PlayStation Vita OS in your phone and telly - Sony's saviour?
Now it's finally shot of Ericsson
Analysis Incoming Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai doesn't have too long to prove himself before shareholders get restive again. Of course, his big challenge is in the TV business*, but he has also spotted the chance to do, belatedly, what rival Samsung has been putting together for years – creating a true multiscreen apps and content platform by extending a common user experience across all Sony's devices and stores.
Taking full control of the handset venture Sony Ericsson is a good start, but at the heart of the push for the consumer's content experience from the living room to the phone lies the still-powerful PlayStation brand.
Sony has already merged its PlayStation online gaming service into its broader online platform, a move which happened this week, and has rebranded the whole system as Sony Entertainment Network.
That was the latest in a string of actions to make PlayStation a central part of the whole Sony business – last year, it combined all its consumer electronics, game consoles and network platforms into a single division, and now it states its aims as being to establish "a global comprehensive network platform of services across games, movies, music and more".
This may involve extending the operating system which underpins the new PlayStation Vita portable console to non-games devices to increase their appeal in gaming-related areas such as rich graphics and interactivity. This may, over time, dilute the handset commitment to Android. Just as Sony is expected to integrate smartphones more closely into its wider family of devices and content platforms, it may also put Vita OS on some of its phones.
In a recent discussion with reporters, Hirai said that the OS on the new PlayStation Vita console was designed to be "expandable", and would be suitable for smartphones and tablets. Vita already blurs the lines with tablets and other wireless-enabled Sony gadgets by including embedded 3G and selling partly through carriers like Vodafone.
Now Sony is looking to make its gaming brand a more integral part of its overall media offering, converging the PlayStation Network with other stores and services, and perhaps creating a controlled OS and user experience for multiple gadgets.
Sony has often been accused of failing to capitalise effectively on the PlayStation brand in the mobile world, partly because internal politics with Sony Ericsson delayed the launch of a PSP handset. Last year finally saw the Xperia Play, but the brand was diluted and the games themselves also made available to other Android vendors.
Hirai said, according to CNet: "If you're asking if we've made it in a way that's expandable, so that it's possible to apply to smartphones and tablets on top of achieving the high responsiveness we need for gaming devices, then that is possible. It's been designed with expandability in mind."
However, he stressed there were no immediate plans for Vita OS tablets or handsets. The Vita sports a 5-inch OLED touchscreen, high-quality graphics close in quality to those of the PlayStation 3, and many preloaded apps such as Facebook and Skype.
Bootnote
* Reuters reported that the combined losses of Panasonic, Sony and Sharp Corp is expected to hit $17 billion this year, thanks to the success of South Korea's Samsung and LG.
Copyright © 2012, Faultline
Faultline is published by Rethink Research, a London-based publishing and consulting firm. This weekly newsletter is an assessment of the impact of the week's events in the world of digital media. Faultline is where media meets technology. Subscription details here.
COMMENTS
Sorry but its Sony...
I'm not buying stuff from a company that installs rootkits, takes legal action (on multiple occasions) against its own customer base, is totally incompetent at securing user data and to top all that off is horribly overpriced. The days of people paying a premium for the Sony name are gone. The company doesn't understand that.
YMMV.
(too?) High quality hardware...
Approx. 3.5 years ago I moved from the rural city of Amersfoort to the wonderful town of Wageningen. It was then and there that I decided that I wanted to get a games console. Funny enough my main motivation was to use it as a media / Bluray player with 'enhanced' capabilities (playing games). I got lucky and could get myself a "media kit deal" which consisted of a bundle with PS3 & PSEye and to pick up the PSP with a big discount in the same purchase.
Up until now I still consider this purchase to be the best electronic device I've got so far.
It. just. works. ! Eventually I got more games, so 80Gb wasn't enough anymore. Guess what? /Without/ revoking warranty you can easily replace the HD (I now have 500Gb). Sony eventually introduced 'Move'. Since I already had the PSEye all I needed were the controllers. New technology on an "old" machine (by then the PS3 Slim had also been released). And it kept on working without me requiring to purchase upgrades or whatever. That feat is IMO impressive.
Of course the downside to all of this should be obvious... Vita is out yet I see no reason to replace my older PSP. Instead I got myself some larger memory sticks so that I could easily store purchases from the store. Large downloads aren't a problem either; I simply buy on the PS3, then transfer onto the PSP.
SO quite frankly; perhaps they sold too high quality hardware?
Re: Good new for OS choice
Well, Android has proved to be nothing short of a disaster for SonyEricssson ( see http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2012/01/27/feature-phones-now-more-profitable-than-mid-tier-smartphones/ ), so this is good news.
Re: Re: Re: Typical Sony
"He is CORRECT, the new Sony Z Walkman proprietary DSP enhancements ONLY WORK WITH SONY-SOURCED MUSIC:"
Further BS, or at least just misunderstanding from the very text you quoted. The DSP enhancements are a function of the Sony music apps (the Sony supplied goods Engadget refers to), which you can play any WMA, MP3, PCM and AAC-LC files through. Any third party Android apps won't have access to the DSP though, which is more to do with Android than anything - to make it available everywhere it wouldn't be accessible from the music app itself and would have to be running as a background service the whole time. Given the DSP seems virtual, that's not a surprise.
Re: Re: Typical Sony
Well, I smell that off-the-top-of-my-head BS - how about checking facts first and accusing others second, dumbo?
He is CORRECT, the new Sony Z Walkman proprietary DSP enhancements ONLY WORK WITH SONY-SOURCED MUSIC:
"So, here's the big reason to use the included players: Sony's loaded the Z with a number of equalization options and proprietary DSPs to enhance your audio. Problem is, unless you want to use Sony's supplied goods, you won't have access to any of it -- if you're a big Google Music user like us, it hinders the reasoning for going with the Z in the first place. But alas, such is to be expected running Android, as your options for a music player are only limited by what you can manage to load into it. Specifically, the EQ is of the five-band variety (allowing for two custom presets), with Sony's "Clear Bass" as a sixth parameter. This is essentially a quick way to raise bass levels beyond what would normally cause distortion in cheaper cans, but it's not to say that bass heads won't love it in general."
Copied from the review of this tiny little tech site you obviously never heard of: http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/14/sony-z-series-walkman-player-review/
