Perhaps the PlayStation franchise should not be thought of as Sony’s best contributing brand these days, given the way its Cybershot camera and Walkman phones are going, but there is every chance that Sony will not risk the brand in a ‘design by committee’ approach to putting the PlayStation into a phone.
We said back in the autumn that if a Sony PlayStation phone was not with us by Christmas it would be too late and now all the news wires are abuzz with the news that Sony has been slating Ericsson, suggesting the only way forward is for Sony to build a PlayStation phone itself and not rely on the joint venture.
There are some huge pluses and huge minuses with a go it alone strategy ‘ for a start any device would probably rely on expertise gained from Sony Ericsson, and leave Sony open to legal actions from Ericsson; secondly Nokia and Apple have already stolen all the early ground in mobile gaming with Ovi and N-Gage and the Apple App store ‘ and that means that what Sony would have to produce is a much bigger thing ‘ an eco-system for creating mobile class games, as well as a porting route for PS1 and other games. Another negative is that Sony on its own will not have the purchasing power or distribution partners for mobile components that Sony Ericsson has. Also once the rot has set in, how much continuing commitment would there be from either party to keep Sony Ericsson going, and the joint venture might implode.
Such a venture for Sony would be like doing an iPhone all over again, an evolution which took over three years. Remember Apple partnered with Motorola over a music phone, but fell out. It then used the know-how it had gained from the experience to plan the iPhone, which it took two shots to get right. We’re not sure that Sony is up to going through such an intense process on its own, being far less adaptable and inventive than Apple.
Sony is apparently arguing that it will only permit the use of the PSP brand if the phone experience matches that of the current gaming devices. “In the past, we have been keen that our product proposition lives up to brand promise, and we feel at the moment the technical specs are not high enough to put such a prestigious brand on a phone,” a Sony spokesman said in Japanese news reports and in Mobile Today.
The positives of going it alone come from the iPhone experience ‘ the Motorola ROKR iTunes phone launched by Motorola in November 2005, could only hold 100 tracks and was seen as a disastrous ‘design by committee’ which is clearly what Sony thinks will happen if Sony Ericsson designs the phone.
Sony’s history is fraught with this type in-fighting even among divisions that it owns 100%, and Sony Ericsson managed to confuse the hell out of the Sony PSP positioning a few years back when it launched a non-gaming device which in other respects was very similar to the PSP, the Mylo. When Sony was trying to come up with an answer to the iPod, each of the divisions came up with separate solutions, making the whole rivalry a mess and a joke.
On the other hand both the Sony Walkman range of music phones and the Cyber-shot range base on Sony’s with high quality built-in cameras, have both been a success.
The sooner that Sony buys Ericsson out of the joint venture the better, but Ericsson will not want to be paid ‘recession’ pricing on its shareholding and has no obligation to sell, so that could be two years away.