Sony is idiotic

I’m constantly amazed at how consumer electronics and music/video distributors are responding to innovation and new technology, respectively. Sony is just the shining example of stupid, stupid business models, because they keep acting like this.

Quake II (free by license, now) has been ported to the PSP. But Sony will quite likely release new software with new “real” games to re-lock the device. This will discourage people from buying new games.

But the basic, underlying point of all this is that the business model for ages with these companies has been “make it difficult for the consumer to do otherwise, and they will buy proprietary things that work together.”

The problem is that in this new world of computers and internet, that formula turns very quickly into “make the consumer hate us, and they will use the internet to steal things.” In short, proprietary shit in media and electronics should be on its way out.

Case in point: I own a spankin’ new video iPod. This is because I can convert videos to play on my iPod, I can easily convert music to play on my iPod, and there’s a small selection of games that work on it as well. This is all without much trouble, and the music is really the main point anyway.

If Sony had made the PSP into something that let me play music, movie files, browse the internet, and play games without having to worry about strange proprietary media devices, software locks, and general anal retentiveness, I would have bought one of those, instead.

The bottom line is that these companies need to spend less time trying to lock consumers into their brand and more time making their brand worth buying. We’ll pay for the good stuff. We’ve just gotten smart enough to know when we’re not getting it.