Part 1: A Wide Range Of Pain
So I want to let you all in on a little secret.
I think Sony, as good as they are at some thing... They are notoriously bad at many, many other things.
It's a wide range of stuff they're bad at, and nowadays one would consider them to be decent. Personally, I've only cared about the shit they put out gaming-wise. I also see them as grandstanding assholes who've held onto a lot of IPs and done nothing with them (a common trend nowadays). Like goddamn when we gonna get Team Ico's shit onto PC, or Ape Escape. But, that's another whole thing, and really there are a thousand reasons I imagine for the weird shit they pull involving video games themselves (As much as I want to blame them for why Naughty Dog has gone from making good shit to constantly shitting out the same game four times in a row, I doubt I can).
But!!!
We're gonna talk about something else. I'm thinking their hardware failures. Technology failures. The things they did for the computer, gaming, and just random bullshit that was a failure. I asked on Cohost about any noteworthy fuckups by Sony, and I got some good examples that I've dug deeper into, as well as various other ones of the same and am going to share!
First Thing's First: OH WOE BE THE VITA
Let's get this out of the way.
I really hope I don't have to explain to any gaming nerds who've played Sony game consoles what the Vita was. Buuut for those who don't know:
Image from Wikipedia. May you rest in peace, you beautiful beast...
This is the Sony Playstation Vita. As was the 3DS was a successor to the DSi, the Vita was the successor to the PSP. It had everything the PSP had and more, with touchscreens on both the front AND the back, and two analog sticks. Which, for those who've played PSP games with one analog stick, ya'll know the pain.
I won't lie, I've never had a Vita, so I can't speak for it's pros and cons myself, but I've heard nothing but good things by hundreds of people who enjoyed one of these things.
Sure as hell can't play ape escape with one analog stick, that's for sure...
You would think, oh, the PSP was amazing and wonderful, and successful, it's followup would do good too right?
RIGHT?
Well unfortunately, the Vita failed. It failed to sell as much as the original PSP, FAR LESS, and I believe it never beat any of Nintendo's sales (which is unsurprising but still). Why? Oh, many reasons.
Not as good third party support because Sony, as they love doing, didn't make it easy to make games for the Vita. Third party devs had shit for support, and they decided not to make as many Triple-AAA titles. Third party devs weren't exactly enticed to use the system aside from making smaller titles, as anything that would make full use of the surprisingly strong system's capabilities would have to be exclusives. Which doesn't work well when the system already has a release library that wasn't too propped up by Sony, and sales that were nothing compared to even the PSP.
Combine the above with the fact that multiplatform development was apparently terrible to actually do, and then you have a trainwreck and a half. If you were indie, you'd probably be fine.
Oh, and advertising for the games and the console itself was apparently lackluster. More often that not, you'd have no physical version of games, only digital. This was before the wider populace was aware of that notion of digital-only games, outside of PC gamers.
If people wonder why the meme of Sony having no games on their consoles tends to pop up a lot, it's because of situations like this, where the presentation and shoddy advertising gives off the impression that there isn't any. Of course, there's other ways this can happen, which BELIEVE ME WE WILL TOUCH UPON.
Oh, did i mention that this was during the rise of gaming on your phones? Which... Definitely dealt a massive blow against the Vita. Sure as hell made the 3DS suffer for a time too, and that thing was a rousing success!
Well, time to move on, right? It had no support from sony, advertising sucked, making games for it was a gamble, and it came out when the mobile games boom was happening. It's not like they'd do something that would absolutely make things worse for the Vita. Like fucking up memory cards with their own proprietary bullshit.
The common thread: ABSOLUTELY PROPREITARY
I don't know where this fucking image came from, my partner used to send it regularly lmao
If there's one thing Sony loves to do, it's to suck itself off with their own technology and make it exclusive. Now, I don't know the first thing about proprietary software and hardware, I just know that when you deal with that shit, it can be a minefield of hell and frustration. And unsurprisingly, a fair amount of Sony's issues can be attributed to them making exclusive hardware that, if you wanted to manufacture yourself, you had to pay extravagent fees for!
The Vita fell victim to this. It didn't come with an internal memory initially. Some models fixed that afterward but, you know, sometimes you dont want to upgrade the fucking system you already have. So, you would need to get an SD card or something to use as storage, right?
Fuck you, here's the Sony Memory Stick.
From Wikipedia. Begone ye, beast of burden.
You couldn't use an SD card.
You couldn't take your card from the PSP and use it here.
You had to buy the specific memory card from Sony. Said cards were expensive.
So at launch you would've had to buy:
A 16GB SD card at the time, mind you, was around 15ish dollars at the time. Hell I opened up Amazon just now to see what the price of them are right now and it's still 'dirt fucking cheap'.
So, to sum up: The Vita had a lot of fucking shit stacked against it, partly due to the times, but mostly due to Sony not having a clue.
Speaking of not having a clue: PS Vita TV.
How do you fuck this up
From Wikipedia. The Super Game Boy looking kinda different.
For $99 you could get a Playstation Vita but for your TV! That's cool, came with a 8 GB Card and a PS3 controller if you got the bundle for $149.99 or something like that.
Okay, could've been neat, could've been cool, cheaper way to profit off the Vita and to have a home system for it and why does it have a compatibility list.
You could only play a portion of the full library of Vita games. It had 1499 games total, and yet you could only play about 10% of that list. Hope you weren't looking forward to playing The Sly Collection, the remake of Ape Escape, Uncharted Golden Abyss, or Gravity Rush pre-remaster!
Apparently people hacked the shit and got the full library playable on there, and a majority of the games supposedly worked. Which only makes me wonder what coke was being taken for this fucking thing's sad creation.
The post on cohost above that made me aware of this particular fuckup states how it could've been like the Super Game Boy and yaknow, honestly, I can see that. Sometimes you dont want to play a mobile game on the go, sometimes you want to kick back on the couch and play Metroid II or some shit on a big CRT screen or some shit. The PS Vita TV is that, except if it was given a lobotomy.
So, before we move on, lets quickly look at the PSP GO:
From Wikipedia. I think its cute honestly.
So I won't lie, i never heard of this one until recently. Imagine if a PSP fucked a Nokia with a slide-out numpad or something, but it's a controller. It's... a weird one, it seems fine, but apparently it was released at the end of the lifespan of the PSP, which kinda defeats the purpose if you ask me. Especially since it doesn't have a drive for the games, so you'd have to download everything from the now defunct playstation store. Really, it just strikes me as something rather sad honestly. Apparently you could use it as a display for consoles with the right plugs, so if you wanted to have a Playstation in your lap while holding this thing in your hands, there you go.
not a fan of waterboarding, i prefer getting airboarded
i also considered a joke about the ipad but meh
So, imagine an ipad, but limited by the technology of the 2000s. You got the Sony Airboard-- something that sony tried for a long while to turn into a thing up to 2008 before giving up. This one never got actually released before it got to market. Oops!
Still up on Sony's website, it looks like something you'd see an artist draw porn on.
They intended for it to be like, well, a mobile TV and internet browser of sorts. You could've carried it anywhere and access the TV and internet, and watch whatever videos were stored on it. So yaknow. It tried to be an iPad before the iPad existed.
Allegedly, the price would've been in the $1300s.
Need I say more?
my life online (the device, not the concept)
So before the PSP, we had this... thing? Called the Sony Mylo.
From Wikipedia. Sony raised this as the golden child, then discarded them when they didn't meet their standards
It's uh... A phone, I think.
I think it paved the way for the PSP, but otherwise, this thing was not meant for gaming. Connected via wi-fi and... no data so you couldn't get a cellphone connection to a tower. Had skype. Had a web browser.
Cost 349.99 dollars.
Not really much to say. It bombed lol.
Oh the misery: everyone wants to give me a rootkit
So, Sony used to have an audio player for CDs released by their former record company, Sony BMG.
You know what else the audio player had? Good ole rootkits!
YOU KNOW. AS ONE DOES.
From Wikipedia. BMG stands for Big Meaty Gluckgluck.
Apparently if you put the CDs into your computer, you would've had programs installed that basically fucks with the ability for your CD to copy discs. You couldn't uninstall them. Atleast one of the problems never told you that OH HEY, THIS IS GOING INTO YOUR COMPUTER!!! Oh, and they would intrude on your privacy by basically telling the suits at BMG about your listening habits. Which I'm sure everyone in 2005 was really big on.
An offical uninstaller for the program also did everything BUT what the thing was made for, and also collected your email just for shits and giggles.
Did i mention that both of these programs had security holes up the ass?
Unsurprisingly Sony BMG isn't around anymore. Moving on!
We have the CD 2 at home.
The CD 2:
Except not really, because we gonna talk about more of Sony's music technology endevours! This time, with the Super Audio CD-- or as I think it should've been called, the CD2.
From Wikipedia. This looks like someone drew the General Electric logo drunk.
Sony apparently thought CDs were lame, so they decided to try and make a new type of CD alongside Philips. Alongside for allowing for surround sound and the works that comes with having a lot of audio channels available, it allowed for a longer playing time than regular CDs. Basically, it was a CD but with the storage capabilities of a DVD.
tangentially related but i genuinely don't know what the difference is aside from size is for dvd and cds. like, they both look the same and can store shit on them...
Apparently, it had a higher level of quality with audio compared to original CDs, and the first model of the PS3 could play them. Not to mention, it was backwards compatible with... some CD players. So in theory, it should've succeeded, right?
So why did it fail?
...
A lot of fucking reasons, actually.
Genuinely I've dug around and im seeing so many things, from other companies not wanting to pay any royalties to manufacture their own SACD discs, competition with the DVD-Audio format, not everyone in the music industry wanting to support it and instead supporting either the competition or just reissuing albums that were already available on CD, the fact that most people wouldn't even notice the audio difference, a lack of support for certain ways that people would prefer to play CDs-- GOD HELP YOU if you wanted to use one in a car! There's probably even more i haven't seen mentioned honestly. Shit's a mess.
Also probably didn't help that this came at the same time as a small bit of technology called the iPod. Turns out, people liked downloading from napster and listening to Funkytown at the lowest quality possible over carrying CDs around.
Always saw the heads as David Bowie for some reason...
Sony hates Casette tapes
So to spoil a bit ahead, we're gonna talk about the Betamax soon. But before that, I learned about two attempts Sony had with trying to kill casette tapes that I thought were worth mentioning. Such as DAT.
DAT CARTRIDGE
Digital Audio Tapes!
Despite the fact that they're tapes, they're apparently digital, which is neat though I have no clue how the flying fuck that works. It was effectively a mini VCR tape from what I can tell, only you can actually select a track like a CD player, and could hold more than regular ole casette tapes. Oh, and was apparently higher quality.
So the price played a part in killing this one-- Jesus CHRIST how many of these have struggled because of the price. It was expensive, but something else played a part in this one's failure.
The ghouls at the RIAA happened!
They lobbied against the damned thing even coming to the states, then tried to restrict the shit out of it.
To them, the thing served as a new way to pirate music, and as such, they wanted it fucking shot in the knee. This time, it wasn't entirely Sony's fault!
It's basically the reason why the Audio Home Recording Act exists, which taxed the usage of digital media and put in requirements for the DAT to be able to be sold in the states. The technical shit from that basically slowed shit down for Digital Audio Tape's adoption enough for CDs to take over. One thing led to another, and now we have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Thanks, assholes.
Not all is woe with this one, though. Professionals apparently still use DATs to this day, and it paved the way for Digital Data Stoage, so, that's pretty neat.
Sony REALLY hates Casette tapes
So, the DAT failed. How to recouperate from this? Well, it was time for CDs except tiny! And so, we got the Minidiscs! Higher quality than casettes and more durable than tapes, surely it would win, right?
From Wikipedia. Honestly, I think it's cute. Plus it reminds me of the later UMDs for the PSP. Future!
Let's see, there was confusion due to the fact that Philips had launched the Digital Compact Cassette... Shit was expensive as fuck ($750 AT LAUNCH. WHY.) despite trying to appeal to Teenagers... Record labels didn't give a damn for it... Regular ass CDs were just better at the time, and MP3s were becoming the hot new thing...
I'm starting to think Sony just has bad luck with trying to do anything involving dominating with a new format. Bet they're glad the Blu-Ray has taken up dominance.
Apparently, it still has a fair amount of popularity for some communities, based on the digging around I've seen about it. Subreddit with a decent amount of activity going on in it, that sort of thing. Despite the fact that it launched in the 1990s, it lasted all the way up to 2013. So maybe it had something going for it!
This one's noteworthy to me with it's failure, though, I'm seeing numbers that in it's first year, it only made 50,000 sales.
Ouch.
Sony probably resents VHS and Casette Tapes to this day
Alright, now for one of the big ones. Betamax!
Damn honestly I think these look better than VHS tapes.
This is the biggest one for a lot of people, as it had a long history that can be mostly summed up as "Despite any positives, Sony fucked up and that's why VHS became the standard." Released in Japan during spring in 1975-- then in the US in fall of the same year, Sony made it as a competitor to the VHS. Needless to say, it didn't win out.
Betamax's tapes had many significant differences than that of VHS, ranging from looking higher quality, to make bookmarks to go back to whenever you want on the tape, and so forth. Plus, they were smaller than ordinary VHS tapes, and quieter when running in a Betamax machine too.
However, for the first release of Betamax, you could only hold up to an hour of footage. This will become important very soon.
Let's go back to something I talked about earlier.
he's back to sing us a tune about free software
A big problem I've mentioned a few times above with Sony is that they love to charge manufacturers extravagant prices for their technology. This, combined with Sony ensisting upon not sacrificing the video quality for recording length, would ultimately pave the way for VHS to surpass Beta.
Even as Sony began to release Betas that could hold longer videos that sacrificed the quality, it wasn't enough due to the fact that, just by VHS doing it first, as well as the sheer quantity of VHS available in stores, meant that as much as Sony tried to push Betamax to the world, it simply would not surpass VHS.
And of course, much like the Minidisc and DAT later on, owning a Betamax for recording tapes-- which is what people ultimately wanted with VHS, was expensive.
So when your options was choosing between that, or something that was lower quality but cheaper and you had lot more room to be able to record multiple episodes of Star Trek on one tape, it was really a no brainer for a lot of people.
Nowadays, whenever you see Betamax talked about, it'll often be a joke at it's expense about how it became obsolete, or how no one can play a tape because it happens to be Betamax.
This bit from Cowboy Bebop lives in my head.
So, what's there to take away from this?
... Don't have things be too expensive for anyone to do literally anything with your shit, probably.
Jokes aside, though, I find it fascinating thinking about how Sony takes a shotgun approach and hopes that it all works out in the end. It feels rather wasteful, though, if you ask me, especially when a lot of the time, these problems would've been resolved had they done things cheaper, had they avoided making things restrictive for both the manufacturers and the users. A big part of why VHS became so prevalant was because they actually paid attention to the consumer's want. Because they actually had third-party support.
Sony does a lot of things nicely. But they also failed spectacularly at everything else.
There's probably more that I haven't listed here, honestly! Like Sony's 3D TVs. But this is already an extremely long post, and as much as I want to ramble on about their trainwrecks, I feel as though there's only so many ways you can say, "This died because of capitalism".
So you might notice from the title that this is Part 1!
Well, before I started writing all of this, I had one thing on mind.
A system of theirs that wasn't a failure per-say, but is noteworthy to me, and probably millions of others on the planet.
I want to talk about the bunches of things that went wrong with this.
Because there were so many things that went wrong with the Playstation 3 it's comical.
And if there's one thing I enjoy: it's comedy.
So, I'll get to that when I get to it!