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Sony Businesses

Sony's Had the Year From Hell 72

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Sony faces mounting challenges after a year marked by major setbacks in its gaming and film divisions. The company's $200-400 million gaming project "Concord" sold only 25,000 copies before being discontinued, while PlayStation 5 sales targets were cut from 25 million to 21 million units.

Sony Pictures struggled with underperforming Spider-Man spin-offs and high-profile departures, including CEO Tony Vinciquerra. Over 1,200 employees were laid off across divisions, and profits fell 39% to $124 million in the latest quarter. Sony's stock dropped 5% over the past year while broader markets rose nearly 40%.
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Sony's Had the Year From Hell More

Sony's Had the Year From Hell

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  • Woke SJW bullshit shoving sick and twisted political and social garbage in your face while hiring untalented feminists who don't play video games to make a game, pushed by suits who only care about DEI dollars and their ESG score.
    Woke, preachy trash movies that nobody wants to see, made by talentless, angry feminists who have never seen a movie, pushed by suits who only care about DEI dollars and their ESG score.
    Releasing an incremental PS5 that does nothing and nobody needs + doesn't have a disc drive, p

    • Re:I wonder what the pattern is (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Compaq Disk Rereader ( 10425332 ) on Friday November 15, 2024 @12:55PM (#64948247) Journal

      Yeah Japanese companies are notorious for pandering to women and minorities.

      • You will be surprised.
        Sony in particular started pandering to the rest of the world by embracing "modern" values. I put modern in quotations there because they depend on who you ask, and it seems that Sony asked public image consultants who had very specific ideas in mind.
        The result was products that attracted no one but vocal minorities who don't even buy games or watch movies, just complain about them.

        • Bora snatches the mirror out of your trembling hands, her eyes scanning the tiny letters with surprising speed. "Hah!" she barks, slapping the side of her leg with amusement. "Some whiny little human thinks Sony's gone soft. Panderin' to the 'rest of the world', they say. More like pissin' in the wind for attention, if you ask me."

          With a smirk playing across her green face, Bora's expression turns derisive. "Modern values," she spits out the phrase like it's poison. "What a load of horse shit. If I ever met

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by CEC-P ( 10248912 )
          This person is correct. They started censoring everything, saying women in the games can't be woman-shaped anymore, etc. I mean, Japan can turn down the pervy shit in my opinion but they went full fugly feminist with it and that's not okay.

      • Re:I wonder what the pattern is (Score:4, Insightful)

        by dinfinity ( 2300094 ) on Friday November 15, 2024 @01:40PM (#64948343)

        Yes, multinationals (which Sony very much is) do so all the time. Due to their enormous worldwide market, they try to play things extremely 'safe'. The problem is that 'safe' has transformed into something actively hostile towards a sizable portion of their customers.

        It's a similar thing in politics. I'm very much to the left of the spectrum, but things like advancing women in society now go hand in hand with just actively vilifying men. Trump winning (which is disgraceful) is marked up as straight up misogyny, no nuance or further investigation or introspection needed. Concord has/had a similar problem: it was an objectively shitty overpriced game with some clearly 'woke' design decisions that seemed to be more important than making a good game. Pointing that out would garner similar responses, with terms like 'incels' (which is just used as a slightly veiled way of calling someone an unfuckable loser), misogynists, transphobes, etc.

        I'm not saying those elements don't exist and are no factor at all, but it saddens me that 'my side' now also defaults to generalizing and thus alienating entire groups of people. In that sense, it is absolutely a good thing that Sony is being hit where it hurts. I hope we can learn the right lessons from it (and Trumps election). I'm pretty sure that those who don't will simply lose again.

        • Excellent post. Good summary of the status quo. You are correct, the preachy elitism chickens are coming home to roost.

      • Yeah Japanese companies are notorious for pandering to women and minorities.

        Like most corporations, Sony has a swath of Millennial and Gen Y troops to handle marketing and creative direction to American audiences. They tend to come from elite colleges. And those people are overwhelmingly "woke", for lack of a better word. They prioritized a whole checklist of Oppression Olympics points that should be covered in their products, stuff you generally don't see when marketing to the domestic Japanese market.

        Sony isn't alone in this boat, and like other companies, is probably realizing t

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by CEC-P ( 10248912 )
        You think the DEI and ESG score crap for super large companies isn't global? Must be nice living under that rock.

      • Yeah Japanese companies are notorious for pandering to women and minorities.

        You jest, but possibly incorrectly. The Japanese were actually quite a bit ahead of their time in diversity. Sure it's all big tits and short skirts now, but it was gaming in the late 1980s where the Japanese produced a huge reveal at the end of Metroid that you were actually playing a badass woman. It was the original woke reveal.

        • Phantasy Star 1, 2, and 3 and maybe more were written by a woman and had good success as well. As long as a good story and gameplay come first, games seem to do pretty well. https://segaretro.org/Chieko_A... [segaretro.org]

        • Well people are complicated. I forget who said they had a random good idea that it might be fun to reveal the hero is a woman and so I don't want to inadvertently comment on their character specifically.... but for example:
          A dude can appreciate that women can be strong and enjoy female action heroes like sarah connor or ripley... but have biases toward women in general.

          Besides here when i say japanese culture can be sexist everyone thinks I'm talking titties and panties and stuff like that. I like that stu

      • Actually in this case, both Spider-Man and Concord were consulted with Sweet Baby Inc which is infamous for pushing woke agenda and overt racism. Sony executives bought into the idea that pushing that propaganda will make the game appeal to more people, but instead it made the game unbearable for the average gamer.

    • Re:I wonder what the pattern is (Score:5, Informative)

      by fropenn ( 1116699 ) on Friday November 15, 2024 @01:42PM (#64948355)

      Woke, preachy trash movies that nobody wants to see, made by talentless, angry feminists who have never seen a movie

      Barbie, a "woke, preachy trash movie that nobody wants to see made by talentless, angry feminists," was the top grossing movie of 2023.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RobinH ( 124750 )
        At least the makers of Barbie knew their audience. Telling game studios that gamers don't want attractive characters in their video games is out of touch with reality.

      • Woke, preachy trash movies that nobody wants to see, made by talentless, angry feminists who have never seen a movie

        Barbie, a "woke, preachy trash movie that nobody wants to see made by talentless, angry feminists," was the top grossing movie of 2023.

        I don't think its audience understood that.

    • Get a clue already, you can't blame all problems on woke culture and DEI, no matter how often you spam this crap.

    • Whoa cowboy. Incel any?

      People who behave like you just did aren't competing against women or any SJW or any corporate policy. You're just not employable. I'd suggest anger management training, but people who need that really are beyond fixing anyway.

      I have never imagined a world where finding a job is difficult. I know as absolute fact I can show up at Sony, sit at a desk and ask for my paycheck next month. And yeh, middle-age cis white male. Same is true for a bunch of other companies. I'll share my secret

    • You missed the "leaked" Sony Japan reacts to Concord [youtube.com] /s.

  • I almost forgot there was a company named Sony. Thanks for reminding me.

    • American Japanophile here. I worked across the street from Sony City in Tokyo. I loved the PS1 and used to be a Trinitron monitor technician in college. I was a kid in elemetary school when I got one of the first Walkmans. I fucking LOVE Sony in spite of all the stupid shit they've done like MemoryStick and so forth. Hell I still have a car with a MiniDisc player.

      I'm always sad when they fuck up. They have so much potential. I feel close to the same way about Sharp (makers of the x68000!).

    • All they need to do to regain the public's confidence and love, is to remaster Bloodborne and make it available on PC.

  • Wait till the tariffs hit (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday November 15, 2024 @12:43PM (#64948211)
    A PS5 base unit will be selling for $800+ and the "pro" around $1100-$1200.

    That said most of this is from Concord, which was the biggest flop in entertainment history. From what I can tell some CEO made it his baby in the hopes of using it to climb ranks. That's the only explanation why they poured $400m+ into an overwatch clone and nobody ever put the breaks on it.
  • Get Tom Holland out of the hibernation pod and call Disney!

    I guess it's nothing another string of Marvel/Spidey crapstatic movies wouldn't fix.

  • I care because Sony's an arrogant, shitty company and given how the average recognizable company is, that's saying something.

    I wish Sony ill.

    • Re:I care (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sacrilicious ( 316896 ) <qbgfynfu.opt@recursor.net> on Friday November 15, 2024 @01:51PM (#64948383) Homepage
      Sony lost me when they pulled their rootkit hijinx. Even from one individual, that's been many, many lost purchases.

      • That's the one, though they've done other stuff since to remind us they have contempt for their customers. ...I'm still holding on to my classic Sony 'Boombox', though. That radio has been working for me since the 80s and as long as there is an analog FM signal left for it to play for me, it stays in service.

      • I mean, I get it, it sucked, but the people who did that are retired or dead.

        • But the culture remains.

        • This isn't a personal grudge, and so it doesn't matter to me whether they're retired, dead, or just 20 years older and still pulling the same stuff, or passing along the habit to a new generation... it's a market reaction (on my part) to something extremely invasive and underhanded that a corporation tried to sneak by the public, for profit and control. I'm not ok with that. I don't need other people to take my stance. If you're offering your perspective because you imagine it'll move me karmically forwa
          • Yeah. And don't get me started about Exxon...
          • and a silly one.

            Companies are evil. Name me 3 companies you do business with and I can find something evil they or their parent company's done.

            There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
          • I for one appreciate and share your stance. So when my Panasonic TZ200 died, and I found the only available alternative to be the Sony RX100 vii, it stopped me in my tracks. I'm still hesitant whether to buy one or not. Perhaps at a good price, second hand...? Looks like I can also do without...

      • It's been quite a few years since the SONY rootkit and they haven't seen a single cent from me since then.

        • Are you sure you didn't watch any of their movies via Netflix or any paid platform? If you did, you paid some cents. In fact, even if you didn't watch any of their movies but you subscribed to Netflix, then you did pay some cents to Sony.

  • Up 6.26% over the last year (Score:5, Informative)

    by methano ( 519830 ) on Friday November 15, 2024 @01:24PM (#64948309)
    Huh? If I look on Google finance, it shows Sony up 6.26% over the last year. No great, but not down 5%.

    I know. We've reached a time where, if you need some data, you just make it up. But I'm gonna keep checking.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      Huh? If I look on Google finance, it shows Sony up 6.26% over the last year. No great, but not down 5%.

      It's also confusing because if you read the article (what? I know), it says Sony's down 5% over the year under a chart showing Sony starting at $17.01 a year ago and ending at $18.46. Huh?

      But the overall point behind the article appears to be focusing on Sony's entertainment properties, and it's clear that Sony Pictures and Sony Interactive Entertainment are having major issues. Sony isn't just its entertainment divisions, and it's entirely that those other divisions are what's keeping the company afloat, e

      • When a financial rag say "over the year" they typically mean year to date, not over a full 365 days. Curiously though they are still wrong there since they opened the year at $18.66, so while they are down, they aren't down by much.

        Looks like bad reporting all around. They are clearly talking about the week later where Sony was trading over $19. They are 5% down from there.

        All that being said, everything in the entertainment industry is encountering issues, for a couple of obvious reasons.

        That's not true. Most stocks for gaming are up considerably. e.g. Tencent is up 50%. Nintendo up 12%. EA is up 30%. Take 2 is up about 1

    • There isn't much to this news really, other than to announce to the world to say, hey Sony stock is down while the overall market is up, good time to buy a few Sony stocks. It seems to have worked.

      The news is an ad for Sony stock.

    • "We lost a lot of money" isn't the same as "we are in hell."

      If you haven't gotten to penis compressors, you haven't even begun to imagine hell. And if you're a woman, we install a penis so it can be compressed. Then we rip your eyelids off.
  • I haven't bought a single Sony product since the CD rootkit story in 2005 broke out ... and specifically because of it. F* you Sony.
  • The money from the new screenings would cover all this, I swear.
  • Maddox called it 20 years ago. Sony's problem has always been it's hated it's customers. Or at the very least, treated them with hostility and a lack of respect. It's such an obvious pattern, we shouldn't be surprised at all by this.
  • Sony is a shit company. They refuse to drop the requirement to link a Playstation account to play Helldivers 2 on PC via Steam. Apparently there are quite a few countries where Sony doesn't allow people to create PSN accounts.

  • Maybe Sony should consider making/selling PlayStations that also double as fully functional VAIO PCs? This way, if someone wants to pay for a variant of the PS5, they know that it will also work for their day to day work... and it would put the PC versus console debate to rest for good. Bonus points if it had some expansion features so one can add 64-128 gigs of RAM, lots of NVMe SSDs, etc.

    This way, if someone is financially pressed and has a choice between a desktop PC versus a console, they can get both

  • Cry me a river Couldn't happen to a nicer company. What once was a respectable hardware company has turned into a media nightmare.

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