BA5 Platform and Distribution: Sony
In 1945, Japan was in turmoil following the destruction left by World War 2. Needing to rebuild their infrastructure quickly, this gave many opportunities to potential entrepreneurs and upstart businessmen such as Masara Ibuka and Akio Morita, who would later go on to be the founders of the modern day Sony Corporation. Following the conclusion of World War 2, Masara Ibuka took advantage of cheap property prices in Japan to open a radio repair shop in a damaged department store building in Tokyo. The following year Ibuka formed the company ‘Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation (Totsuko)’ with his colleague Akio Morita.
The main problem for Ibuka and Morita at this point was financing. With Japan being in economic crisis, there were very few opportunities for financial backing for the company. This was made worse in 1946 when an ordinance by the government was issued switching from the ‘old yen’ to the ‘new yen’. This made it even more vital for Totsuko Corporation to obtain the new yen notes to stay in business. According to Sony.net history, the company could barely even afford the equipment needed. “The engineers at Totsuko made all the equipment themselves. Beginning with soldering irons, they made screwdrivers from motorcycle springs fished out of war ruins. They constructed their own electrical coils and substituted telephone cables for electrical wiring in their trial products.”
In 1950, Toksuko’s fortunes changed when Masara Ibuka met with Bell Labs to licence their newly invented transistor technology to the company. While American companies were looking in to using the transistor for military purposes, Ibuka and Morita wanted to apply it to a more commercial scale. This led them to create Japan’s first tape recorder later that year, followed by Japan’s first transistor radio in 1955. Wanting to continue their worldwide commercial success after the TR-72 transistor radio, Ibuka and Morita wanted a strong name to market themselves globally. The problem they encountered with the name ‘Toksuko’ is that many Americans were finding it difficult to pronounce. Shortening the company’s name to TTK or Tokyo Teletech was considered, but was abandoned based on the similar sounding ‘Tokyo Kyuko’ (TKK) and the American company ‘Teletech’. The following year Toksuko made a deal with cartoonist Fuyuhiko Okabe for his character ‘Atchan’ (also known as “Sony Boy”) to become its advertising character for the new TR-6 radio. The name Sony originated from the Latin word “Sonus”, meaning sound, and the 1950s American slang “Sonny boy”. Although there was pressure from the company’s financial bank to change the name to something such as ‘Sony Electronic Industries’ or ‘Sony Teletech’, Akio Morita was firm that he “…did not want the company name tied to any particular industry.”
Sony continued its success in the coming years with a key focus on creating its own criteria for new technologies instead of adapting those of their competitions. Sony believed that producing the highest quality products would be their winning edge in a competitive market. This was displayed in the late 1970s with the introduction of the ‘videotape format war’. Although Sony’s Betamax lost to JVC’s VHS format, they did manage to impact the film industry with the ‘Betacam’ – an adaption of the Betamax technology. With the introduction of the first portable music player in 1979, the Sony ‘Walkman’, and the development of cathode ray tube televisions, the company solidified its position in the consumer electronics and recording business.
Originally, Sony had no intention of entering the computer games industry. Sony executives were determined that the company was not to be a toy company and that the computer games market was already dominated by other businesses such as Sega who owned 52% of the market. It was only with the threat of the Sega Genesis CD that Nintendo decided to approach Sony, who was already manufacturing sound chips for Nintendo, to create a CD drive for their Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). This would be in the form of a peripheral attachment for the SNES, but would also be available as a combined unit which would be called the ‘Play Station’, the latter being sold by Sony. This marked the rise of Ken Kutaragi, an engineer hired by Sony in 1975. Kutaragi was the one responsible for work on the sound chip for Nintendo (the SPC700), which was originally kept in secret from Sony executives. Upon hearing of the news, Sony executives were extremely angry. It was only with the help of Norio Ohga (Sony CEO at the time) that Kutaragi managed to keep his job. Ken Kutaragi’s reasoning for making the chip was that he had always realized the potential of video games, and after his ideas for a video game console had been rejected by Ohga, he jumped on the chance to manufacture the chip for Nintendo.
Despite hostility from Sony executives, Norio Ohga gave Kutaragi the funding required for the SNES CD and assigned him as the leading engineer of the project. It was at this point that Nintendo secretly cancelled all their plans upon realising that Sony would own all rights to the CD technology under the original contract. This would cut Nintendo out of a large profit margin in addition to a potential conflict of interest, so Nintendo decided to approach Philips about creating the CD component for their SNES without informing Sony. In 1991, Sony made an announcement at CES about the Nintendo Play Station unaware of Nintendo’s secret deal. Shortly after, Nintendo following by releasing a statement they were going to work with Philips on the CD technology. Ken Kutaragi pushed his original idea to Sony executives of continuing to make a full games console since they had already developed the CD technology. Feeling the recent betrayal of Nintendo, Ohga who had rejected the idea before was now very supportive of Kutaragi, and Sony commenced work on the ‘Sony Playstation’, followed quickly by the formation of Sony Computer Entertainment on November 16th 1993.
Previously, Sony was well known for their high quality electronic storage and recording devices, but the Playstation marked a venture into new hardware development and distribution for Sony and many were questioning whether the Playstation would be viable. Sony execs were convinced that their console was a glance into the future, and with the company’s key focus of creating new technology of highest standards, they began to be sure the Playstation would be a success despite sceptics.
The Playstation’s success lied in its 3D graphics infrastructure. It was faster than any other console at the time and allowed game developers much more freedom. Sony was aware that the only thing the Playstation was missing was software – they needed to win the trust of game developers and publishers. This marked a fundamental moment for Sony, as it is likely the console would not have been a success without the aggressive marketing strategy Sony engaged in at this time. With the ironic release of Virtua Fighter by Sega opening many developers eyes to the possibility of 3D games, many companies approached Sony about making 3D games for the new Playstation.
When the Playstation was released in Japan in 1994 it was an instant success, selling over 1 million copies in the first month. Because of Sony’s large organization they were able to spend large amounts of money on marketing for the European and US launch of the Playstation. This in turn with a clever marketing technique by Sony designers caused the Playstation to be a huge success by the end of 1995, causing the Sega Saturn to be virtually eliminated from the market.
Sony continued the success of the original Playstation with the release of the Playstation 2 in 2000. The Playstation 2 quickly became the most successful video games console of all time selling more than 150million units to date.
Sony’s ‘Dual Shock’ controller is regarded as one of the best designs for game interface by reviewers. The controller is ergonomically designed so that it can rest in a player’s hand without fatigue, and still have easy access to a large array of buttons. The original idea was taken from the Atari D-Pad, where the left thumb would control movement while the right thumb would correspond to certain actions. Sony further improved upon the D-Pad design by adding two joysticks that would allow much more fluidity of movement than analog buttons. The Nintendo 64 controller attempted this with a joystick in the middle for ambidexterity, but was generally considered uncomfortable and hard to use. Sony’s Dual Shock 2 controller’s joysticks were made of a soft rubber composite that meant the player’s thumbs wouldn’t take stress when playing for an extended time. Nintendo made this mistake with the Gamecube joystick, where player’s reported discomfort and even swelling of the thumb after several hours use.
In 2003, a problem arose for Sony Computer Entertainment when they were sued by Immersion Corporation for infringements of their patents by Sony’s ‘Dual Shock’ controller. Immersion were awarded $82 million with an additional $8.7 million in damages. This also caused Sony to have to remove the rumble functionality from their SIXAXIS controllers, and was a terrible incident for Sony – especially since Microsoft managed an out-of-court settlement with Immersion and an agreement for use of the technology in their new Xbox 360. Sony later returned the rumble functionality with their ‘Dual Shock 3’ controllers.
The recent advances in wireless technology have caused all current generation consoles to adapt a wireless interface, with the most recent being motion (or gesture) controllers. With the introduction of the Nintendo Wii, the controller market was revolutionised. Going one further than the gyroscopic sensor of the SIXAXIS, the Wii-mote uses wireless Bluetooth 2.0, infrared and a 3-way accelerometer to translate a players movements onto the screen. This tapped in to a whole new range of casual gamers being drawn to the Wii’s user-friendly interface, in addition to experienced gamers who were enthralled by the feeling of interactivity.
In 2010, Sony released the Playstation Move and Microsoft released the Kinect as direct competitors to Nintendo’s motion controller. Sony’s aim was to allow players to have a more immersive game experience due to the increased accuracy of the Playstation Move and Playstation Eye versus the Wii’s controller. The Microsoft Kinect uses the same theory as the old 2007 Playstation Eye but features much more advanced technology, such as 3D motion capture, facial recognition and advanced gesture recognition. The Kinect uses multiple infrared and RGB cameras in addition to monochrome CMOS camera to map a room in 3D regardless of the lighting conditions. This makes the technology somewhat superior to that of Nintendo and Sony’s due to more accurate 3D mapping and without the need to hold a peripheral device to be detected.
Sony have attempted to recover and expand from the slightly disappointing release of the Move with the ‘Move.me’. The Move.me is essentially a software toolkit that allows users to make applications using the Playstation Move technology. This is very similar to the Playstation Move SDK (Software Development Kit), but is available to researchers and designers who aren’t licenced Sony developers. The Move.me application receives data from the PS3 about the current state and situation of the Move controller(s). This is essentially Sony opening up motion technology to the masses, allowing non-professional organisations who wouldn’t otherwise be able to acquire the Move SDK to develop applications for the technology, the only limit being you have to operate the Move controller within a radius of a Playstation 3 and ideally the computer running the Move.me client. So far the Move.me has been kept fairly secret by Sony, so it is hard to gauge its mass appeal, but from initial findings it looks as if the Move.me could realistically be used in a multitude of different scenarios. The general consensus with reviewers is that the only thing that lets the Move down is the lack of dedicated software for it, but with the Kinect SDK now being available for free from Microsoft’s website I can’t see why Microsoft wouldn’t market the Kinect for the same applications the Move.me is thinking of being utilized for.
Because of my lack of coding experience in C++ or C#, I tested the Move.me based on its responsiveness and ability to track movement. The interface was very easy to navigate and strangely enthralling. Even with the pre-packaged sword application, it felt entertaining and easy to use. Gyroscoping of the sword was lost occasionally near the edge of the screen.
The Move.me has potential to be used in a large number of applications. This would include physical rehabilitation as mentioned by John McCutchan, allowing patients a much more engaging way to do the required exercises, but also allowing doctors to get advanced data on their exact movements. The sports industry is also another big market. Most sports revolve around accuracy, timing and consistency, and training can often be halted in the winter or summer months. The Move.me would allow players and coaches to simulate a highly dynamic sports environment, such as seeing exactly where a golfer is hitting the ball regularly and where they are meaning to aim. This would let coaches more easily identify errors in technique, and can be done virtually anywhere.
