Comments on: TPR News: Sunday, October 29, 2006 - Sony, Keidanren, the Senkakus and teenage suicide

by: DeOrio

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 07:42:57 +0000

Never fear, John, not only will there be Elmos, the new ones apparently fall down, roll over, and slap the floor when you tickle them. (OK, I walked into that. Let the innuendo fly.)

by: John Sheridan

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 04:24:39 +0000

Are you trying to tell me that there won’t be any Elmos at Christmas?

by: ken

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 17:31:03 +0000

Good points, but you’re missing Microsoft’s problems with moving the XBox 360 in Japan. The thing is, Japanese gamers will wait for the PS3 because it will have games they want. XBox has never had very many games that Japanese people want to play, and often don’t have decent Japanese-language manuals. They try to push games like Madden in Japan, which is sort of like making a soccer game your bread and butter in the US.

Sony is having similar problems with shipments in Japan, though. They’re even giving out vouchers for PS3s (scroll down for the article).

At the same time, they want to take market share away from Apple’s iPod, while being further distracted by the Blu-Ray and exploding batteries. Sony is no longer the company that every Japanese kid majoring in engineering from 1975-2000 wanted to work at. That hurts as well.

As everyone knows (ask Cabbage Patch and Elmo), a shortage of units (and publicizing that it’s going to happen) at US holiday time is only good in the long run. Classic marketing strategy…even if it might not be on purpose.

by: Tom - NYC

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 17:21:05 +0000

In the same week that Sony announced a dramatic plunge in quarterly earnings, Microsoft announced that its Q1 earnings were up 11%. Obviously, current earnings of Microsoft and Sony are driven predominantly by factors other than the Playstation vs. XBox console war. However, as the next round of the console war is upon us with PS3 vs. XBox360, the earnings announcements set an interesting context to the battle. Sony recently announced that significantly less PS3s will be available for launch in the US than origially anticipated, only around 400,000 units of the system will be available for launch on Nov 17th. Due to this launch shortage, Japan will only see 100,000 units on November 11th. Shipments will be broken up between $499 and $599 units. Meanwhile, not only is Microsoft ahead with over 6 million units already sold worldwide, it will certainly pick up marketshare with a significantly lower price point when PS3s are impossible to find this holiday season because of the low launch numbers. Meanwhile, Microsoft is gearing up for new launches in January ‘07 of it’s most popular (and among it’s most profitable) products, it’s new OS and new version of Office.
Sony seems to have it’s back against the wall a bit, and it seems to have so much riding on the success of the Blu-ray optical disk format (problems with the Blu-ray optical disk drive just so happen to be the reason behind the slowed PS3 production schedule). Microsoft seems to be the one showing the good old fasioned kaizen right now in this long term console war, even if PS3 proves to be superior to XBox360 in this round of battle.

by: Ken

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 15:53:19 +0000

Ah…Borat! Saw some clips of you on YouTube.

I guess we’re still waiting on the answer to Schieffer’s question, and I’m guessing that he’s still wating as well, and that he’ll get a response something along the lines of, “We don’t understand the question.”

by: borat92strnhn

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 15:11:57 +0000

I dig it fellas, but what’s with all the business? More politics! And what’s the answer to Schieffer’s question?