Sony's Stringer: Rinse, Repeat - PlayStation Network

Sony Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sir Howard Stringer, has given one of those interviews that aren't quite interviews (ItanQI) to Japan's Nikkei. You can tell it's an ItanQI by answers such as: "Understanding customers will also help us uncover hidden customers. The Wii from Nintendo Co Ltd of Japan is an excellent example." Who actually says, "Nintendo Co Ltd of Japan" in an actual face-to-face interview?

Anyway, in what appears to be an interview, Sir Howard retreads ground walked by CEO of Sony Electronics, Stan Glasgow, back in March 2008. Back then Stan talked about the fact that the PlayStation Network will be "spread (over) over the next year or so to many other products of Sony."

In the recent Nikkei interview, Sir Howard says, "Next we will be expanding the PlayStation Network to hardware other than the PS3, because the number of PS3 units sold puts a limit on the scale of the network possible."

Right, Stan's already told us that. So, when is it going to happen?

The interview also includes lines such as:

"Engineers remain the 'movie stars' of the electronics industry"

and

"The Sony tradition is not to live in the past."

Slightly more importantly, "We developed brand new, absolutely incredible technology for the PlayStation 3 (PS3), but the cost was high. We've adopted a slightly different approach now, and are evolving the PS3 into a platform for Web services."

That means, as far as our business translator is concerned, "Any platform that can view web pages is a platform for web services. So, the only thing being evolved here is a marketing plan. Also, it makes a good point of difference between the PS3 (with web browser) and the Xbox 360 (without)."

<sup>See the full interview here.

Why the image for this story. See here.</sup>