Microsoft Buyout of Ailing Sony Possible

imashoe writes "BonaFideReviews has published an interesting article stating that a Microsoft buyout of Sony is quite possible sometime in the not-so-far future. From the article: 'All this added up, you have to ask yourself. Will the next Playstation you purchase post-PS3 run a Microsoft operating system and have backwards compatibility for PS1 PS2 PS3 Xbox and Xbox360? Putting your rabid love for Sony aside, this doesn't seem as far fetched as it once did, when the Sony name wasn't covered in enough red tape to fill the Grand Canyon.'"

Red Ink, not red tape.

[Ohreally_factor]

Idiots! Get your idioms straight. Are the slashdot idiotors native English speakers?

Fanboyism at its best

[Gothmolly]

Firstly, Sony makes more products than the PSP. In case you didn't know that.
Secondly, why do we all have a "rabid hate" for Sony? They make excellent midrange CD players, for instance. I have an actual Walkman from back in the day, which still works.

The "news" slant would be something like "Wow, this article says that MS might by Sony".

Apparently the "accept trollish submission text" method is what we have here.

Re:Red Ink, not red tape.

[Ohreally_factor]

My apologies. The idiotor saw fit to merely present an excerpt of the story, so the unhappy turn of phrase wasn't CN's.

Re:Fanboyism at its best

[Ohreally_factor]

why do we all have a "rabid hate" for Sony?

DRM rootkits.

Where have you been?

Continuing PS3 under Microsoft doesn't make sense

[Zweideutig]

In my humble opinion, Microsoft won't be continuing the PlayStation gaming console and the Xbox if they acquire Sony. It makes more sense to combine the merits of both consoles into one that combines the market share to put a serious force against Nintendo. If Microsoft were to buy out Sony, I see a lot of change happening. The Sony VAIO laptop and desktop computer lines would likely be spun off into a different company like IBM did. The Sony name could be used to sell a competitor of the iPod that runs some portable Windows CE-like OS. Sony's music and movie division would be great for helping Microsoft kill Apple's iTunes. Direct control over the label allows Microsoft to charge whatever they want (even free like with Internet Explorer, which would effectively kill iTunes.) I see the buyout of Sony a great move for Microsoft, provided they spin-off some things that aren't pertinent to boosting the value of the shares for us stockholders.

Re:Fanboyism at its best

[wfberg]

why do we all have a "rabid hate" for Sony?

DRM rootkits.

Also, The NeverEnding Format Wars (MemoryStick, BlueRay, etc.), PS3 Delays And High Price (Save Up Suckers), MP3 Players That Really Only Play ATRAC, Trying To Get Us To Buy MD Even Though We Told Them A Zillion Times That Tape Sucks Come On Philips Dumped Their Digital Tape Ages Ago, and last but not least Every Kind Of Hardware They Make Except For Playstation Is Being Made By Some Other Taiwanes Or Korean Company For Less Money And Higher Quality.

They're a company in decline.

DON'T RTFA.

[xigxag]

Just don't. You will want your five minutes back. You were warned.

Re:Red Ink, not red tape.

[Ohreally_factor]

Red ink? What "english" is this?

Here in England (you know, home of the English language) "Red tape" is a very common term for excessive bureaucratic processes that one sometimes has to go through. I've never heard the term "Red ink" being used to describe this.

Refer to Wikipedia for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_tape [wikipedia.org]

And you claim to be a native English speaker? Well, I guess even England has ignorant and uneducated people.

Red ink refers to the accounting practice of recording finacial losses in red ink.

red ink
n.
A financial loss in business.
The condition of showing a fiscal deficit: a firm drowning in red ink.

[From the use of red ink to record debits and losses in financial records.]
(Dictionary.com [reference.com])

Please see this article [economist.com] for an example of use of the term in English financial journalism.

Re:Red Ink, not red tape.

[Qbertino]

German has a simular term. It's called having or "being in the red numbers" (in den roten Zahlen sein) or "writing red numbers" (rote Zahlen schreiben) which all mean making loss. The same as the english "red ink" used to write 'red numbers'.

Cutting through red tape means having to make a big issue to be able to enter somewhere (as in cutting the red tape across the street of a new bridge).

So it should be "red ink" and not "red tape" when talking about Sonys losses of lately. Though the two idoms sound simular, they bouth mean different things.

Re:Red Ink, not red tape.

[McFadden]

Before you make patronising remarks, check you actually know what you're talking about. Speaking as an Englishman (you know, one of those guys from the "home of the English language"), I can assure you that 'red ink' is in very common usage. Just because it doesn't describe the process you mistakenly thought it did, doesn't mean it's wrong. The term "in the red" shares the same etymology.

Re:Fanboyism at its best

[Anonymous Coward]

MD is an optical disc, not digital tape.

Re:Red Ink, not red tape.

[aurelian]

Cutting through red tape means having to make a big issue to be able to enter somewhere (as in cutting the red tape across the street of a new bridge).

Is that a German idiom as well? I'm certainly not familiar with it in English, where 'red tape' is always used to refer to bureaucratic requirements which are considered burdensome by the user. (It's frequently used by company directors and managers wanting tax concessions, or complaining about things like human rights legislation or health & safety requirements..)

Re:Red Ink, not red tape.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK, it is usually referred to as being 'in the red', I have not ever heard 'red ink' used over here.

( Not the GP UK AC )

Wouldn't Sony buy Microsoft?

[jedigeek]

Consider these statistics on both companies:

Sony, 2005 Revenue (USD): 60.85B
Microsoft, 2005 Revenue (USD): 39.79B

Sony, 2005 Employees: 152,700
Microsoft, 2005 Employees: 61,000

Why did this article even make Slashdot? It makes no sense at all.

Re:Rabid love

[Anonymous Coward]

If I go to Sony's web page, I see a ton of things that have little to do with gaming (directly) - Stereos, Walkmans, TVs, etc. How can these guys say that Sony is "Ailing"?

And that's just the hardware side of the business. Don't forget that as well as Sony Electronics there's Sony Music and Sony Pictures.

To quote from Sony Corporation Of America's website [sony.com] (not Sony Japan, not Sony Europe, etc.)

Revenue for last fiscal (ending March 31, 2005):

Sony Corporation: $67b
Music Group: $2.3b
Pictures Group: $6.9b
United States $18.4b

Microsoft [microsoft.com], in contrast, had a total annual revenue for the period of $36.8b (roughly half if Sony's).

The article talks about $2b a year utterly bankrupting Sony (assuming they simply sell consoles at a loss and don't recoup from game licensing, accessories, additional HD TV sales, gaining ownership of next gen DVDs through market share, etc.)

I'm not quite sure how a loss that barely makes it in to the couple of percent range will cripple a company so badly that it gets bought up by one with half the total revenue and no interest in the majority of the larger company's business.

Microsoft is a software and very specific hardware firm. They would be incredibly badly served by trying to take over an electronics, movies and music giant that's a far bigger company than they are. They're doing very well with the controlled growth they have right now.

The only way it would make sense for Microsoft would be if they could take Sony Computer Entertainment and leave the rest of Sony. Sony, however, gains a huge amount beyond direct console sales. A bankrupt Sony would be forced to sell off pieces. An intact Sony would likely have no interest in destroying its future TVs (cell), its future DVD players (blu-ray), its movie business (also blu-ray) and its appeal to the massively profitable 18-35 demographic that spills over from gaming to those big TVs, car stereos, etc.

Since Sir Howard Stringer took over Sony, he's made some incredibly tough decisions to get Sony, as a whole, back on track - so much so that he's become a major persona non grata in his own home country of Wales where he made tough choices and cut a huge number of workers. Here is a man who's clearly willing to do what it takes to make Sony profitable and who, more than anyone else on earth, has very detailed figures on the costs of the PS3 - yet he's not chosen to sell off Sony Computer Entertainment.

So, overall, we have a company with double Microsoft's revenues, with areas Microsoft's just not interested in, making them far too big to buy out in the entirety (which the original article appears to have totally missed). Piece-by-piece, SCE might be affordable for Microsoft but that requires Sony wanting/needing to sell - something they've shown absolutely no signs of.

Re:Seems unlikely

[metamatic]

MS-DOS was licensed from SCS, who weren't acquired. Microsoft's streaming media technology was partly licensed from Vivo and Real, who weren't acquired, partly stolen from Apple, and partly written in house. They bought a ton of 3D technologies from SGI, who weren't acquired. Their speech recognition technology was licensed from L&H, who weren't acquired. They licensed B2B technologies from VerticalNet, Radiant Systems and others--again, didn't acquire them.

Sure, they've purchased plenty of software companies to get well-defined software applications. However, Sony doesn't fit that model. If they bought Sony they'd be purchasing a company with no real desktop software products, and a large number of diverse technologies. So I still think a 'strategic investment' in return for technology licensing of the stuff they actually wanted would be the approach they would take.