Here's an article bashing Sony from TheStreet.com.



Highlights:

Sony is set to be knocked off its firm position as King of the Hill because of its flawed PlayStation 3 strategy. This is only one of many reasons to avoid shares of the consumer-electronics conglomerate, but it's certainly the most important.

Among the most glaring errors Sony has made with the PS3 has been the inclusion of a next-generation Blu-ray DVD drive in the console. Having seen Blu-ray in action up close, I can say it certainly is impressive.

Plus, Sony is losing exclusivity on many PS3 video-game titles.
[He goes on to list Dynasty Warriors, Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto, Guitar Hero 2 and Virtua Fighter 5 as definite losses to Sony's exclusive lineup]

The Wii is making its way into gamers' hands a lot faster than the PS3, giving Nintendo a chance to gain a foothold with consumers ahead of mass production of the PS3.

Sony's video-game business is easily its crown jewel. At its best, it has provided more than 60% of Sony's operating profit despite hovering around 10% of overall Sony revenue. Given that Sony is almost certainly going to lose market share, the company's profitability will be dragged down dramatically.

... as Microsoft and Nintendo gain market share in this segment. Plus, one must consider the generally tough state of the consumer electronics business, given how competitive businesses such as high-definition televisions have become. With that in mind, it is nearly impossible for me to come up with a bullish case for Sony.

Woof! Not much I can add to that!

It's hard not to get caught up in the doom and gloom of Sony's status quo

Well, if all you can see is (Sony Corp downfall) OR (Massive losses in the Sony Consumer Electronics), then, yeah... it IS easy to get all doom and gloomy.

Perez also reminds us that enthusiasts like you and I are merely a minority in mass gaming culture, you know the one where Madden consistently is the top selling game in the US contrary to what is covered in the press. From the article: "Sony still has the definitive brand in gaming and to the average mainstream consumer that's all that really matters." So what's the doom and gloom conversation really focused on: The fact that Sony may have blown its 70% PS2 market share, or the long-shot of a chance that the PS3 may have seriously jeopardized the company's gaming business? There I go getting all hasty again...

Good point. They'll keep their massive base of Madden players. But how many hard-core gamers - of which theirs is an ever-expanding market! - will leave teh Sony camp for Microsofts? How big is that cabal of gamers going to matter? The Author and I agree - they're'll be a massive reduction of Sony's marketshare!
Which brings us to the Domm&Gloom Question of the Day:Will the PS3 kill just SCE or all of Sony?

Will the Xbox 360 be able to reduce its price quicker than the PS3?

Granted, the article says that Microsoft is having some problems shrinking their die - but how hard will it be for Sony?

The Xbox is running a custom triple-core PowerPC-based design by IBM - but it's still a Power-PC chip. How hard can it be?

The PS3 is running a never-before-seen chip - the Cell - which is utilized by a small handful of products. The PS3 uses 7 Synergistic Processing Elements (SPE) but the chip is designed with 8 (see the picture, above). They omit one to help increase their production. At the current die process of 90nm (the same as the 360's PowerPC chip), it was too costly to create a chip with all 8 working SPEs. The solution would be to hone the production to create a higher-quality chip; instead - and probably for production output reasons - Sony allows one SPE to be broken. How will Sony be able to shrink that process to 65nm if they can't create a fully-functional chip at 90nm? It'll take some doing, is all I'm saying. Hell, Microsoft's parter is having a bitch of a time making it work, and that's with a relatively well-understood chip like the PowerPC!

So, anyway, my point is that Microsoft will have an easier time reducing the cost of the Xbox 360 than Sony will reducing the cost of the PS3. Lower costs may allow for lower prices; which is a potent weapon in any company's arsenal of competition.

This is just my speculation. We'll all see how this plays out.

City Of Milwaukee Suing AT&T Over Planned IPTV Service

The agreement would force AT&T to make an annual payment to the city just as Time Warner Cable does under its long-standing franchise agreement with Milwaukee.

But San Antonio-based AT&T contends the IPTV service now under construction is not a cable TV system as defined under federal law.

So, is Milwaukee trying to honor their own "Level Playing Ground" laws, or are the cronies of cable providers? More debate!

Trading PS3s for Wiis?

Hole E. Smokes.

I just can't fathom this. Could it be true?

For those who don't know, I follow these console wars pretty closely. I've even cast my predictions that the PS3 will eventually gain a sizeable marketshare, albeit smaller than their last-gen dominator, the PS2. As it stood in the last generation (Nintendo's Gamecube vs. Microsoft's XBox vs. Sony's Playstation2), the PS2 held a whopping 70% of the industry, leaving Nintendo and Microsoft to split the 30% equally between them. That is a massive victory, but one I feel has been squandered and pissed away by Sony, leaving them vulnerable to competition. The current generation pits Nintendo's Wii against Sony's PS3 against Microsoft's XBox 360.

Cost: The PS3 is $600, 360 is $400 and the Wii is $250. Need I say more?

Development Costs: Wii is old-skool technology with a dressed up interface, so the costs of game development by publishers is relatively small. Microsoft fully recognizes that games are what drive hardware sales, so they're putting easy-to-learn development tools at even my grasp. (A mix of XNA tools and C# programming language) After all, Microsoft is largely a software company - they do that stuff right. Sony's technology is brand-new, never-before-seen stuff, that Sony executive Phil Harrison says, "nobody will ever use 100 percent of its capability." This says - quite blatantly - that the development tools are practically non-existant. Why would he say that? Because he's trying to spin the fact that there's more potential for fun than the 360. (Typical Sony propaganda -- "It's not a problem, it's a feature!", which Microsoft used to use quite frequently)

Online Services: Microsoft has been leading this aspect of gaming since the last generation, and they've done a phenomenal job of honing it over the years - despite an annual fee of $50. Nintendo offers a free service that has been getting positive reviews. Sony's free service, on the other hand, has been recieving horrible reviews. No voice chat, no unified interface, no unified list of friends, poor developer support (as in, some games that have multiplayer options on the 360 don't have that at all on the PS3) Sony refuses to get on-board the multiplayer train, and it has left the station.

Sure enough, developers are abandoning their exclusive contracts with Sony. The #1 game in Japan, Dragon Quest, was recently announced would be an exclusive for Nintendo's mutant handheld-that-could system, the GameBoy DS. Rumors are flying about PS3's prized games being brought over to the 360. As Jimmy43 says, "if this turns out to be true i can save myself $600." That's $600 worth of XBox 360 games Jimmy43 can spend, which is to say 10 games. (Games for both the PS3 and 360 are $60)

What is even more disturbing is that Sony is actually voicing their opinion that market share doesn't matter! This is patently false, and is about as stupid an opinion to hold as the Flat-Earth idea.

"The name of the game is not market share, it's how fast we can grow the industry - our ambition is to grow 15 per cent a year on hardware and software if we can," [David] Reeves told MCV

.

Fucktarded. Everyone knows the circular dynamic: People buy the console with the most games. Developers want to sell games, so they look at market share of the hardware. There's the hurdle - and the first console to overcome that inertia wins. Microsoft seems to be doing all the right things, with the low cost of development tools and an year head-start of hardware sales, as well as active recruitment of developers. Meanwhile, Sony seems to have their head in the sand.

Bah. It's sad to see such a fall from grace. Even if it hasn't happened, yet. Only time will tell, though.

Social network users have ruined their privacy, forever.

Social networking users need to take a step back and think about just what
they're posting onto the Internet. It'll probably be too late for a number of
people, and it'll take a lot more 'victims' of the lack of privacy before most
users actually start heeding these warnings. Just beware that anything posted
online to your friends now, could very easily come back to haunt you in days,
months, or even years to come.

A neighbor of mine wanted to learn HTML so she could personalize her MySpace account with pictures of her kids. Hmm. I told her I thought it - posting pictures of her kids - was a bad idea. Paranoid? Probably. Sage advise? I think so. Whatever. She'll do what she wants.

">I want to learn HTML! Grr!

What bothered me more was that she didn't really seem interested in learning some rudimentary HTML tags. I was snubbed, man. I guess I am a lot more boring than I realize, 'cause even my wife rolled her eyes at her, as if to say, "Don't get him started." Oh well. Technological heathens can stare into their fires, while I recline in my technological leather La-Z-Boy watching hi-def movies.

Of course, this pseudonymed blog is kind of a public thang, too...

Grassroots or astroturf? AT&T and the politics of influence

Here comes the first swirlings of the typhoon. After all the negative press Ed Markey has gotten as a Moon-Bat Massachusetts Liberal, it's nice to see he's actually going after these guys. Do they deserve it? I don't care. I'm just glad someone is trying to uncover something - 'cause something is most definitely afoot at the Circle K.

Reminds me of the flak surrounding Sony and their ill-fated AllIWantForChristmasIsAPSP.com debacle. I've heard the government is taking Sony's example of deception to try to force clandestine sales efforts to reveal their employers up-front. Sounds like a no-brainer, to me, but hey - That's why I'm not in the government.

Whoa! Fiber to the house? ECKS-cellent!

FCC kills build-out requirements for telecoms' video services (updated)

(Okay, maybe this Google toolbar is worth something, after all...)

I was just talking to my Dad about this!! I had predicted that within 5 years the FCC would revamp the laws regarding cable providers and telecom carriers. Little did I know that it would happen within TWO DAYS!

It will be fascinating to watch the fallout from this. It seems like towns are getting the shaft, and corporations will be able to steamroll right through. Is that a bad thing? I'm not sure. It's gonna be an interesting couple of months, as the Forces of Indifference do battle with the Brigade of Apathy. Well, at least that's how it stands with me. Until I can determine my own course of action (if I were in charge) then I can't really judge either side (towns vs. corps) as being Right.

Anyway, this little revision by the FCC will keep me blogging for a while, I'm sure.

The Commissioner of the FCC is named Copps. That's right. Commissioner Copps. Achtung!


He hears noth-INK!

The article I emailed my Dad was this one.

GQ's Gear of the Year: Nothing You'd Ever Want to Buy - Gizmodo

FINALLY! I've always hated those crappy "Gear You Need" advertisements articles in magazines like GQ, Maxim et alia. Craptastic crap at fantastically high prices. But have us technophiles ever complained? No. Because we like reading about that techno-crap, even if it is crap. A mixed bag of emotions, to be sure. At least Gizmodo has the presence of mind to actually say it out loud. "This crap is exorbitantly priced crap!" Can I get an Amen?


Expensive food usually results in expensive crap. At least it started tasty...


My brother says he actually reads this thing. Heh. How long do you think it'll take before he reads this and mentions this code word: "Goofy Monkey"? Never.

Anyway, I just realized that Google's latest toolbar will auto-link a page to my Blogger account. That's a handy-dandy thing for a blogger to have. Maybe I'll ressurect this thing with that kind of ease-of-use. Naaaaah. Dang! Blogger is filled with neat features... I want to tell my brother to check my blog out!

Time to dust this thing off.

I just posted a link to this page to my classmates at the University of Phoenix. Great. Now they get to see what a silly goober I can be. Jeebus, there's four articles about video games, fer cryin' out loud. How goofy does that look? Oh well.

Perhaps I can pawn these entries off as the works of a much younger, immature Enzian. Think they'll buy it? Yeah. Me niether.

Fine. As long as I'm basking in my nerditity, I might as well post the picture I grabbed for Monkus (a codename for my oldest son). This pic got him all hyper and spazzy. Heh. I love that.

Well, by friend Sean and I played XBox for an entire weekend. I think my eyeballs are gonna drop from hy head. Monkus was pleased as punch, of course, as he got to play alongside us.

As soon as the Earth-Boy went to bed, though, BAM! Halo 2!

>

We're part of my friend, Ruined's, Live Nights clan. We were the recipients of much pwnage. We sucked. You can check out the fee-nominal stats on Bungie's site. My account is Enzian00001.