Sony were once known as a sterling company who couldn’t put a
foot
wrong. Unfortunately recent years has seen a backlash from customers
over under performing hardware and underhanded installations made to
consumers PCs.
It’s seen its Walkman heritage fade every so
painfully to become what
many would agree is now, when juxtaposed against the all-powerful
iPod-iTunes duopoly, just another second-class.
And just last week the
company announced that it
is shelving the ATRAC file format it stubbornly held onto
since as far back as I can remember, and will
also be putting to bed the music side of Connect Music Store;
the eBook division of the Store will remain open (for now) for the sole
purpose of maintaining its Reader-compatible catalogue.
Doesn’t look very good for Sony, does it? No, not
very. But it’s not
over for the company yet. In case you’re thinking the
company’s digital
media division is finally biting the dust for good, Sony’s
got news for
you.
Movie Is The New Black
Rather than accept defeat after years of struggle,
it’s going to
press on. How, you ask? Well, by launching another media download
service of its own, of course. The
main attraction this time: movie.
Awesome.
If you looking in to the details of this new initiative of
Sony,
you’ll see that, ideally, such a service could in fact work
in ways
that the Connect Music Store never could. How?
Playstation 3. Yep, a lovely piece of kit the PS3 is.
It’s the
newest iteration of the Playstation lineup rightfully dubbed a
full-blown entertainment center (though the way Sony markets the
console, one wouldn’t think so).
One can game on the platform, but one
can also view DVDs and Blu-Ray content and traverse the Web and
presumably network with others via things like VoIP and so forth. If
one looks at all that the Playstation 3 can do, it does in fact look to
be a wise investment.
Playstation 3 Selling Badly
Unfortunately, few are investing. The Playstation 3, despite
intense
efforts by Sony to market the console to various markets of the world,
regularly falls to a third- or fourth-place behind its biggest
competition. Clearly, Sony had better luck with the Playstation 2.
The fact that the Playstation 3 isn’t selling well,
however,
portends tough times for a Sony movie download store, regardless of how
wonderful and “open” and easy to use it ends up
being.
The only way the
company could in fact spark a sort of “change of
heart” in the consumer
world for its digital media offerings is to make its hardware products
far more compelling than they appear today.
The PS3, for example, is
high-def-video-compatible right out of the box, includes free access to
over-the-Web multi player game play, offers storage for media, and,
because its operating system is structured in such an
“open” fashion,
possibilities for expansion are pretty much limitless.
But Sony doesn’t appear to highlight these features.
They market the
box as a game console. Nothing more. A marketing sin by omission, in my
view.
I’ll be honest, I like Sony in its most basic form.
It’s hardware,
is, in a word, beautiful, almost Apple-like in its
simplicity/sophistication. But the company fails to capitalize on the
gorgeous factor.
Sony Needs To Capitalize
It doesn’t take to heart the necessity to create
great
software and a great customer experience, which at the end of the day
are components absolutely crucial – I dare say even more
important than
aesthetics – to making the whole thing work.
If it addresses these
problems, it may just see its fortunes change. If not, anything it
produces will more or less fall into infamy as good ideas sullied with
bad execution. Which was the problem that proved the downfall of Sony
Connect.
The company will no doubt have to consider the desires of the
end user a bit more when constructing its movie download store.
Paul Glazowski is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com
