After 14 years of seeing year-end gains, Sony has finally got hit with its first net loss in 14 years, losing $1.04 billion U.S. or 98.9 billion Yen. This is compared to the previous year profit of $3.88 Billion U.S. or 369.4 billion Yen.The company blames the global down turn and the strong Japanese Yen for the net loss. Worldwide sales are down 12% for Sony, seeing nearly 8,000 jobs cut from its overall 185,000 staff and closing 10% of its factories. Another reason for the loss is due to the falling sales of the Sony PlayStation 2, which has been out for years, still outperforming the numbers for the Sony PlayStation 3 in many regions.
Senior managing director at Chibagin Asset Management, Fujio Andon has said "[Sony] Right now they have no 'number one products", which can hurt the company a lot, especially when Sony is involved in so many electronic markets from gaming, to televisions, digital media, Vaio PC's and portable electronics.
Sony is not the only Japanese company feeling the pinch as Hitachi announced an annual loss of $8.26 billion U.S. or 787.3 billion Yen a record for a Japanese company. All eyes are focused on Sony to see if they can recover from their deficit while Nintendo and Microsoft report positive numbers in their gaming department.
Sony isn't the only company manufacturing blu-ray drives.
really?
the last time i checked there were developing 200GB ,400GB and 1TB optical disks !!
Wrong. Not until ISPs abolish download limits and provide at least 100Mb broadband.
Yeah because you will still be using the same download limit and speed in 10 years as you do now. Optical disks are running out of purposes fast. Won't be long til they are useless as backup also with cloud technology becoming a more and more common option for storage.
the last time i checked there were developing 200GB ,400GB and 1TB optical disks !!
And what's the storage capasity got to do with anything? The day you scratch your 69TB PinkRay disc with porn you'll wish you stored it elsewhere.
Yeah but discs are also cheap. I doubt flash will be used as a medium of storage for movies, games ect. Optical deics still have life in them and by the time they don't I'm sure people will jump straight to digital downloads be it 5 years or 10.
I don't think theres a hugely compelling reason to kill optical formats currently for things where the distributer wants the media to be read only. Flash would make sense in cases where you needed to write back to the media.
in 2001 my Download limit was 3GB
for the same price in 2002 it was 1GB
for the same price in 2004 it was 10GB
for the same price in 2006 it was 10GB
for the same price in 2007 it was 12GB
for the same price in 2009 it is still 12GB
I do not see any significant advances in download limits in Australia (or much of the world for that matter) in the next 5 years, or indeed until long after the National Broadband Network is built in the next 10 years.
Until such time, optical discs will still be relevant to the rest of us. It is still cheaper to mail a physical DVD's worth of data to my neighbour, than to send that amount via the internet.
in 2001 my Download limit was 3GB
for the same price in 2002 it was 1GB
for the same price in 2004 it was 10GB
for the same price in 2006 it was 10GB
for the same price in 2007 it was 12GB
for the same price in 2009 it is still 12GB
I do not see any significant advances in download limits in Australia (or much of the world for that matter) in the next 5 years, or indeed until long after the National Broadband Network is built in the next 10 years.
Until such time, optical discs will still be relevant to the rest of us. It is still cheaper to mail a physical DVD's worth of data to my neighbour, than to send that amount via the internet.
Sorry, AU is stuck in the middle ages regarding broadband. Your country sucks majorly in this department.
Here we no download limits at all. The majority of the world does not have any download limits either.
Your country is centuries behind.
We aren't great bandwidth wise, but Telstra caps are hardly the benchmark even if they are AU's biggest telco.
?
I loved the first 2 games, but sold my PS2 and games awhile back.
Wonder if they can give me some tips to rationalize this for my wife on how it's a good purchase!
FFXIII isn't a PS3 exclusive
I guess he meant FFXIII: Versus
The days of using the justification "well it's a blu-ray player too!" are long gone. You can get a separate Blu-Ray player AND an Xbox 360 (which has many many more games and a much better online service) for less than the cost of a PS3.
No you can't. A 360 plus Live and even a low end BD player are, at best the same price. Sorry, the PS3 is a good value overall.
I don't see why for instance GOW2 wasn't a PS3 title given it came out close to the PS3's release. That to me seemed like a bit of a missed opportunity right there.
Maybe that doesn't make them evil, but it makes them something FAR away from good.
Maybe that doesn't make them evil, but it makes them something FAR away from good.
I don't disagree but they seemed to have learned their lessons. I'm not defending everything they have done, but it appears people are holding them to a much higher standard than they hold other large corporations, the double standard is mostly humorous and grossly ill-informed.
Maybe that doesn't make them evil, but it makes them something FAR away from good.
Sony is a big company. You can't say, for example, Sony Computer Entertainment is bad because Sony BMG made a dumb choice.
Many corporations have one or two stigmas in their history that when put in a scales pan together with their good deeds in the other pan, usually the latter turn outs to be the weightier one.
if you think Sony is still the old Sony, you are wrong. You should finger count in how many products Sony is a winner.
1. TV. No. Samsung outsells Sony and technology is better than Sony these days. Sony got raped by using Samsung's panel.
2. DVD or Blue ray drives. No. Many companies sell them.
3. Home theater. Just another seller.
4. Game console. Maybe still no 1, but arguable in terms of sales in PS3. PSP is their winner.
5. Phone. way behind Nokia.
6. Cameras and camcorders. well, never the best at all.
So, which is their winner? PSP and PS3 probably.
Sony is just another average company that prices its products higher than most other companies. So, having a loss is validated.
But thanks to all its loyal fans for keeping it afloat these few years by paying the overpriced items for the 'sony' label.
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