Sony is competing:

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Certainly one significant difference is that Sony have a large retail presence, and operating a retail business is MUCH more expensive in Europe than in the US. Higher wages costs, higher property and business taxes, etc.

Exactly. That is the kind of local overhead I'm referring to.
Amazon runs a couple warehouses, a few data centers, and contracts pretty much everything else. They bookkeep everything as an independent profit-loss operation.

[ProfCrash]

http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_new...t-online-right

And according to this article, Amazon has the best Customer Service for On-Line retailers and Sony has the third worst. Which means that people who are trying to buy Sony's online are struggling and it is probably even worse for buying an e-book.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not all companies do this, however. Eg, Amazon have extremely equitable pricing; the Kindle costs, in other countries, pretty much a direct conversion of the US price plus the relevant local taxes. Sony certainly leave one with a certain impression that high prices in other countries are perhaps being used to subsidize the price in the US market.

Amazon is willing and has a history of selling items below cost.

[afa]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

There are several cautionary economics textbooks to be written off Sony's business decisions in the last 20 years, just on TVs, Gaming, and ebooks, never mind phones and semiconductors.
Very dysfunctional company.

I don't think they have done too bad in gaming, actually.

The PlayStation & PS2 are, by a large margin, the best-selling consoles of all-time (not counting handhelds). And while PS3 has been lagging behind Xbox 360, this can be largely attributed to the fact that they launched a year later. And they've almost caught up now: 59.1m consoles vs. 62.6m for Xbox (the Wii is far more than either).

And in 2011, in fact, the PS3 was the best-selling console overall (barely, but still...).


(*EDIT* Apparently, both the links will simply show the main page, as the charts aren't separate pages. Just click on the "Global Totals" button below the chart to filter.)

[cHex]

Spend some time traveling the world, and you'll find that there are different brand "cultures" in different countries. A company's reputation in one culture can vary wildly from that same company's reputation in another culture. Even when the company's actions have been exactly the same, the context in which those actions occur and the way in which those actions are interpreted can differ. Add to that the fact that companies often do behave differently in different cultures, and there's much more to the issue than we're seeing here.

But yes, in general I've found companies do try to rake in whatever the market will bear. Yay for those who are able to travel and can purchase items across several markets!

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by afa

...this can be largely attributed to the fact that they launched a year later.

And the price at launch in comparison to the price of the Xbox 360... That was a pretty big turn-off, too.

[Serpentine]

Originally Posted by afa

59.1m consoles vs. 62.6m for Xbox (the Wii is far more than either).

And then you work out just how many of those ps3's are used exclusively as BD players

I have 3 friends with ps3's, I doubt any of them own more than 2-3 titles as they're mostly just used BD, but even that is declining as the movies of late have been less than stellar.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by afa

I don't think they have done too bad in gaming, actually.

From a business management point of view, the PS3 is a disaster of biblical proportions; specifically, how Kutaragi totally ignored the economic parameters senior management had laid out, went rogue without authority, and *shipped* 4 million PS3 that cost 50% more to build than it was supposed to. There's a reason he was (japanese-style) fired.

http://www.dailytech.com/Sonys+Ken+K...rticle7078.htm

He cost the company a cool billion in losses in the first year and another four since. To say nothing of blowing an entire gaming generation.

PS3 should have been a gold mine for Sony; instead, after 5 years they are barely breaking even on the hardware and still in the hole life-cycle wise. And that is after four waves of feature-reduction redesigns. A classic case of gold-plating and bad design management.

The issue isn't how much hardware they've managed to ship, but what it *cost* to get that far. And the lost market share, mindshare, and developer commitments.

[BeccaPrice]

Originally Posted by Serpentine

And then you work out just how many of those ps3's are used exclusively as BD players

What is BD?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

What is BD?

The Official name of what is commonly called Bluray Discs.
The full term is BD-ROM, and is accompanied by BD-R write once and BD-RW re-writeable disks, generally used for data backup.
Blu-ray, strictly speaking, refers to the core Blue-laser technology developed by Sony, not the disks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_recordable

[HansTWN]

Sony used to make such beautiful, functional, and innovative laptops. Then they started overloading them with "crapware" (little programs that they got paid to include) that slowed the computers to a crawl and instead of coming out with new designs they just copied the older ones and slightly upped the specs. The same happened for their other product lines. They lost their mojo and I can only see them going from bad to worse.

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The Official name of what is commonly called Bluray Discs.
The full term is BD-ROM, and is accompanied by BD-R write once and BD-RW re-writeable disks, generally used for data backup.
Blu-ray, strictly speaking, refers to the core Blue-laser technology developed by Sony, not the disks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_recordable

So, If I buy a Sony PS Game machine, I can then go to my Inglis grocery store to the Red Box and rent a Blu Ray movie for 30 cents more than a DVD movie. Gee, if I had known that, I am sure I would have done it. I guess it is not too late. In fact I might have some PS consoles around somewhere. The boys used to use them to play games with. But I think I only have the first one still. Maybe the second? Will that one play Blu-Ray?


QUOTE - HansTWN
"Sony used to make such beautiful, functional, and innovative laptops. Then they started overloading them with "crapware" (little programs that they got paid to include) that slowed the computers to a crawl and instead of coming out with new designs they just copied the older ones and slightly upped the specs. The same happened for their other product lines. They lost their mojo and I can only see them going from bad to worse."

You probably are too young to remember the BetaMax. I had a brother in law that swore by them. They had better specs than the VHS machines, but eventually lost out to better marketing. He would carry his BetaMax player with him when he and my sister came to visit. We would go to an old local private video store that carried VHS and BetaMax titles. It was easier to get them where I lived at the time than where he lived. He enjoyed that. Then he would set up this assortment of equipment and cables and plug into my TV and we could watch BetaMax movies.
He does something similar now with his Apple equipment.
I had several Sony products. All expensive, excellent hardware, ahead of their time, and only affordable when heavily discounted or being closed out.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by SeaKing

You probably are too young to remember the BetaMax.

I was quite young back then, but I still remember it --- my parents bought one.

[afa]

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

And the price at launch in comparison to the price of the Xbox 360... That was a pretty big turn-off, too.

Good point. The PS3 was monstrously expensive (I think it was $650?) at launch. What was worse - Sony were apparently still losing money even at that price.

Originally Posted by Serpentine

And then you work out just how many of those ps3's are used exclusively as BD players

While there are undoubtedly some for who that is true, they are surely in the minority. When the PS3 launched, it was the cheapest good Blu-ray player on the market, but prices for Blu-ray players dropped not too long after. I doubt many of the sales of the console after, say, the first year can be attributed to people who just wanted a movie player.

[afa]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

He cost the company a cool billion in losses in the first year and another four since. To say nothing of blowing an entire gaming generation.

PS3 should have been a gold mine for Sony; instead, after 5 years they are barely breaking even on the hardware and still in the hole life-cycle wise.

I don't know the details of PS3 performance in terms of profitability compared to Xbox (or even PS2) but my understanding has always been that consoles always sell at a loss for the first couple of years (because they spend so much on R&D). I have no idea, though, whether the PS3's rate or amount of losses is within what was expected.

They should be making profits on hardware, though. After significant reduction in costs of manufacturing, it was estimated that the cost of the PS3 had fallen to about $240 per unit back in August 2009, so they've been making money on the hardware for a good two-and-a-half years now.

The issue isn't how much hardware they've managed to ship, but what it *cost* to get that far. And the lost market share, mindshare, and developer commitments.

True, and I specially agree with the second part. Sony has lost a lot of their exclusives in this generation, like the Tekken, MGS, and Devil May Cry franchises. In fact, just looking up this info I stumbled upon an article that reveals that Sony had the opportunity to make GTA IV and Assassin's Creed exclusive titles, but bungled it.