
Sony's Deal with Microsoft Blindsided Its Own PlayStation Team - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-19/sony-s-deal-with-microsoft-blindsided-its-own-playstation-team
======
rocky1138
> This shows "a new Sony" and should be applauded by investors, SMBC Nikko
> Securities Inc. analyst Ryosuke Katsura wrote in a report. “Management is
> adapting rapidly to change."

Uh, no. This shows that the developers have absolutely no control, say, or
ownership over their work. Things like this happen in companies (or divisions
within a company) right before their best people jump ship because they are so
poorly respected they are literally not given the time of day by management.

I'm reminded of Ray Kassar's comment about programmers being at the same level
of someone who puts the game boxes together.

~~~
caymanjim
I'm a developer and low-level manager, and wouldn't expect to have much input
in this kind of decision. Especially in a behemoth like Sony. This is C-level-
executive decision making territory.

I might have something to say about the idea from a technical perspective, if
asked, and if that aspect of the platform were my purview, and I suspect they
discussed it with plenty of knowledgeable people at some level.

I'm sure some people who were developing their in-house cloud solution feel
like they've been blindsided, but if they'd succeeded, they wouldn't be in
this position. The article says they've been struggling with it. They likely
had a chance and missed benchmarks one time too many.

They're likely better off using a major cloud provider anyway. They've already
solved the big problems.

~~~
dhimes
I could get on board with this if the devs had a say in setting those
benchmarks.

~~~
caymanjim
Any good executive consults with their subordinates to create realistic
objectives. This is so fundamental that it's implied. That's the CTO's job.
They will in turn rely on their subordinates all the way down to the lowly
developers.

Are you suggesting that developers deserve some kind of vote? They're a cog in
the machine. Sony isn't a democracy or a worker's collective. As a developer
myself, I'm not trying to diminish the role. I like to think I can provide a
valuable perspective and that I'd be consulted about my small part. I'm
certain that's exactly what Sony did, because they are a successful, well-run
company that's been doing this longer than I've been alive.

Beyond that, no, the developers shouldn't have much say. Their role is to help
determine what's required to achieve the objectives set by management. Good
management will consult with them, set goals, and change tack if the
objectives aren't met. If they still can't achieve the objectives in a timely
and cost-effective way, management will replace them and go with a vendor.
This is all right and good.

~~~
dhimes
_Are you suggesting that developers deserve some kind of vote?_

Of course not.

 _Their role is to help determine what 's required to achieve the objectives
set by management. Good management will consult with them, set goals..._

This. Consider yourself lucky that you've never worked someplace that starts
off with "These goals are aggressive, but in my mind achievable" and then
proceeds to give you objectives that are a wildly optimistic extrapolation of
a of a previously achieved timetable.

This isn't just developers, either, but that's the context here.

 _Any good executive consults with their subordinates to create realistic
objectives. This is so fundamental that it 's implied.

...

I'm certain that's exactly what Sony did, because they are a successful, well-
run company that's been doing this longer than I've been alive._

If you're right them I'm onboard.

------
londons_explore
I bet this 'strategic alliance' doesn't go beyond microsoft selling a bunch of
servers for cheap to sony.

Big companies rarely collaborate well on wide-ranging things unless the
companies share board members/heritage.

This deal was clearly spearheaded by the Azure sales team, and vague promises
of collaborating on future services were probably thrown in to sweeten the
deal, but I doubt will go anywhere.

~~~
uniformlyrandom
Msft is very pushy around Azure - they really try to behave like they are on
par with aws (they are not. well, maybe on paper). O would not be surprised if
this deal is a result of regular Msft blackmail-style negotiations.

~~~
lighthazard
Can you explain why Azure isn't on par with AWS?

~~~
tracer4201
Last time I was using Azure was in 2015. At the time, their UI was completely
broken. My company was getting charged for using our support hours to get
support for a broken Azure UI, and they were telling us to use their APIs
instead of the UI to do basic stuff like launching mobile services and VMs.

Our Microsoft rep recommended we consider deprecating our SAP instance with
Dynamics CRM as we could get more discounts and support hours as part of a
better valued package and our CIO in that meeting laughed in her face.

Azure might be just as good as their competitors in 2019 or even better but
your question reminded me of way back when it was a piece of shit and our
clueless CIO was mostly bought in because Gardner could have told him to
fellate a horse, and he would have obliged.

~~~
kuzehanka
> it was a piece of shit and our clueless CIO was mostly bought in because
> Gardner could have told him to fellate a horse, and he would have obliged.

2018/19 that's still the only kind of CIO that would choose Azure if the
choice is otherwise unconstrained. Most Azure offerings are somewhere between
Alpha/Beta stage of maturity with glaring issues, only cursory (often
outdated/outright wrong) documentation, zero community around them.

The only way Azure gets picked is if the decision maker is an idiot guided by
the likes of Gartner, or there are other factors at play. Other factors
usually being the Azure sales teams leveraging existing MS mindshare and
pandering to entirely non-technical decision makers with co-investment or
support, the sum value of which is still far less than the cost of choosing
Azure.

~~~
jedberg
That's not true. If you're already running a .net shop and you're already
using VS as your IDE, then Azure is a great choice.

~~~
reallydontask
if you are a .net shop Microsoft makes your life a lot easier if you use their
products and for the vast majority of .net shops, MS products are good enough.

Not saying that people don't complain about them or that there aren't better
things out there, just that they are good enough

------
aston
This is a great example of what Marc Andreesen called the Moby Dick theory of
big companies [1]. Paraphrased, the behavior of any big company is largely
inexplicable when viewed from the outside. And from the inside, too!

[1]
[https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part5.html](https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part5.html)

~~~
baud147258
It was an interesting read; do you know which company the author is talking
about in that part :

> I am thinking of one high-profile Internet startup in San Francisco right
> now that is extremely promising, has great technology and a unique offering,
> that did two big deals early with high-profile big company partners, and has
> become completely hamstrung in its ability to execute on its core business
> as a result

------
olivermarks
Phil Harrison drove Playstation worldwide studios game development through
their glory years and is now running Google's game streaming efforts 'Stadia'.
He was at msft xbox for a while and knows the overall landscape well. This
'deal' may be a bid to counter the smartest guy in the space and Google vs
Azure for hosting

------
partingshots
Probably due to the top down management style of Sony, but when both CEOs meet
and make such a big public announcement, there's definitely something behind
it backing things up.

Personally, I see it as two entrenched players seeing a potential newcomer
(i.e. Google Stadia) and realizing it would be better to work together and
keep the duopoly going than let a newcomer tear away both their market
shares.[1]

It's always better to pick the devil you know, as they say.

[1] [https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/16/18628245/sony-microsoft-
co...](https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/16/18628245/sony-microsoft-
collaboration-google-stadia-cloud-gaming)

~~~
Someone1234
Nobody is losing any sleep about Google's vaporous Stadia offering. It is yet
another game streaming service, which aren't rare[0] (Sony, Nvidia, and
Microsoft already have one). Plus they're starting with little strategic
advantage in the space, with most of their early games being limited Android
ports.

After Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo I'd imagine the largest competitor/concern
would be either Apple or Oculus (with their new Quest console), Google perhaps
next, but that has nothing to do with this alliance. Google cannot even
encourage games on a tablet or Chromebook, let alone a TV.

Apple are a slightly bigger threat because the Apple ecosystem already
supports larger and richer games, including on tablets and TVs.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_gaming#Cloud_gaming_serv...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_gaming#Cloud_gaming_services_\(Gaming_as_a_Service_\(GaaS\)))

~~~
partingshots
Why the mad dash from Sony and Microsoft to partner, in a such public manner
at that, almost immediately after Stadia's announcement then?

You can't really refute the actions from these companies themselves; they
speak for themselves.

~~~
addicted
A possible scenario is that Sony has been floating this for a while but MSFT
has resisted.

MSFT probably agreed to go in giving Sony good terms because they are afraid
of Stadia. Not because it’s a threat to their gaming business but because it’s
a threat to Azure. Heavy Stadia use means GCP has a high use tenant that pays
for their use which they can use to make the rest of their offerings cheaper
without losing profit. And that would hurt Azure, which is gonna be huge if MS
is gonna live up to its trillion dollar valuation.

IOW they are worried that Google Stadia will be to GCP what Amazon retail is
to AWS.

~~~
AlphaSite
I’m pretty sure google is to gcp.

------
hkarthik
This isn't entirely surprising. On-premise infrastructure is getting extremely
hard to scale for high scale services like gaming. Google, Amazon, and
Microsoft have completely bent the market for data centers and hardware due to
their cloud footprints. At this point, you have to be fairly niche or have
really strong security requirements to justify the time and cost of not
building on AWS, Azure, or GCP at that scale.

From what I understand, even Apple is starting to build more of its services
infrastructure in the cloud, although those agreements aren't being widely
broadcasted.

With that view, it should be obvious that a hardware-focused company like Sony
simply could not scale the internal teams and infrastructure required to
support high scale software services like on-demand gaming. They were going to
have pick a cloud infra provider, and with every cloud provider also making
their own foray into gaming, they had to make frenemies with someone.

~~~
baron816
I've been wondering what Microsoft gets out of this deal. Sony doesn't really
have the size or the expertise to even continue in a gaming market that has
moved entirely to the cloud. Microsoft could just let them die. Makes me think
Microsoft has something sinister planned where they're able to take a lot of
Sony's IP without paying for it.

~~~
rjsw
Maybe it is like the investment that Microsoft made in Apple, Microsoft
doesn't want to have a complete monopoly in games consoles.

------
ulzeraj
Gaming as a service is something that literally no one but corporations are
interested. It’s the latest evil after the attempted murder of physical
copies.

~~~
dagw
_something that literally no one but corporations are interested._

I'm interested, assuming a reasonable price and performance level. Not having
to have gaming PC plus being able to easily play a bunch of new games for a
few hours without shelling out $60+ each are both things that sound
interesting to me.

Then again I think the last physical game I bought was Europa Universalis III
a decade ago, so physical copies haven't really mattered to me for a long
time.

~~~
smileybarry
The problem is that the "avoid shelling $60+ each" idea continues to be a
dream. Games are added only many months later when the first-week/month
revenue well runs dry, and by then you'd probably find a good deal online. The
gaming PC argument can work, but PC-based game-subscription streaming services
usually end up running at mid-high graphical settings (OnLive did, at least),
and you can build a PC nowadays to satisfy that at not a high cost. (But we'll
see what Stadia ends up delivering)

The closest we got (if I remember correctly) was Darksiders 2 launching on
OnLive at the same time as PC, but it was also a rental game rather than being
part of their Netflix-style subscription PlayPack.

------
neilv
Related from 3 days ago: "Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud
gaming alliance (nikkei.com)"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19930955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19930955)

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ralphstodomingo
Wasn't there a recent deal between Microsoft and Nintendo as well?

------
nickpsecurity
The strange move from a risk management perspective is partnering with their
main rival. I'd have probably went with Google for two reasons:

1\. They'll likely fail in their gaming effort with Sony still being in strong
position in market.

2\. They have a competitive cloud with bright engineers that can solve
infrastructure problems better than Sony.

------
foobarbazetc
This is one of those things that you look back on as a pivotal fork in the
road which leads to the death of either the Xbox or the PlayStation.

