Sony loses $2.8bn in Consumer Products & Services

[averybluemonkey]

To cater to different markets around the world and different demographics you have to produce a variety of products. Producing spin-off products from a mainline of common bases is a cheap and easy way for a company to broaden its sales potential.

[PaTaito]

Oh my lord. Someone needs to lower their prices. I have always thought they price consumers out of buying their stuff and I suppose this proves it. On this point Vita needs to drop 50 pounds also. Along with this the whole company needs stream lining I heard they have about 25 different models of camcorder on sale!! Just make 5 and you're onto a winner come on Sony think. It seems their problems lies in too many of the same products TVs etc in Yodobashi id see they would have at least 10-15 different versions of TV all priced massively higher than other companies.

Hope this loss makes them price competitively for Vita and PS4 as well as the rest of their stuff.

As for vita, i think the current ?190 odd for a wifi would be good value for the common gamer, if they just threw in maybe a 32gb memory card....hell even a 16gb card.

I honestly think they dropped a bollock not including some onboard storage.

?169.99-?179.99 for a vita wifi with built in 8gb onboard flash storage would go well. And start selling the seperate cards at reasonable prices.

[JU!]

As for vita, i think the current ?190 odd for a wifi would be good value for the common gamer, if they just threw in maybe a 32gb memory card....hell even a 16gb card.

I honestly think they dropped a bollock not including some onboard storage.

?169.99-?179.99 for a vita wifi with built in 8gb onboard flash storage would go well. And start selling the seperate cards at reasonable prices.

Just before I read your full post was gonna say their memory cards for it are ridiculous.

Sony constantly trying to create their own proprietary formats for everything and failing every single time can't help them!

Agree same as above. Epic fail especially on Vitas part with this stupidity.

To cater to different markets around the world and different demographics you have to produce a variety of products. Producing spin-off products from a mainline of common bases is a cheap and easy way for a company to broaden its sales potential.

I think Sony over egg the pudding in this department though. Further more their company seems to be split into many different departments that argue amongst each other and don't seem to communicate. They have got to focus more on less product lines imo.

[charlesr]

It might be generating revenue, but at the expense of what? I know a lot of people avoid using the dash these days because it's become so in your face. Could be plenty of lost sales there.

I don't use it because it's ****e but not because of the adverts but instead because it's duff to navigate - the adverts bothered me to start with but some of them have started to become relevant to me.

Maybe if you have kinect it's really good to navigate?? (Anyone tried?) But the amount of remote button presses needed to do stuff is sensational. Whereas if you use the guide button it's very quick.

[saturn-gamer]

Sony don't even need to add internal storage, they just need to tweak the Vita so that all games can function without a memory card.

Its ridiculous how its been set up now. I could see mothers buying a Vita and then finding out the games don't work. The PS1 and PS2 at least ran games if you didn't have a memory card. But it was required for saving anyway so gamers would end up buying it.

The Vita is trying to find a middle ground between digital sales and physical. The Go was being ignored by a lot of retailers because it only worked with digital purchases. In case of the Vita its really a stealth DD only machine. Changing a cartridge is quite a pain and feels like its not meant to do often. Every single game so far has been released digitally as well. This makes the lack of internal storage weird but also understandable, those cards are surely Sony's profit on the Vita. And retailers have every reason to sell them.

The memorycards are a scam though, they are last-gen tech (6mb sec?). Thats why the load times of the Vita are rather slow at times.

[MisterBubbles]

So Vita has sold 1.8 million, its a failure, stop talking bollocks please guys.

[smouty]

Yesterdays report from BBC

Sony shares have tumbled to a 31-year low, a day after the company reported a record annual loss of 456.7bn yen ($5.7bn; ?3.5bn).

Sony shares fell as much as 6.7% to 1,132 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The firm, which has been making a loss for each of the past four years, has forecast that it will return to profit in the current financial year.

However, analysts said that investors were not convinced the firm would be able to achieve that target.

"Sony is facing a lot of difficulties and the new president has not been able to produce a clear plan as to how he will turn around the company," Yuuki Sakurai of Fukoku Capital Management told the BBC.

"Even the little that investors have heard, they are not very impressed with."
'Remains at risk'

The Japanese electronics maker has been hit by a spate of issues in recent times.

Its TV business, one of its biggest growth drivers in the past, has been hit hard by increased competition and falling prices. The division has been making losses for eight years in a row.

The company has also lost ground to rivals in the gaming and mobile phone business.

Analysts say the firm has also been lagging behind in innovation and product development, which are key to growth in the consumer electronics sector.

To make matters worse, Sony has had to deal with rising costs and a strong Japanese currency which have also hurt its earnings.

Earlier this year, the newly elected president and chief executive, Kazuo Hirai, announced that the firm would cut 10,000 jobs as part of a major reorganisation.

However, analysts warned that despite the restructuring plan, a falling market share in key segments may continue to hurt Sony.

"On the whole, [Sony] remains at risk of ongoing losses in its cellular application and TV businesses, and we continue to see little prospect of a rise in valuations for the time being," Credit Suisse analysts Yuan Tian and Shunsuke Tsuchiya said in a client note.

There's not much there I can disagree with. Lack of innovation, lagging behind competition and rising costs with no clear strategy to turn it around.

[sj33]

Sony don't even need to add internal storage, they just need to tweak the Vita so that all games can function without a memory card.

Its ridiculous how its been set up now. I could see mothers buying a Vita and then finding out the games don't work. The PS1 and PS2 at least ran games if you didn't have a memory card. But it was required for saving anyway so gamers would end up buying it.

The Vita is trying to find a middle ground between digital sales and physical. The Go was being ignored by a lot of retailers because it only worked with digital purchases. In case of the Vita its really a stealth DD only machine. Changing a cartridge is quite a pain and feels like its not meant to do often. Every single game so far has been released digitally as well. This makes the lack of internal storage weird but also understandable, those cards are surely Sony's profit on the Vita. And retailers have every reason to sell them.

The memorycards are a scam though, they are last-gen tech (6mb sec?). Thats why the load times of the Vita are rather slow at times.

Related to this, given that it is actually possible to save data onto the cart itself, is there actually a reason why most games still require a memory card?

[saturn-gamer]

As I said, their lack of innovation will do them in. I always find it funny when people come up with things like Blu Ray as innovation in gaming. Which it isn't at all.

Sony needs to pull a Wii or Kinect with the PS4, that kind of shock. Otherwise they won't lure in anyone else than the Sony fans. The PS3 was being carried by the PS2 somewhat, the PS4 will receive more backlash from the get go. I have a feeling this Wii U Tablet thing is going to work out (like the Wii itself, its dismissed at first but incredibly succesful later on), and MS is traditionally going to capture slowly but surely more share in markets outside of the USA. I expect them to improve their Live and Kinect experience, and their multimedia services as well.

Vita's April NPD is reportedly lower than Kid Icarus numbers (80k). Sony also seems to combine PSP and Vitas forecast numbers to make it look somewhat better. Which, to me, sounds like Sony is expecting **** from the device but can't really tell the shareholders bluntly.

As for their mobile phone market, the Xperia S seems to be a good Android handset. Sony's best in ages. But also a bit late to the party. Its perhaps a good start.

Related to this, given that it is actually possible to save data onto the cart itself, is there actually a reason why most games still require a memory card?

It has to do with DLC support. Games with DLC support don't seem to have a save partition on the card.