That's simple: they've always been very good at hardware but not that good at software. It was fine in a time where software was just a minor part of electronics, but today the software is the most important part, and the hardware is just here to make sure the software can run flawlessly.
Agreed. As a former Sony fanboy, I've noted that the hardware is very good/innovative - insofar as it is exactly what it claims and no more. The software has driven me away. A representative anecdote: my Sony Bluray player, a flagship device, is smothered in irritations...the Netflix software is hideous compared to AppleTV, network operations end with me having to positively acknowledge every success ("Update complete, select OK" - well duh, just move on to what I obviously want to do without waiting for me!), the "Play" button just doesn't (on a movie menu, have to go find the remote and hit the Select button instead of just pressing Play on the player), the demo apps/"channels" are awful (the promotion of movie "Salt" tried to be oh-wow with...cheezy webcam resolution on a 1080p display? WTF?), and just one little grating doesn't-just-work after another. I've gone thru this "95% is great but 5% destroys the experience" with at least a dozen devices...ya know, I'm just not going to buy Sony stuff any more, mostly because of "last inch" software.
Which is why I'm surprised that Sony has failed so thoroughly to dominate in this new software-oriented era. Sony easily has various assets that would make them positively terrifying to Apple and Samsung if they got their crap together. Between their game ecosystem and their media (music and movies) labels, they could easily put together a Sony-branded e-shop that would give iTunes/App Store and Play Store a run for their money.
Combine that with the wide inventory of platforms they're in - imagine a Sony-branded de-Googled version of Android running on everything from PSPs to smart TVs.
They're excellently positioned, and they've demonstrated they can make good software in the various PlayStation-related devices.
Sony's media divisions are the dog that walks the owner. DRM must be slathered on everything and Sony wanted lock-in like formats, like ATRAC. The only two Sony divisions that have played nice with the real world is, first, their eBook division -- but even they couldn't do Android right on the latest Readers and so didn't garner the support and sales of the rooting community that the Nook Touch has. Second was the division that did the PalmOS-based CLIEs. And that division is long gone. Now Sony is trying to play catch-up with Android -- but their media divisions are still the dog walking the owner.
Not much to add to your analysis, since it's spot on.
I'd only like to add Sony's tendency for crippling devices, probably starting with the MiniDisc and continuing this fine tradition until today.
The underlying basis, of course, is the media division.
It's a shame really, when you look at Sony's past. Hell! The Walkman was an incredibly innovative device. While the iPod essentially was a repackaging of existing technologies (great repackaging, but still) Sony's Walkman was actually the invention of music on the go.
I know exactly what you mean about them crippling their devices. Quite a few years ago now I purchased a portable Sony MiniDisc recorder and a good quality microphone with the intention of recording local gigs, uploading them to my computer, splitting the tracks up, and creating a CD that I could give to the musicians.
Imagine my chagrin when I discovered that, whilst I could digitally upload music to the device, I could not digitally download music from it. Unbelievable! I did a few by attaching the headphone to the mic port on my computer and playing the music in real time, whilst recording on the PC. But this was such a time consuming process that I quickly lost interest. A shame, because I did get a few really good recordings.
The minidisk could have become the digital media if Sony weren't so afraid of piracy. It was relatively cheap, rewritable, couldn't get scratched and had (for the time) very large capacity.
Instead we got single-write cds (no one bothered with rewritable) until finally usb sticks made optical obsolete.
Oh man, I loved the Clie - high-res before high-res was a thing on that platform, a nice Blackberry-style scrollwheel on the side (sorely underrated feature, that), tough as nails and marred only by the earthshatteringly mediocre Palm Desktop program it used for syncing. I played the hell out of Warfare Inc on that thing. Palm OS was a tragedy - the loss of the Graffiti patent battle just ruined the platform, and it could've really done spectacular things going into the WiFi era.
But yeah, Sony seems like a very divided company - if the myriad divisions got together to work on a single unified customer-facing infrastructure of devices and e-store and whatnot, they could re-take that spectacular brand power they had in the early '90s. But their internal politics will never allow that, sadly.
The best GUI's and UX considerations for video games are a completely different kettle of sushi than what you want from a consumer electronics device.
I want to play a puzzle with Super Mario.
I want to answer a red-eye phone call in the middle of the night with my iPhone without playing a game (it still has a lovely app wrapper for puzzle games, right there on the customisable app launching springboard for when I want that sort of software).
I adore Japanese hardware/software design, but I don't want my toothbrush or phone to be kawaii.
> "The best GUI's and UX considerations for video games are a completely different kettle of sushi"
Not to mention Japanese games are notorious for their inscrutable, awkward and sometimes downright user-hostile controls, menus, save systems, etc. (As per common western opinion; who knows, perhaps the Japanese truly prefer it?)
But when considering what is great about Japanese games, no-one has ever lauded the game-user interface. Their games are largely great in spite of that side of things.
The Wii and the particular games like Wii Sports, the hottest things during this generation of consoles, became so successful first and foremost due to the UI innovations they brought to the table.
That is interesting, since the notable thing about them is that they are physical devices. Boards to ballance on, guitarrs to play, fishing rods to swing...
Yet I was amazed by how long it took Sony and Nintendo to build something as seemingly prosaic as a usable menu system in their recent consoles. Part of me wonders if the Apple/Microsoft patent battles of the 80's deterred a lot of capable non-US companies from doing any work in operating systems.
The article seems to ignore any discussion of startup culture, which I've read elsewhere is a challenge in a country whose business culture has been defined by the "salaryman" working their entire career for one company. I mean, should we be surprised that companies around for the better part of a century are getting disrupted?
Ruby was created by a Japanese person, yes. But Matz is a Mormon with something like 4 children. Not exactly representative of your average Japanese person.
> Japanese programmers wrote a huge proportion of the world's greatest video games....
But how much credit is because of the programmers being better than the rest, and not because of the creativity of the designers, the graphics, or even the hardware the games were created to run on?
It's not that the Japanese are bad at software. But the big electronics companies never realized the importance of software/hardware integration. Sony even has a lot of in-house expertise that is probably just not put into god use. There is no reason why the on-screen menus on a top-of-the-line Sony TV should be slow when they also make the PS3 operating system.
Maybe developing games and robots , in past didn't require good english, but today, in many industries you have to have good english in order to develop software since a lot of code will come from other places around the globe(whether it's open source, or commercial libraries).
The japanese are pretty weak in english in general.
It is true that Japanese studio created some of the greatest games of all time. But I have also heard reports that every game was rewritten from scratch. The DIY concept was entirely alien.
Source: 84 Play Podcast interview with Gregg Tavares (I think, I cant relisten to the podcast now). Linked if interested
http://8-4.jp/blog/?p=1423&lang=en
That makes it very difficult to understand how other parts of Japanese culture can be so focused on perfection. Even western programmers use he word "Zen" to describe the simplicity and perfection of code that we strive for.
Greatness of games is in the eyes of the beholder - the only Japanese games I truly find great were shadow of the colossus and ninja gaiden black. And they never were technical gems to begin with.
Also my experience with japanese products is that they don't "get" software, not that they are bad at it. I am sure that the developers are as competent as anywhere in the world but they deliver what they are ordered to.
Software is way too general. Developing games, misson critical softwares or in a body shop doing crappy consulting gigs at a bank are very different jobs.
When you make a game for a console, mistakes are very costly: it makes a lot of sense to get it right the first time. Attention to details is a trait that Japanese culture really emphasises (always think about every possible thing that can fail, triple check, etc...).
Now, for most software products, that's a different story. I think that's part of the story why you don't see great software companies in Japan.
To expand, they're not bad at software per se, but they missed the boat on the idea of connected devices and the whole ecosystem that Apple and Google have done so very well.
Japanese phones were several years more capable than the first few iPhones and at the time it was thought that Japan would never use them. What changed that was how much better a phone was when it connected to a store to buy apps and games. Competition purely on electronics doesn't cut it anymore.
It's a shame Sony didn't realise this sooner, they've made phones, laptops, game consoles, music players for years. They should have been in the position to do the iTunes store or Apps way before Apple. They seem to only be trying to do such a thing now with bolted on crap like replay sharing on PS4.
Even after an edit you seem to have missed that Sony also own global movie and TV studios.
However they lacked the internal structure and strategy to really deploy them effectively. Plus someone would have had to choose a suboptimal strategy for their division's financial results if they were to avoid selling some rights or exclusivity externally but to use it for joined up strategies. (Or the low profit hardware arm would have had to paid commercial rates.)
It also surprisingly gets harder in many ways to negotiate for other rights when you have your own studio/record label and who wants to only watch/listen to Sony content. Anti-trust law may be a factor in this (as a content owner Sony couldn't legally do an Apple and tell their competitors what pricing model to accept) but also it changes the tone of the negotiation and attitude of other parties when they are your competitor.
And finally just when the network technology and the products are getting to the point where a useful internet delivered content ecosystem can be established somebody high up the organisation decides to split the platform and bend over for Google in order for the honour of making the Google TV for US only under ridiculous contract terms based on Intel hardware costs and to be supported by a dreadful marketing campaign it still sows FUD amongst content partners.
[Former Sony (Software Engineer, Product Planner, Biz Dev - all in European TV business)].
Firstly I didn't say it would be impossible just potentially harder than if not a competitor.
I don't know the history of Steam that well but my understanding was that it started as an easy way to get their own games. Yes Sony Music could have done the same (maybe they did but I can't remember) but a store with a seemingly random selection of about 25% of pop music doesn't make a great hit in the era of Napster and when they are still pushing DRM (which Steam also uses).
I don't believe that as a company with about 25% of the music market could legally impose pricing conditions on it's competitors (Valve may allow flexible pricing but iTunes did not at least at the beginning and I don't believe was such a proportion of the market at the time).
It might not make sense for sony to make one device that would replace many, with most money for the software going to other people. This is a classic innovator's dillema.
Also they did build the first ebook reader, but they lost to the kindle. Since the ereader is mostly about building ecosystems, maybe the same would have happened to them with app stores ?
Well that's exactly my point with the eReader. They did the hardware (in most regards better than Amazon) but because they didn't do much for past-sale services they ultimately lost out.
The viewpoint of things as stand alone devices has ruined them. It's not necessarily to do with one device to replace many (smart phone to replace PDA, walkman and laptop for example - they ultimately did that) but that couldn't tie them all together. Anyway, if they don't cannibalise their own products, someone else will (and did). It's only short term profit focus that scares them from doing so.
