu-ray moves. I guess what else could they say, but they need to accept two things, they lost, and the more they try to convince people they were actually winning when the numbers clearly showed the opposite the more ridiculous the look.
Here’s the press release:
TOKYO, Jan. 4 /PRNewswire/ — Toshiba is quite surprised by Warner Bros.’ decision to abandon HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray, despite the fact that there are various contracts in place between our companies concerning the support of HD DVD. As central members of the DVD Forum, we have long maintained a close partnership with Warner Bros. We worked closely together to help standardize the first-generation DVD format as well as to define and shape HD DVD as its next-generation successor. We were particularly disappointed that this decision was made in spite of the significant momentum HD DVD has gained in the US market as well as other regions in 2007. HD DVD players and PCs have outsold Blu-ray in the US market in 2007. We will assess the potential impact of this announcement with the other HD DVD partner companies and evaluate potential next steps. We remain firm in our belief that HD DVD is the format best suited to the wants and needs of the consumer.
There are two things wrong with that statement.
“HD DVD players and PCs have outsold Blu-ray in the US market in 2007.” - Only because Toshiba decided not to include the number one selling blu-ray player, the PS3 in those statistics. Disk sales showed blu-ray consistently outselling hd-dvd by as much as 3-1.
and even funnier….
“Toshiba is quite surprised by Warner Bros.’ decision to abandon HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray,”
It was rumored on every technology, dvd and many mainstream news sites for the last month. Surprised? Really?
What will be really funny is if Microsoft decides now, that it is finally going to put a hd-dvd drive into the xbox as a built in drive, just as it’s too late to do any good.
By the way, in case anyone is wondering why this move means so much, Blu-Ray now has exclusivity of 70% of the entertainment industry content producers. HD-DVD can not survive on the remaining releases from Paramount, Dreamworks animation, and Universal, all of whom must be seriously considering their options right now. Paramount looks particularly stupid arly stupid right now.
[Read Toshiba ‘Surprised’ By Warner Blu-ray Announcement | High-Def Digest]
Ok, so the year isn’t over yet but I can’t imagine it can possibly get much worse than this. A short while ago, Sony CEO Howard Stringer was quoted as saying that blu-ray was at “Kind of a stalemate” and pretty much everyone set upon this as Sony expecting defeat. Engadget in particular with their usual bout of anti Sony rhetoric. Here’s what Engadget had to say at the time:
“So we wonder, just what does Sony’s boss, and figure-head of the smack-talking Blu-ray Disc Association, have to say about the state of the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD war? It’s a “stalemate,” according to Sir Howard Stringer. He goes on to downplay the winner as nothing more than a matter of prestige while lamenting the lack of a unified standard. “
Then today, another story pops up with Sir Howard pretty much contradicting the first story saying that blu-ray had momentum. Again, Engadget has the story thusly:
“Merely days after Sony’s Howard Stringer was scrutinised for calling the format war a “stalemate,” the exec has apparently decided to tweak his tone a bit. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Stringer was quoted as saying that Blu-ray had “the momentum and the scale” it needed to eventually reign victorious over its rival. “
They have the story as one of their CE-OH no he didn’t articles, basically lambasting him for flip flopping over his stance on blu-ray. At face value this certainly seems to be the case. But the problem is, the original point, that he said the blu-ray / hd-dvd war was at a stalemate wasn’t what he had said at all. It was taken completely out of context. What he was actually talking about was the studios fighting over the format with some going one way and some going the other. Here’s what he actually said….
“I should point out that that is not part of the software battle. I mean, that’s actually in some ways sort of anachronistic. We’re fighting over a packaged goods hardware that will not go on forever, from a classic sense. We have a more expensive version, as Sony tends to, and Toshiba has a cheaper version, which seems to keep getting cheaper. I believe it has slowed down the progress of high definition packaged goods. Oddly, the studios kind of liked it for a while. They were able to leverage one of us against each other. But in the end, it’s counterproductive. We have a sort of stalemate at the moment. As you know, they had fewer studios, but then they paid a lot of money for Paramount. So we have four studios and they have two or three studios.”
In fairness to Engadget they weren’t the only ones to jump all over this, but rather than do a little digging to clarify what was obviously an out of character comment considering the clear and apparent lead blu-ray has over hd-dvd they would rather portray the Sony CEO as a bumbling fool when nothing could be further from the truth. You don’t get a knighthood from the Queen for nothing you know. Just because your publication is online rather than in print shouldn’t mean you can just call it a blog and say whatever the hell you want.
The thing is, I never even questioned the original article because frankly it never even occurred to me that someone would go that far just to paint Sony and Howard Stringer in a bad light. And again, it’s not just Engadget who are guilty of this, the link they have Yahoo News also has the short out of context quote, but Engadget, from their original story it does seem as if they did read the whole interview and then misrepresent it because they say…
“He goes on to downplay the winner as nothing more than a matter of prestige while lamenting the lack of a unified standard. “
So obviously they read the full thing. Absolutely the worst reporting on any (technology) subject all year.
It amazes me every time I read a biased or completely uninformed article about the Playstation 3 as to just how similar it is to the things people used to say about the Mac and the iPod when it first came out. I just don’t get where much of this is coming from, and why there is such a determination by certain segments of the gaming and technology press for Sony to be a failure. Anyway, here’s some of the (exaggerated or not entirely true) stuff that may sound familiar to long time mac users: (Mac equivalents in brackets)
1. It’s too expensive. They should have left out the blu-ray etc. [Mac’s / iPods are too expensive - I don’t want firewire etc or My other music player is much cheaper]
2. There are no games available. [There’s no software available for the mac]
3. The xbox is just better [Windows is just better]
4. Nobody is buying the PS3, it’s a failure. [No one’s buying macs, the platform’s its last legs]
5. “The Troubled playstation devision.” [”The beleaguered computer company”]
6. Xbox users trolling Playstation sites. [PC users trolling Mac Sites]
7. Xbox version of (insert title here) is much better that PS3 version. [The PC version of (insert software title here) is much better]
8. It’s too hard to develop for the PS3 [It’s to hard to develop software for the mac]
9. Poor ports of Xbox games blamed on Sony. [Poor ports of PC software blamed on Apple]
10. You’re not a ‘real’ gamer if you don’t buy an Xbox [You’re not using a ‘real’ computer unless you buy a PC]
I could keep going but you get the idea. If you look too at much of what was said about the iPod when it first came out too there are also striking similarities. The funny thing is, if you say the PS3 will be a success and try and explain why you’ll be written off as a fanatic. But the thing is, much like those of us who could see huge potential in the iPod, I can see huge potential in the Ps3. It’s not just a game console, it’s something completely unique, it’s the convergence device we were all promised but no one ever delivered. No one seems to have realized that yet. I find myself using my PS3 instead of my Apple TV now all the time and I hardly ever turn on my 360.
You can dismiss this as fanboyism if you want but I am absolutely confident that the PS3 is the next iPod in terms of a genre defining device. The best is yet to come.
PS3 Fanboy reviews Uncharted: Drakes Fortune
Usually, I open my reviews with one or two vague paragraphs about the game, but this time I’m not going to beat around the bush. Uncharted is the best PS3 game, nay, one of the best games, I’ve ever played.
That pretty much sums up my impressions from the demo. In fact I would go so far as to say it blows away expectations of what a game, any game, on any platform can look like.
[Read PS3 Fanboy review: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune]
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