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Some more to say about Sony…

by Martin Porter

I’ve been thinking a lot about Stringer stepping down at Sony and the Game Dude (Kazuo Hirai) now put in charge. This corporate tango could actually revive the brand for a next gen of connected, online entertainment.

If I’m reading this move right, Sony of tomorrow will be a front-end for an insanely deep, personalized, digital archive of the greatest entertainment in history, much of which it already owns. The televisions and mobile devices will become commoditized — valued more for how much they learn your voice patterns and gestures than for the features they tote. In other words, consumer electronics will become nothing more than the new physical media in the eyes of the consumer. Commanding an omnipresent library of socially-networked entertainment will be everything.

The Sony that we knew has always been the television division. It’s now bleeding losses, dependent upon competitors for its components, and unable to compete apparently even in the next gen of OLED TV. Stringer is a television guy — CBS through and through — and in an age of Facebook IPOs, broadcast television is so old school.

The Game Dude is beholden to no legacy brand. He aims to be the master of the Internet, not the airwaves. He just so happens to own a record label, a movie studio, and a megamoney TV team — not to mention the next generation of Hollywood filmmaking (i.e., post-film).

A generation of content consumers has been brought up thinking that the Sony PlayStation is a portal to a wondrous world of online entertainment and interactive gaming. They know nothing about a declining hardware brand. They know that it’s all about the network, not the gear — something Sony finally figured it out for itself.

Good move. This is going to be fun to watch.

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