As promised, the second half of the two hour long podcast, in which there’s a long, long ramble about pop culture and potential future specials with Paul and company.
The other news items included in the podcast are:
The next podcast will be recorded live at E3’s show floor in two weeks – stay tuned!
Every day we’re hearing of a company running through a round of layoffs or going out of business, it’s really not a happy time. Sony is not immune to the economic troubles either. Sony is talking restructuring and that involves a potential head count reduction of 16,000 jobs due to plant closings.
This leaves Sony with some hard decisions. Restructuring can mean drastic changes that effect all their product lines. The PlayStation 3 isn’t currently a shining example of high profit margins. The console needs time to reduce its overall cost, chip sizes and bring profitability. Is it in danger?
“Sony’s not in a position to halt all domestic production but it has to do something that drastic,” said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management. “If it announces plans to move production overseas while keeping only planning and development functions in Japan, that would be a positive.” (gamestooge)
The yen is losing value in our global economy making it more difficult to export the product and build any type of profitability plan. “A source said this month the company will likely suffer an annual operating loss of about $1.1 billion, its first such loss in 14 years” (news.yahoo.com) All this noise is making CEO Howard Stringer contemplate Sony’s involvement as a “software only” company, making us recall the changes at SEGA to this same result.
The Financial Times reported Sony will unveil details of its restructuring steps on Wednesday or Thursday. It said Chief Executive Howard Stringer was meeting with resistance from some executives to shifting the company’s focus to software from hardware and cutting jobs in Japan. (news.yahoo.com)
Is this just a case of a fearful executive trying to lay plans for a more stable future? Software is easier to develop, pays for itself quickly and becomes pure profit as it ages. Hardware requires constant upkeep at manufacturing facilities, chip reductions and a boat load of quality planning for first shipment. Would Sony go full software?
Let’s face it, Sony isn’t SEGA, they’ve been developing hardware for consumers since anyone can remember and they’ve been doing it with quality and market penetration. It seems absurd to think they’d forgo hardware designs in replacement of a full software solution to the problem. In addition, Sony has already invested a large amount of cash into seeing PS3 through it’s 10-year plan and letting that die now is realizing a huge loss on investment.
If Sony pushes through the economic and maintenance course, the PS3 will become highly profitable, much like the PS2 last generation (with a slower ramp up for sales). Even if they break even after ten years it seems a lot better than throwing all the effort away.
Perhaps Howard Stringer is talking “software” for the next generation home console? You think Sony will create a PlayStation 4?
This week’s episode has bad audio, but at least it’s short, due to Jonah’s lingering laryngitis. Paul insists Homestar Runner hasn’t been good in 15 years, while Jonah talks about the NES classic bomb Athena.
This week’s news includes:
All this and Listener Feedback.
As not to be shown up by other conferences, E3 is bringing back the booth babes, the glitz, the glamor and the publishers and developers. All but NCSoft is reported to be making it to E3 this year and they’re opening up registration again, without having an invite only exclusive club.
Is it really that easy to breath life back into E3? It makes me question why they changed it to begin with as developers and publlishers were the ones reported to not want to spend the millions of dollars in cost to obtain a few extra eyeballs on their products. We all contemplated mini-conferences with each major developer to take the place of the big E3 where each confierence would focus on just a few small brands.
Now, we’re heading back to the way it always was… isn’t this what the big boys were trying to avoid? Apparently not, because they’re all signed up and ready to return and hype their product. Perhaps these same developers saw some falling trends and realized E3 is needed to push their new games?
Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and all their friends are back again to battle, this is like a long awaited Street Fighter sequel. The new Super Smash Bros Brawl of press events with the hot chicks in tow hoping to flash the lights upon their awesome next greatest game development.
Will this really reinvigorate the conference? Will it cause other conferences like TGS and GDC to lose attendance this year? We know many mainstream press folks are sighing as they realize they’re going to all have to show up and really work the show, for them this is business and ratings. While a few of us are impressed by the anime clad chicks, most of the folks there are actually working for a living.
Thank you for mentioning me!
I referenced the part from episode 423 regarding Jesse Eisenberg in American Ultra where he’s paranoid/anxious until he gets his weed and how stoners can get paranoid after they’re high and think cops are coming.
My user name was supposed to have a cool “A” as 4, so it would read as “Lad”; I was using this user name before Left 4 Dead was publicly announced, and my Steam account is ]_4]), but I don’t like to tell people this for fear of hacking…
Regrading politics, I’ve seen your support for Hillary, so I do not want to discuss politics, but my main issue against Hillary is that she might be part of the New World Order; I hope she is not a member, since she will most likely be the next president…
I neglected to state my Steam account creation date, which is 4/14/2004. I have a similarly named Gmail account with L4d in it, which was created around that time, too.
Is there a way to edit these comments?