Tag Archives | Sony

Blu-ray’s New Format War: The Old School DVD

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 20, 2011 at 6:40 pm

Win the battle, lose the war. The saying might as well apply to Sony’s Blu-ray high definition disc format (I’ve used it before on this topic), which continues to struggle for relevancy. Even with player prices now as low as $70 through Walmart, consumers are still taking their good old time in adopting the format.

Strategy Analytics researcher Peter King told Foxnews.com that even through Sony won the format war against Toshiba and HD DVD more than three years ago, only now has the format been able to equally split the 20 million disc players sold evenly with standard DVD.

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Sony in Denial Over PSP Go’s Apparent Demise (Updates)

Posted by Jared Newman on April 19, 2011 at 7:42 pm

(See updates below)

Looks like the PSP Go is going out with a whimper.

A Sony Shop employee in Japan wrote on his blog that PSP Go production has ceased, according to Andria Sang, a Japanese games industry blog. Also, the Sony Store games page for Japan no longer lists the gaming handheld, and the product page says it’s out of stock. In the United Kingdom, Sony’s store lists the black PSP Go as out of stock, although the white model is still available. A UK retail source told MCV that no further stock will be supplied to the retail channel.

In other words, Sony seems to be letting PSP Go fade away, but the company isn’t ready to admit that the gaming handheld, which relied entirely on downloads instead of physical media, is kaput.

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Who’s Suing Who? A Cheat Sheet to the Mobile Patent Mess

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 19, 2011 at 7:32 pm

So Apple is suing Samsung, accusing it of imitating Apple products with its Galaxy phones and tablets. The most startling thing about the news may be that the two companies weren’t already in court with each other. Over the past few years, the mobile industry has been so rife with suits and countersuits that if every complainant managed to sue every subject of its ire out of business…well, there’d hardly be a mobile industry left.

I had trouble remembering the precise details of the umpteen cases that have made headlines–as well as some related relationships, such as Microsoft’s licensing agreements with Amazon and HTC–so I decided to document them with a handy-dandy infographic, as much for my own edification as anyone else’s.

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Sony’s SOCOM Hits New Low (or High?) in Used Video Game Punishment

Posted by Jared Newman on April 18, 2011 at 7:36 am

Last year, a few video game publishers started withholding online multiplayer from used video games unless buyers paid $10 for an activation code. I figured that was just the beginning of the attack on second-hand sales.

Sure enough, SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy Seals charts a new course in punishing used game buyers, and it’s at once better and worse than the status quo of $10 online passes.

As described on the official Playstation Blog, SOCOM 4 will let all players access the game’s multiplayer portion — as it should, because online play has always been SOCOM’s main attraction — but used game buyers will miss out on special guns, game types, and other perks to be added later. To get these features with a used copy of the game, you’ll have to buy a $15 activation code.

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PS3’s Free Realms is the First Free-to-Play Console MMORPG

Posted by Jared Newman on March 29, 2011 at 6:59 pm

Strange, but true: Five years into the Playstation Network’s existence (and eight years after the birth of Xbox Live), Free Realms for Playstation 3 has become the first free-to-play massive multiplayer console game.

The kid-centric game, which first launched on PCs in April 2009, gives players an open world filled with minigames such as kart racing, fighting and cooking and fishing. Players’ experience levels are capped in the free version; the premium version costs $5 per month, $13 for three months, $24.50 for six months, $30 for a year and $35 for life. Virtual goods are also available for purchase.

I’m only half-surprised it took this long. On one hand, free-to-play MMORPGs are a lucrative market. DFC Intelligence, a market research firm, estimated last August that free-to-play games, which earned $250 million in 2009, could become a $2 billion industry by 2015. On the other hand, console makers spend years losing money on every system sold in hopes of making that money back on software. Giving the software away could be an unpalatable risk.

But the Playstation 3 is more than four years old, and now’s the time to experiment. Free Realms is another example of Sony’s kitchen sink approach, which to date has included Blu-ray movies, the Playstation Move motion controller, 3D and an expanding streaming video selection.

Free Realms itself isn’t my cup of tea — and actually, I haven’t been able to try the PS3 version at all due to server problems — but I hope the experiment goes well for Sony. Free-to-play MMOs have belonged exclusively to PCs for too long.

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Crackle’s Ad-Supported Movies and Shows Deemed Fit for Set-Top Boxes

Posted by Jared Newman on March 29, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Until now, you’d be forgiven for knowing nothing about Crackle. Sony Pictures’ online video service has kept a low profile by withholding its ad-supported movies and TV shows from most web-connected set-top boxes.

On Tuesday, Sony announced that it’s bringing all that content to the Playstation 3 (via the home screen on the built-in web browser), Sony Blu-ray players, BRAVIA TVs and the Roku set-top box, along with Google TV, which was previously supported. Crackle will become the first web video service to stream ad-supported movies and TV shows to these devices, Sony says.

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Sony's Sony-Centric Music Service Goes Live in the US

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 17, 2011 at 10:24 am

Music Unlimited Powered by Qriocity, Sony’s music service, reaches the United States today. It’s launching with six million tracks from all the major music companies, plus independent labels. A $3.99-a-month version lets you listen to music channels themed by genre, decade, and mood, and scan the playlists on your computer and reconstruct them within Sony’s service; a $9.99 version allows full on-demand listening to every song and album in the catalog. Judging from a demo that Sony gave me yesterday, the whole thing has an attractive interface, with nicely-done cover flow-like album art.

What you can’t do just yet is listen to the service when you’re not in front of a TV set or a computer. For now, Music Unlimited is available on the PlayStation 3 and recent Internet-enabled Sony Bravia TVs and Blu-ray players, and there’s a Web-based version for PCs and Macs. Sony has plans for an Android version later in 2011. And Shawn Layden, executive vice president and COO of Sony Network Entertainment, told me that “nothing is off the table” regarding versions for Apple’s iOS and other platforms. (Of course, with Apple’s new rules for iOS content providers, it’s not clear what’s going to happen to non-iTunes music services on the iPhone, period.)

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Playstation 4? Sony's Not Even Thinking About It

Posted by Jared Newman on February 17, 2011 at 9:08 am

A couple years ago, I predicted that Sony would launch a new home video game console in 2010, with Nintendo and Microsoft to follow in 2011.

Man, I was way off.

With 2011 well underway, console makers aren’t even talking about a new generation of hardware. And in an interview with PC Watch, translated by Kotaku, Sony Computer Entertainment head Kaz Hirai said the Playstation 3 is “not even at the halfway point.”

“That’s why,” he added, “we’re not deliberating on a PS4 or a next generation machine, whatever you call it.”

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Sony Issues Ultimatum to PS3 Hackers

Posted by Jared Newman on February 16, 2011 at 3:21 pm

Sony is threatening the nuclear option to deal with Playstation 3 hacking.

In a statement on the Playstation Blog, Sony says consumers should immediately remove all unauthorized or pirated software from their consoles. Otherwise, they’ll be permanently banned from the Playstation Network and from Qriocity services.

Sony hadn’t previously wielded the banhammer against jailbroken PS3s, but now the gloves have come off. I’m already seeing some reports of bans on PS3 hacker blogs.

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Okay, Everybody Calm Down About Sony and iTunes

Posted by Jared Newman on February 11, 2011 at 1:33 pm

I’m seeing a lot of frantic stories in the tech blogosphere today over some comments a Sony executive made about iTunes.

Speaking to The Age, Sony Computer Entertainment Australia Chief Executive Michal Ephraim said his company would like to get away from iTunes, if only it could move to a credible alternative, such as the Sony Music subscription service that’s rolling out now.

But thanks to some eye-catching headlines (including The Age’s own), Ephraim’s remarks got twisted into a threat to abandon the most popular music download service in the world. You need only look at the quotes to see that’s not the case.

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