This week saw a slew of Sony news. Good news, bad news, and just plain embarrassing news. On Tuesday, investor confidence in Sony rose sharply following Sir Howard Stringer’s comments at CES. Stringer asserted that his company was “prepared to meet its operating profit margin goal for the next fiscal year”. News that Sony had met its shipment target also helped spur a surge in Sony’s stock.
On the same day, Sony released a press release claiming to have been awarded an Emmy for its new Sixaxis controller for the PS3. Unfortunately for Sony, that claim was actually false. On Wednesday, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) rebuked Sony’s claim. The Emmy was not for the Sixaxis, but for its older DualShock controller, Sixaxis’ predecessor. It is obvious that Sony would not be so foolish as to try to lie about the award; this can only be the product of some confusion. What probably occurred is that NATAS informed Sony that it had won an award for the controller, without specifying which one. Sony rightfully assumed the award was for their latest controller and not for a 6 year old one, hence the confusion.
An innocent mistake, and too much eagerness to officially announce the award still leave Sony with a bit of egg on their face, a PR embarrassment. Sony has quickly backtracked and offered a correction, hoping to rapidly place this faux-pas behind them.
Finally, Wednesday was capped by a brazen and scathing assault on Sony’s PS3 platform by 2 senior Microsoft executives. Peter Moore (VP of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, Entertainment and Devices Division), and Chris Satchell (general manager of Microsoft’s game development group) described Sony’s online offering as a “disaster” and described Sony as company missing the talent necessary to ever compete in the level of quality offered by Microsoft’s Live service. We have already had an in-depth look at Sony’s online service and highlighted some of the issues affecting the very core of their online strategy (parts one, two and three of our analysis). In this author’s opinion, Sony’s service is indeed still a long way from matching Microsoft’s, and the problems affecting it are going to require a fundamental review of their strategy if they even hope to catch up with Microsoft this generation. This is looking increasingly unlikely.
Meanwhile Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder, took another indirect shot at Sony by labeling Nintendo their “toughest competition”. The inference is obviously that Microsoft is not concerned much with the PS3.
This multi-front attack on Sony by Microsoft is unprecedented, and is shocking in its directness. It highlights the confidence Microsoft has in its own service, and more importantly the flaws they believe are apparent in Sony’s. Microsoft may be doing Sony a big service as this may spur Sony to actually reassess what they are trying to do with the PS3.
