I wish I worked in a marketing department for major electronics manufacturers, more specifically Sony as I am sure my ideas would net them huge profits. I just read an article in regards to their UMD business. In case you do not know, UMD disks are the mini DVD's used to store movies and play games on the PSP gaming device. It wa a disastrous failure for a couple of reasons. The biggest culprit was the 10-15$ price premium over regular DVD offerings which had all the extra content that is just not possible to put on a UMD. So in essence, it was a mini DVD minus all the bonus features for a higher price of a standard edition DVD with all the extras. And the UMD was only playable on PSP's. Were I in charge of marketing and development for that platform firstly, to increase the appeal of UMD as a potential buying option, I would make it so it played on standard DVD players also. Now, in an effort to make sure the PSP was the focal platform of playing the UMD's and not just buying a UMD and playing it on a DVD player instead of the device, I would make it so UMD's could only be played on Sony branded DVD players. To further the appeal of the UMD as the potential equal of DVD's, I would have instituted from the beginning, something just recently made capable on the UMD, the ability to hook the UMD player to a television and play content on the PSP on a TV. UMD support has been ended from all major motion picture studios with the exception of Sony of course and now they are retooling the UMD for a second potential revival of the format. Will any of the studios jump onboard again or will the UMD movie remain a niche? I say niche.

How an electronics leader such as Sony can have fallen from grace over the years is beyond me. Lemme rephrase it, it is simply a failure on their part to forsee the future and capitalize on emerging trends. CD player murdered by the MP3 player. More specifically, murdered by the Ipod. The CD player is not dead just yet but as more and more automakers and automobile aftermarket parts maker begin to shift away from in dash multidisk changers in favor of MP3 player docks, again more specifically Ipod docks and other MP3 player variants, you will see the eventual demise of the CD player as a primary or even secondary media player. Instead it will fall to the wayside as a media delivery tool until something much better than the optical drive emerges. And no, solid state memory will not be that mdia delivery tool for those wondering. If I were the electronics giant Sony, with all my divisions and businesses and seemingly bottomless money purse, I would begin making convergence devices that combine its combined strengths. More to the point I would combine the Walkman/Diskman brand, Playstation brand,Bravia brand and Erricson brand. It would seem as if it would be a nobrainer to combine the awesomeness of the Bravia television brand with a built in Playstation 3. The Bravia branded televisions are some of the best performing and looking flat panel televisions out there and combining them with the solution of a build in, full featured (think first generation hardware PS3 with full backward compatibility) PS3 (BD drive included) and my friends you have a legitimate reason for people to seriously go buy a large expensive television, expensive Blue Ray movies and expensive Blue Ray PS3 titles. Am I the only person to see the logic in a move like this? Flat panel television prices steadlily come down and yet, even thought the tv's are still expensive, people are still going out and buying them. When they get to the point where they are no more expensive than standard definition CRT's, what harm could adding more value to them by releasing a much more featured set that costs what current flat tv's cost. I own nothing Sony and never have but I would buy a Bravia PS3 version TV as it would save me the need to buy more devices to clutter up my entertainemnt area. Now lets talk portable devices. The easiest way to spur sales of these devices is to combine features/ The Erricson line of phones is solid and pretty good when it comes to quality. But when compared to its competitors it pales in comparison in terms of features, design and functionality. Instead of just making redesigned and more powerful phones which cannot hope to stand up to the behemoths such as LG, Nokia, Motorola, etc., why not seriously merge two of their best know brans into one and advertise the hell out of them; I am of course talking about merging the Erricson and Diskman. The Erricson Diskman or whatever sony calls their MP3 players would be an instant threat to any music phone. If you take it one step further and include the very small success that is the PSP and incorporate it into the design you have a superthreat to all portable devices. People have shown that they are not to concerned with the size of their media devices so long as you pack tons of features into the smallest form factor you can. The N-Gage failed primarily because it tried to do something it was il-equiped to do, namely portable gaming. Their is no future/profit to be had in cell phone games when there are much better alternatives such as the DS for gaming and a cell phone such as the Iphone for music and phone. Imagine if the Iphone had screens on both sides and opened up like a DS and played DS games? You could take the previous size of a DS, which was not at all to large, smooth it out, add phone capabilities and media playback (lets not forget capacity for storing the music/movies) and you have a device that is what everybody wants. I see the demise of their position as a world leader in electronics without clear vision.

Lots of people would have you believe that gaming in Japan is not relavent in the grand scheme of things since more games are sold in the US. For the past year I have been following closely the developments of several games and the state of game hardware sales and have come to the following conclusion. It should be noted that I have had the opportunity to live in Japan for the past year. My conclusion is as follows: If a game does well in Japan, it probably will do well in all other territories. A systems spec sheet does not make a system a best seller, innovation and fun do. Any kind of game, with the right amount of development time and care, can work on any system, don't beleive me, look at all the top selling titles on each system and while there are games that sell huge initially, their sales fall off dramatically after the first month or two while conversely, games just as great on systems that supposedly do not matter in the grand scheme of huge hardware specs sell very very well over time and eventually sell more units than titles with bigger marketing push (looking at Halo vs. lots of other franchises). My conclusion is simply this, games that are fun and innovative sell systems, and such innovation can often be found integral with some systems more so than others.