Sony's Revised FY11 Losses More Than Double Initial Estimate
From the "hard to believe this was an honest mistake" department, the New York Times is reporting today that Sony's net loss from last year was actually more than double the $2.7B initially reported:
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During a news conference at its headquarters in Tokyo on the projected annual loss, equivalent to $6.4 billion, the electronics and entertainment company stopped short of confirming reports that it planned to eliminate 10,000 jobs, a weighty move in a country where staff cuts are considered a breach of a company’s social contract.
But the chief financial officer, Masaru Kato, said that all options were under consideration as Sony pushes ahead with a restructuring drive. The company expects the effort will catapult it back to profitability for the current financial year, which ends next March, with an operating profit of ¥180 billion.
I'm not so sure I share Sony's optimism about the coming year. Think this will impact plans and timelines for the PS4 going forward?
The timing of the PS4 for them, financially, isn't good either as they tend to makes losses on the hardware and it takes time to build up a profitable market share.
Microsofts plan to destroy Sony is going pretty well There is no way Sony can afford going head to head with Microsoft with the new consoles. Sony simply cant afford to sell consoles at a loss anymore so they will not be able to keep up performance wise with Microsoft. Sony needs to do a "Nintendo" but I dont think they can.
I see them exiting one or more core businesses. Either they'll try to sell their movie and music libraries; particularly since they haven't kept up with the digital times and they're just mismanaging them now. That would be a huge pickup for another company and might give Sony the cash injection that they need.
Or they may exit the "mainstream" electronics markets for similar reasons; they've just mismanaged the brand and let Samsung/LG... even Visio is a better buy than a Sony TV product. In the mean time Yamaha is eating their lunch in the Audio department.
They could try to re position themselves as a boutique electronic manufacturer ala BOSE but with TVs and the like.
Games in development (hi2u Planetside 2) are probably going to get cut. Anything not a blockbuster (Uncharted level) IP or studio will get nailed. Sony won't shop around IPs or be willing to take risks to push failing products like the Move (so you won't see anything like Sorcery again, at least not Sony funded... and let's face it, who else would take that big a chance considering the pathetic attach of Move?). There's also a reason the speculation is that Sony is using mostly off-the-shelf parts for the PS4... Cell was too expensive and creating *good* dev tools from scratch is hard.
That said, someone mentioned that Apple has enough liquid funds to buy Sony (hell, most other companies) out right. Maybe Sony goes away and Apple gets a console in the living room and the Appstore makes more inroads. If that happens then the Microsoft eco-system is well and truly screwed.
Where's Teecakes? I'm sure he could spin this into a positive somehow.
Lmao. They just announced that they've lost over 25% of the companies market value in a single year.
How have they not been delisted from the stock market yet? They're a penny stock and they don't know it yet. I guess some people still believe in their ability to make money. Well, I guess I'd wait and see what happens to this restructuring effort too. Kazuo is Sony's last hope.
Man, could you imagine what the loss would've been if Kutaragi had been CEO :P Had the PS3 actually succeeded, Kutaragi would have been CEO right now.
I wouldn't completely call Sony dead just yet, it's still a strong brand name. I would assume that they would cut costs and focus on what has actually worked for them but who knows
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Originally Posted by Johan
Valve hasn't stripped anyone of anything.
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Originally Posted by lockwoodx
Steam has always been 100% voluntary. Origin.... not so much.
I think PS3 has a pretty good exclusive line up this year: starhawk, MMO FPS (can't think of its name). Don't they have new IP being released using drake character? One thing about sony, they do release exclusive games, they just don't always sell that great.
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Originally Posted by divinechaos
Gaming-wise, what do they have coming out for the PS3?
There is no way Sony can afford going head to head with Microsoft with the new consoles. Sony simply cant afford to sell consoles at a loss anymore so they will not be able to keep up performance wise with Microsoft. Sony needs to do a "Nintendo" but I dont think they can.
