Epic Default Productions

What three things will make a major company fail? Fanboys have debated this question for years, and I intend, once and for all, to give a bit of logic to this argument. This little jaunt into the great fanboy wars is to be taken with a grain of salt, and remember, my opinions are exactly that, mine. You don’t have to agree with them, and that’s okay—they call it freedom.

This is where I’ll show you how to collapse your favorite/least favorite (please circle one) electronics company, in three easy steps!

First up: Sony.

Right now, Sony is at the bottom of the pile in terms of console sales and it’s easy to pick on the guy at the bottom.

1. Stupidity
Not enough people will tolerate stupidity for a long time to keep yourself profitable. Eventually people will get fed up with you and not give two hoots about your product. Take for instance, the PS3. Over-priced, over-hyped, piece of junk. Okay, maybe the last part is a bit of a stretch, but the first two are spot on. In less than one year after launch, Sony dropped the price of the PS3 to increase sales. This is after numerous PR guys saying that the system was under-priced for what it was. Well, apparently, no, it wasn’t. This made a lot of early adopters rather upset for spending all of that money on the same thing someone else got for $100 less. The system was also supposed to have many extra features, like dual video support and a LAN switch. What happened after E3 to those features that were announced? Jack Tretton couldn’t remember ever making those claims (he did) when asked about them in an EGM interview. This is the same interview that spawned the famous Penny Arcade comic. If you continue to lie and cheat to your customers, they will turn on you, and really, that tends to be bad for business.

2. Fear
Fear of new technology has only caused problems. The RIAA (a major player for Sony) sued Diamond because they created an MP3 player. If the RIAA had won, well, we wouldn’t have the iPod, now would we? The question you have to ask is, why would a tech company like Sony support the RIAA’s decision to follow with the lawsuit?

Answer: fear of the future. Sony had more money in the BMG name than in electronics and would suffer heavy losses without it. Since everyone knows that the creation of MP3 players has caused the music industry to completely collapse on itself, ruining the lives of millions of people, Sony’s choice was well made there. Oh, wait… because Sony didn’t want this technology on the shelves and everyone’s pockets, they lost a huge market share to Apple, who has embraced the technology wholeheartedly. What about the fear of sharing music? Who can forget the Trojan that Sony put on peoples’ computers and then “fixed” by making them even more vulnerable? Continuing to fear the future of technology will eventually collapse the entire electronics side of Sony. Since they are a fairly proud company, they will try and prop it up with money from other sources, and eventually they will have to give up, or fail completely.

3. Greed
Again, this goes back to the price thing. When you think expensive electronics, what brand do you think of? It is perfectly fine to be an “upper” brand. People will always be willing to pay more for the brand—just look at the Starbucks towering over your local coffee shop. But where does that greed end? Sony is getting greedy and it is starting to show. They assume that, since at a time they made the best of the best, they always will, and are starting to make inferior or useless products. For instance, where is the dual shock on the first generation PS3 controller? Missing due to a ridiculous lawsuit against Sony and because Sony didn’t want to pay a few extra cents. While this is more of an annoyance, progression toward this greedy attitude only leads to people being unwilling or unable to afford your products.

Sony’s attitude towards the consumer could bring about their absolute downfall. Sure, Sony could be brought down by other things: a major accounting scandal, making a PS3 “stab you in the chest” edition, or Armageddon. And they may not fail at all, even if they become greedier, more fearful, and even more stupid. But you can’t deny that these things will have a significant impact on Sony’s bottom line if they don’t pull their heads out of their proverbial rear-ends.