production of its PSX due to lagging sales. The PSX is a hybrid
PlayStation 2 and personal video and DVD recorder with broadband
capabilities. Released in December 2003 in Japan, the PSX sold 40,000
units on the day of its launch and continued to sell in the five digits
up until the end of the month. However, its sales began to decline at
the beginning of 2004.
"We have a structure where we run our production lines according to the
movement of demands [in the market]," a Sony spokesperson told the
magazine. "We are currently deciding on the timing of when to restart
production, with consideration given to adjustments in our inventory."
E-mails and calls to American Sony representatives went unreturned.
While Sony anticipated the machine to be a success, the PSX was dogged
by misfortune. Last holiday season, controversy erupted after consumers
learned that the machine would ship without many of its originally
announced capabilities, such as PlayStation broadband support and MP3
playback. Sony has since released two firmware patches for the PSX--one
in February and one this month--that add to the machine the omitted
capabilities.
"A lot of things have been said about the failure of the PSX inside the
company, but it was probably due to the unrealistic way that its
development was conducted," says an unnamed source close to Sony. "The
development [of the PSX] was being handled by the games division and the
next-generation Blu-ray Disc development division. The [PSX's] controls
were being developed by the games division, while the Blu-ray Disc
division was doing the AV parts. But the divisions couldn't work too
well together. As a result, the capabilities of the PSX became
incoherent, and it ended up as a machine that's neither a game console
nor a DVD recorder."
The Weekly Gendai article marks the second time that the relationship
between Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony's Blu-ray Disc division has
been mentioned. An article last month in the magazine Asahi PC addressed
the possibility that Sony’s next-generation game console may use Blu-ray
Discs (BD-ROM) as its media. "
Hmm. I thought that dropping those features and requiring a 'patch'
wouldn't work.
I think it will be a terrible day when HARDWARE manufacturers push
products out to market and consumers need to 'patch' the firmware in
order to get them working as expected ;-)
-Gel
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