Sony Stifles The Very Creativity The Company Touts Its Product Line Encourages
You'd have thought a few years ago that after picking up any copy of Sony Style, that Sony as a company was on the cusp of something great. The magazine depicted the Sony line as a collection of lifestyle products and tools for creative outlet. The loyal following that Sony electronics products in particular enjoys certainly indicates there is some truth to the various accounts portrayed in the articles. I myself have been a vehement advocate of Sony products because they are always cutting edge, reliable, and tastefully styled. But, over the past few years, Sony corporate appears to be at odds with itself, resulting in growth limitation, a dip in consumer confidence, and the stifling of the very creativity high cost marketing campaigns were actively encouraging. As soon as Sony became a content provider, their consumer products went to hell in a hand basket. Instead of being a leading proponent of digital rights management, Sony became wholly consumed with protecting its pricey investment and continued to push its varying proprietary formats and technologies.
Interestingly, engineering does not seem to be the primary problem. Sony continues to push out products that are simply stunning. There has however been a noticeable drop in quality of consumer products that anyone like myself who owns a large number of Sony products will most certainly attest to. For me these quality problems include burned out or hung pixels, a jammed DVD carousel, and a downright aweful cell phone. Whether the quality problems were due to partnering, cost cutting, or just plain sloppiness is difficult to say. But, I suddenly find myself second guessing as to whether or not I should purchase an extended warranty for my new Sony electronics purchases--something I would have never considered around the time the last Sony Style magazine rolled off the presses
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It wasn't until I was looking to replace my car stereo that I realized the position that Sony has wedged itself in to. At Fry's electronics, I found a floor model Sony MEX-1HD head unit. The price mark down was astonishing, but I couldn't tell whether it could actually play ordinary MP3s or not. This stereo was an engineering marvel however. It had a 10 Gig hardrive that you could rip CDs to, a memory stick slot, RCA-style line ins, and a firewire port. But with all of this hardware, it was impossible to tell if I could use a regular memory stick or if I had to use MagicGate and only download Songs purchased from Sony/BMG. It also wasn't clear if I could play MP3s that had been burned to a disk or only on the memory stick media. All of the documentation seemed to downplay the unit's astounding capabilities. The original price was in the stratosphere, but if consumers actually knew what it was capable of, my guess is that many would consider it worth every penny. So, I purchased the product in hopes that it would meet my expectations, and though I got price gouged on the replacement of the knobs, it has far surpassed my wildest expectations.
In my eyes, this downplaying of product capabilities and features marked the beginning of Sony's campaign of protectivism. In recent news, Sony's insertion of spyware was uncovered where software was being automatically installed that secretly (and invisibly) prevented a cd from being ripped more than once. This was a clear act of abuse, and the way that Sony has handeled it has been irresponsible at best. A simlarly infuriating move which spurred this post was the forceful firmware upgrade of the PSP in order to view content of new UMDs. For consumers such as myself that actively purchase new UMD contents, but who happen to have a first generation PSP with a 1.5 version of the firmware, this is simply a slap in the face to close a discovered loophole that would allow PSP owners to write their own software and run it on the PSP. This strong arm tactic, though not surprising, is actually encouraging the proliferation of illegally copied content. There is nothing inherent in the firmware upgrade itself required for the UMD content to be played, and there is no requirement specification on the UMD box stating that the content requires a specific firmware level to run.
Liability appears to be a primary motivator for why companies such as Sony are reticent to allow consumers to use their product in ways in which it's creators were not intending. But is this not itself the key ingredient to being creative in the first place? Video game companies have already suffered for letigous moves against them for the creative motives of their end users. Being both creative and innovative in such a letigious environment certainly seems stifling to me. For Sony, this protectivism now extends all the way to Sony Style stores themselves, where customers are followed by numberous conspicous security personnel creating a rather hostile shopping environment for a company trying to showcase a digital lifestyle. I hope that Sony will soon sort out it's multiple personality disorder, and in the end follow the Google mantra that people are inherently good.
