Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, Joel Johnson takes a deep look about what went wrong with the Sony PSP. Along the way, he writes a thoughtful prescription for the PSP2 and how Sony could emerge from its own ashes. From BB Gadgets:
It's the wrong time for Sony to launch a PSP2. The economy is the dumps. Sony has posted a $1.12 billion loss, its first in 14 years. But they must also be looking towards the future, making tough decisions about whether they should remain in the gaming space at all.
I don't think there's much doubt they will. Sony, after all, has never lacked for stubbornness and pride.
So what should Sony's next portable gaming device be? A phone? An all-singing, all-dancing convergence device of the future? Or a pared down device that does gaming–and only gaming–as perfectly as possible?
"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything." – Win Borden, senator sentenced to 2 years and 3 months for failure to file tax returns
Sony has always had a problem with convergence, in that it does it poorly. That's because the company, despite attempts by its latest CEO to bring the company in line, still operates as the prototypical engineer-led Japanese company, a field of silent ivory silos that rarely communicate as a whole. One division of the company might make a camera with a web browser in it, while another might make a camera for the PSP, while yet another sells cameras that connect to their laptops– none of which can actually communicate with other Sony devices. It must be a herculean challenge for a company that makes products in nearly every consumer electronics category to coordinate and executive as a collective whole, but it should not be impossible, even in notoriously regimented Japanese corporate culture. Difficulty does not excuse a failure to meet the challenge…
Read the rest of "The PSP2 and the Return of Sony" at BB Gadgets
