Sony refuses to flog off Spider-Man lab and other entertainment wings PlayStation giant Sony has rejected activist investor Daniel Loeb's call to partially sell off its entertainment arm to prop up its electronics business. The Japanese firm said in a letter to Loeb's hedge fund, Third Point, that the board had unanimously voted to hang onto the entertainment business, which includes …
The problem with Sony is that they make hardware that serves the interest of the entertainment division, rather than the customer. So Sony electronics is hamstrung. For example, MagicGate Memory sticks (incompatible with the investment in non-magic-gate ones, because they didn't support DRM). What about the lack of multi-region DVD players from Sony? Or the BlueRay players that prohibit you from skipping the commercials and the warnings at the start.
The downvoter(s) to this AC need to buy a clue. Like it or not (I don't) he's stating a fact, not an opinion. The DRM is included in the Blueray license, as is the ability for the manufacturer of the disk to control playback. And really, even the commercials don't irritate me as much as having to sit through 25 versions of the FBI Piracy warning that are written in languages I don't read. I understood the first one thank-you, very much. I would hope they don't stick non-Merkins with that crap since FBI doesn't apply to you, but given the number of languages I expect they do.
Really struggling with your justification for levering Spiderman (et al arachnoid references) into this story - twice. Tenuous? That's twentyuous!
Doubly idiotic when the only mob (all too) likely to be making any further Spiderman movies in future ain't them.
I admit "bunch of control-freak, hardware-nobbling cunthorses" might be harder to satirise in a suitably pithy and apt headline, but come on...
Dear Mr. Loeb:
I have a simple solution to your problem:
1 -- Buy nothing but Sony products. Make your family but nothing but Sony products. Get them to encourage others to buy nothing but Sony products.
2 -- Bottom line is improved the capitalist way -- by people buying products.
3 -- SUCCESS!
You're Welcome.
(Granted, it's not as fast as strip-mining the company, but it all rather depends on whether your ultimate goal is sustainable growth or taking short-term gain and abandoning the husk once you've sucked all of the life out of it, doesn't it?)
> rejected activist investor Daniel Loeb's call to partially sell off its entertainment arm to prop up its electronics business.
God why would they prop up their mediocre money losing hardware division by selling their crown jewels? The opposite should be true. Everybody but Sony has realized they are a media studio first and foremost for many years now. I guess that romance of the vision of the founder is hard to shake off.
""Full control of Sony’s entertainment businesses drives internal collaboration, facilitates synergies, and allows the company to be more nimble,"
It might be a Japanese company, but that was not written by a Japanese person. I've long held that Sony is now more about the dull rhetoric of the American Bored room, and not the Japanese company it once was.
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