Topic: New Sony Chairman and CEO

[chaos]

http://www.game-science.com/
Turns out Ken Kutaragi is stepping down to take care of the game division and the new chairman isn't Japanese, his name is Sir Howard Stringer he is originally Welsh, Cardiff to be exact.  

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Sony today announced a new management structure, due to become effective on 22 June, subject to approval at the Shareholder's meeting that day. Sir Howard Stringer will assume position of Chairman, Group CEO and Representative CEO for Sony Corporation. Meanwhile "father of the PlayStation brand", Ken Kutaragi, will resign from the Board, along with six other board members - Nobuyuki Idei, Kunitake Ando, Teruo Masaki, Teruhisa Tokunaka, Goran Lindhal and Akihisa Ohnishi. From 22 June, Ken Kutaragi will be concentating on the running of Sony's Game division. Here is the full story at Yahoo!

 

[oohhboy]

A demotion? Maybe the other divisions finally got the balls to move him out of there along with his supporting members for shafting them over the PSP.

[KDR_11k]

Perhaps he slowly turned insane. Remember that "we created the most beautiful thing in the world" speech? Or perhaps he and those other board members wanted to express their discontent with appointing a non-Japanese CEO?

[Ian Sane]

Perhaps now that a non-Japanese is CEO that national prejudice that supposedly prevented the American Xbox from succeeding in Japan will hurt the Playstation 3's Japanese presence.

Yah right.

Still Nintendo is the only console maker now where the head of the company is Japanese.

[Savior]

Doesnt make much sense, he basically helped make Sony into the gaming powerhouse it is now

[oohhboy]

Maybe so on the surface. But he has negleted the other divisions over his pet gaming division to the point of being willing to scapegoat the other divisions over the cost of the PSP.

Also Sony eletronics division has been struggling for a long time profit wise and he hsn't even attemped to address it. As a matter of fact he went and made it worse.

[BlkPaladin]

Yes it pretty bad when a CEO lets 95% of the company go into the red while the only one division, the computer entertainment division is the only one making a profit. And that profit can only go so far.

Here is a comparision, a few months ago (more like a year) a study came out saying that Nintendo just on the Gamecube alone made more profits than Sony's divsion did. Now Nintendo just has itself to sustain consider them about the size of Sony's division.  So Sony is 10 times the size of Nintendo when you count all their divisons, has to surrvive on less profits then Nintendo, its a wonder why they didn't ask him to step down before.

[nemo_83]

Sony is 61 billion dollars in debt

[kennyb27]

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Originally posted by: nemo_83
Sony is 61 billion dollars in debt

Do you have a link or is this just common information that I don't know?

[Don'tHate742]

hahaha are you serious? I'd like proof just to have something to laugh at. I'm glad they're in tremendous debt. They've been making shoddy products that work off the cool factor instead of the quality factor. It's about time I think.

[ruby_onix]

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Do you have a link or is this just common information that I don't know?

Bloomberg

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Sony's total debt stood at 6.71 trillion yen ($61 billion) on June 30.

However, that's only part of the story.

Apparently Sony has about $100 billion in "assets". Like, their factories and studios and stuff like that.

And they had a "A+" credit rating. Like a credit card. Which they used to build up a $61 billion debt.

It's like, if Sony was a family, the parents own a $100,000 house, but they've got $60,000 on their Visa. The parents are retired, and all their kids are unemployed mooches. Kutaragi is the only son with a job, but even he can't pay down that debt by himself, so the parents declared him "man of the house" and told him to find jobs for everyone else. His grand scheme was to get his siblings to massage his feet, so his job's easier, so he maybe works faster and earns more money. It was a stupid plan, and their debt only got higher while he was in charge. So the parents stripped him of that authority, and now they need to find a new plan, otherwise they're gonna be homeless.

[couchmonkey]

ruby_onix gets the analogy award for March!  The only problem with that analogy is it makes me feel sorry for Ken's starving parents!

Seriously, though.  I've been really disappointed with a wide array of Sony electronics over the past decade, and it seems like a lot of people I know are in the same situation.  Sony is earning the rewards of cheaping out and riding on its reputation.

[boggy b]

From what I've heard, this new CEO is probably for the better. He has a reputation for breaking down walls inside the company to open it up and bring it into the 21st century. It should be a very good move for the company.

Oh, and all of you falling over yourselves to spew effluence on Sony; I'm pretty certain that their poor reliability only extends as far as their gaming segment. In every review I read of their other home electronics in a magazine they say that the build quality is impeccable, even if their product as a whole isn't (that said, they are still the best plasma TV makers in the business).

[Avinash_Tyagi]

Sony is teh doomed

[KDR_11k]

boggy b: I've heard loads of complaints about other Sony hardware as well, you sure? Sony's stuff doesn't break from violence but time will kill it pretty fast. Of course you can't say in a review whether the thing will die in 6 months.

[couchmonkey]

I've noticed that Sony products get good quality and reliability reviews in Consumer Reports, but anecdotally speaking me and the people I know have had too many problems for me to trust them anymore.

[vudu]

I've had the same Sony TV for over six years and it works flawlessly.  The remote wore out a couple years ago, but the television itself is great.  My Sony DVD player is starting to act finicky, but it's also six years old, so I guess it's to be expected.

[boggy b]

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Originally posted by: KDR_11k
boggy b: I've heard loads of complaints about other Sony hardware as well, you sure? Sony's stuff doesn't break from violence but time will kill it pretty fast. Of course you can't say in a review whether the thing will die in 6 months.

The only people that I've really read claiming poor reliability for Sony products are *ahem* people who don't like Sony (there are, of course, expceptions). I've never owned any Sony gear aside from my PS1 (ye olde model, not the PSone) and PS2, and both are working flawlessly (I still dig out the PS1 to play MGS from time-to-time, because PS2 emulation has weirdo texture errors all over the shop) so I can't speak from personal experience, but a number of people I know have Sony stuf and it's all well made and some of it's old and still works perfectly.