ted and thread:
Sony's PlayStation 2 May Become A Means to Rule Entertainment
interactive.wsj.com
This battle will have huge ramifications on AMD's future. Now I am a believer that MSFT will/must have a counter-attack to the SONY PS2. If X-Box is announced early next month and armed with AMD chip(s), it may bring AMD to the all time high IMHO. Do you guys smell the gun powder already or am I just too sensitive?
If PS2 is viewed as a Trojan horse for SONY to replace home PC, X-Box might be a Trojan horse for AMD to replace wintel with wamd.
Here is the full article from the WSJ Interactive.
Sony's PlayStation 2 May Become
A Means to Rule Entertainment
By ROBERT A. GUTH
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
TOKYO -- Videogame fans can't wait for Sony's new PlayStation 2,
the game player that goes on sale in Japan on March 4 and in the U.S.
later this year. When a Sony Web site started taking advance orders
last week, it was overwhelmed and crashed temporarily.
But Sony has even grander ambitions for PlayStation 2. It sees the
machine as a sort of Trojan horse that will enter the house as a
videogame player and then become a secret weapon to access the
Internet, play movies and download music, rivaling the PC as the hub
of entertainment in the home.
Preparing for that day, Sony
executives are already forging
deals with music companies and
Hollywood studios to build new
kinds of Internet services and
interactive entertainment aimed
at the PlayStation. Just this week
Sony set up a new U.S. company
to create services for the
emerging broadband market. It
also recently formed a pact with
Cablevision Systems Corp. to
develop technology for digital
services via cable TV.
"We want to build a new entertainment platform for the home," says
Ken Kutaragi, chief executive officer of Sony Computer Entertainment,
the video-game unit of Sony Corp.
Mr. Kutaragi's goal is one shared by many of Japan's technology
titans: to dominate a new wave of Internet gadgets and services, just
as U.S. PC companies have ruled the first wave. As the Internet
weaves its way deeper into the lives of consumers, Japanese executives
think they will have an advantage, given their expertise in making
people-friendly products such as the Walkman and point-and-shoot
cameras.
Some executives liken this strategy to building a new arena where the
likes of Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. don't play. "The PlayStation 2
is a new dohyou," says Sony senior executive vice president Masayoshi
Morimoto, using the Japanese word for sumo ring.
In an even more grandiose metaphor, Trip Hawkins, chief executive
officer of 3DO Co., a Sony software supplier, says Playstation 2 will do
for entertainment what Johannes Gutenberg's movable type did for
printing in the 15th century. "The explosion in interactive
entertainment you will see is huge," he says.
Mr. Kutaragi calls the PC "a very nice calculator"
that is well suited for chores like tax preparation,
but is too cumbersome and lacks the graphics
capabilities to handle future forms of electronic
entertainment. He says the PlayStation 2, by
contrast, will be a "home server" that plays
sophisticated games, music, video and hybrids of the
three, delivered over networks such as the Internet.
"The world is changing -- the PC will remain as one
of the strong powers, but other devices will emerge
as communications vehicles for the Internet," says
Toshiba Corp. Chief Executive Officer Taizo
Nishimuro. "One very strong candidate, naturally, is Kutaragi-san's
PlayStation 2."
Sony's first goal for the 39,800-yen ($360) machine is to shore up its
No. 1 position in the global video game market, which generated $7
billion in sales last year in the U.S. alone. One pitch:
graphics-processing power on a par with advanced workstations used
by scientists and engineers. In demonstrations, Sony is showing games
in which strands of a character's hair ruffle in the wind and light
shimmers on the surface of a lake. Sony executives believe they can
woo a broader audience with the machine's DVD player and hard
drives that can store lots of music and video downloaded from
PlayStation 2-related Web sites.
Square Co., the Tokyo maker of the Final Fantasy role-playing game,
next year will open an Internet service for PlayStation 2 users to meet
online, listen to music and get baseball scores while playing Final
Fantasy with each other.
One reason PlayStation 2 is turning heads is Mr. Kutaragi's track
record. A hard-nosed engineer, he clashed so much with colleagues
that Sony's former president spun off Mr. Kutaragi's games group 10
years ago. The group's brainchild, the first PlayStation, made its debut
in 1994 and, with sales of 75 million consoles, is now the world's most
popular video-game machine. Last year, Mr. Kutaragi's game business
provided about 40% of Sony's entire operating profit. By comparison,
Sony's movie and music businesses brought in about 12% and 10%
respectively.
Videogame makers have tried the Trojan horse strategy before, in
vain. In the early '90s Nintendo cooked up a strategy to turn its wildly
popular game machines into superboxes featuring shopping, mail and
other online services. But the plan never hit the big time.
Today Sony faces heavy competition. Sega Enterprises Ltd. is also
trying to turn its Dreamcast machine into an engine for digital home
entertainment. Since Dreamcast's launch in late 1998, Sega has shipped
4.4 million consoles and has one million customers world-wide
tapping its online game service.
And the company's dream of a dohyou without Microsoft and Intel
may be premature. Microsoft is reportedly working on a game
terminal of its own, called the X-Box, while Intel and a few of its
partners are readying low-cost Net appliances for release by year end.
What's more, the PC isn't going away. Across Tokyo from Mr.
Kutaragi's group, Sony itself is churning out new PC designs every
quarter. This year, computer makers will ship 130 million PCs
world-wide; it will take Sony years to ship that many PlayStation 2
consoles.
-- Dean Takahashi and Leslie Cauley contributed to this article.
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