Science and technology news blog

In what could be considered as a massive blow to the momentum that Blu-ray was generating, both Paramount and Dreamworks have announced exclusive support for HD-DVD. In the following press release from Viacom, both Paramount and Dreamworks have officially announced that they will be releasing their high-def content on HD-DVD only:

Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B) and DreamWorks Animation SKG (NYSE: DWA), each announced today that they will exclusively support the next-generation HD DVD format on a worldwide basis. The exclusive HD DVD commitment will include all movies distributed by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies and MTV Films, as well as movies from DreamWorks Animation, which are distributed exclusively by Paramount Home Entertainment.

This is definitely a major shock to the Blu-ray camp as until now, Paramount and DreamWorks were supporting both the formats.

Sony has officially made the following couple of announcements:

• The 60GB model will now be priced at $499


• There will be a new 80GB model for $599

These are quite to the contrary to what Sony President Ryoji Chubachi told Reuters in an interview that Sony had no plans at present to cut the price of the console. These announcements, however, are for the North American public only. Sony has no plans at present to announce price cuts anywhere else. Which is a surprise, as consumers in Australia already pay a lot more after factoring in currency conversion.

Well Microsoft will not be idling away, they would be announcing some kind of price cuts pretty soon.

No matter how hard Sony tries to explain the recent layoffs, it is quite clear that the real reason is due to the below average sales of its PS3 gaming system. With about a 100 people losing jobs in the US in its PS3 division, it is now official that the PS3 has been one of Sony’s biggest flops in recent times.

Sony’s explanation for the recent round of layoffs is that they are restructuring taking place in the company. With about $1.9 billion operating loss last year, this is a move that was anticipated as the PS3 contributed a big margin towards the loss. Unlike Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or Nintendo’s Wii, the PS3 has seen slow sales on top of which Sony actually makes a loss on each PS3 unit it sells.

A lot of feedback for Sony is to reduce the price of the PS3 to compete more evenly with the Xbox 360. With more units in people’s homes, Sony can then make a profit on games and media sales through its online service which it provides for free. Sony also needs to accept that they made a major mistake by packing the PS3 with technology so advanced that the general public just isn’t ready for, yet.

Sony will not be able to match the success of PlayStation 2 with its new gaming console, the PlayStation 3, according to outgoing Electronic Arts CEO Larry Probst. He feels that Sony’s days of dominance of the console market may very well be over.

Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s’ Wii games consoles have made rapid strides even as Sony is struggling to deal with production issues that have beset the PlayStation 3. The console was also released one year after the Xbox 360 and appears to have let go of its advantage.

“We expect that there will be a more level playing field this time around than last time,” said Probst. His comments were delivered at an investor conference by Morgan Stanley. Probst added that the main issue with the PS 3 was its cost.

Last year Sony had announced that a high-end model of the console would cost $600 as compared to the $400 price tag on Xbox 360. Nintendo’s Wii is the cheapest of the lot. Probst said that Wii was off to a great start, but it would not be wise to write off Sony.

“No one should count Sony out at this point in the game. This is going to be a long race,” Probst added.

Sony has sold over 115 million PS2 consoles, but is finding it tough to get the PS 3 onto the markets. The latter is set for a European release on March 23.

Sony, struggling to deal with fierce competition from Nintendo and Microsoft, has announced a customizable, networked community service for the console, in which users will be able to navigate in 3D while being represented by avatars.

It is the first practical step of a new gaming concept Sony calls Game 3.0, together with LittleBigPlanet, a community-based game where users play, create and share what they build.

Sony’s ‘Home’ for PS3 users appears to be a mix of SecondLife and Nintendo’s Mii. However, the avatars don’t look like cartoon figures. They are very customizable and designed to look like real life humans. Fortunately, you get some free clothes when you start out, so your avatar doesn’t have to run around naked. If you want to be more chic, just buy a few clothes online.

Players can communicate via voice, text chat (supported by a USB keyboard or a virtual keyboard) and through canned speech and gesture. The environment looks like a luxury resort.

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Sony Ericsson brings in the new W200 Walkman phone – and SE calls it the Walkman phone for everyone. With enough memory to store about four albums, the phone comes bundled with Disc2Phone music management software.

The Sony W200 is equipped with an FM radio receiver for additional entertainment, which lets you store 20 stations of your choice. A dedicated Walkman key is available on the device. By default, you get a 128MB Memory Stick Micro (M2), which is upgradeable to 1GB.

Thrown in along with the Sony W200 is Sony Ericsson’s HPM-64 stereo headphone featuring Bass Reflex. There’s also a speakerphone for such mundane duties as alarm clock. A disappointing VGA camera apart, it comes with a decent web browser and supports video messaging, push email and PC sync.

The phone supports Java MIDP 2.0, which is good news for mobile gamers. Now if only they upped the 65k color screen to something nicer…

Expect the Sony Ericsson W200 in Q2 2007 in two flavors: a GPRS 900/1800/ 1900MHz compatible model and a GPRS 850/1800/1900MHz compatible model. SE will be offering it in two colors: Rhythm Black and Pulse White.

No word on the pricing yet. Feature list in the extended entry.

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Supporters of the two rival next-generation disc formats are slugging it out this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, with HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc predicting victory in the quest for a unified high-definition standard.

HD DVD is banking its prediction of success in large part on the arrival this year of low-priced players from China and other Asian countries. The Blu-ray camp, meanwhile, believes the PlayStation 3 rollout, together with overwhelming studio and consumer electronics support, will boost software sales to such a degree that HD DVD will have no choice but to throw in the towel.

“Game over,” quipped Buena Vista Worldwide Home Entertainment president Bob Chapek, a leading Blu-ray supporter.

Both camps held lavish news events at CES. At the HD DVD event Sunday, the North American HD DVD Promotional Group said that as of Friday, more than 175,000 HD DVD players had been sold in North America. That figure includes computers with HD DVD drives as well as Xbox 360 game consoles with the HD DVD add-on.

Toshiba, which so far is the only consumer electronics manufacturer to produce dedicated set-top HD DVD players, said it will ship this spring a new 1080p unit, the $599 HD-A20, that will offer consumers the highest resolution possible. Toshiba also said it has developed a triple-layer 51GB disc that can hold up to seven hours of high-definition content. The new disc is seen as a reaction to Blu-ray’s dual-layer 50GB disc.

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Sony’s video game unit named the head of its U.S. operations as president Thursday, replacing the so-called “father of the PlayStation,” Ken Kutaragi, just as the company is rolling out its newest version of the PlayStation 3.

The appointment of Kazuo Hirai to the global management team comes at a crucial time for Sony Corp., which sorely needs a big hit in its PlayStation 3 to repair its battered reputation and books.

Kutaragi will stay on as chief executive and also become chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment, and the company said he will continue to play a key role in the video game business.

The addition of Hirai, president and chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, also reflects Sony’s efforts to make its top ranks more international.

Sony announced Thursday that it was appointing an American, Jack Tretton, head of its U.S. gaming business to replace Hirai. He’s the first non-Japanese to assume that post.

Tretton, executive vice president at Sony’s U.S. gaming unit, helped oversee the launches of the PlayStation series in North America.

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Toshiba is confident that it will beat Sony to market with consumer electronics devices packing the powerful Cell microprocessor, the head of its consumer electronics business said Thursday.

The Cell chip was developed with a budget of several billion dollars by Toshiba, Sony and IBM for a variety of applications. Much of the initial focus has been on its place in the PlayStation 3 games console. But both Toshiba and Sony have been harboring plans to deploy the powerful chip in a wider range of products. Its power makes it well suited to handle high-definition digital video and possible uses could be in televisions and video recorders. (more…)

Sony launched its own somewhat convoluted download-to-own gaming service on Tuesday, forcing PSP owners who want to play PlayStation games on their PSP handheld console to use the recently-released PS3.

The PSP console will emulate the old PSP hardware, Sony said. The five titles released will cost $5.99 apiece: Cool Boarders, Crash Bandicoot, Hot Shots Golf 2, Syphon Filter, and Tekken 2.

Additional first and third-party PlayStation titles will be added on an ongoing basis to the PlayStation Store to keep, with a second batch of PlayStation titles slated for release later this month, Sony said.

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About 10 years ago, I was in the market for a video games console for my older son and visited an electronics retailer. I had no idea whether to buy a PlayStation or Nintendo 64 as both were very much in the public eye and getting rave reviews. Not knowing where else to turn, I threw myself at the mercy of the shop assistant. What he told me appears to be very much same as what shoppers are being told today.

The young shop assistant obviously knew about games and he didn’t beat around the bush. “Your son is only a young kid, so get him a Nintendo 64. He won’t appreciate a PlayStation yet and he’ll find it too difficult until he gets older,” he said – or words to that effect.

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Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson and Japan’s electronics giant Sony will expand their cooperation beyond cell phones to mobile and broadband TV, an Ericsson official said on Thursday.

Per Nordlof, Ericsson’s director of product strategy and portfolio management, said the companies will together develop software to link their products through wireless networks.

“There is a strong confidence between Ericsson and Sony after the success of the handset business and we will work to develop software that connects the gadgets in the homes with the outer world,” he told journalists at a news conference.

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Grouper.com, the online video-sharing company owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, has denied charges in a Universal Music Group lawsuit that accuses the company of allowing users to swap pirated music videos.

In a filing with the U.S District Court in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Grouper denied the copyright-infringement allegations and said Universal was using the lawsuit to boost a rival video-sharing site in which it has a stake.

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Sony is gearing up to introduce in December what some are already hailing as the world’s lightest notebook PC.According to news reports, the Type G Vaio laptop will feature a 12.1-inch display and be considerably lighter, at 1.9 pounds, than its laptop competitors, which typically weigh between four and eight pounds.

The laptop will sell initially in Japan, with a basic model starting at about $1,880.

As of yet, Sony has not announced plans to sell the laptop in any other country. The company expects that the Type G Vaio will be most popular among business customers.

Pacific Difference

Sony’s focus on Japan as the primary market for the ultralight laptop is indicative of the difference between technology that is popular in the U.S. versus what sells in Japan.

In the U.S., consumers tend to favor low-cost machines even if they are slightly heavier than other models, noted Douglas Krone, chief executive of Dynamism.com, a company that sells imported technology. Those in the U.S. are driven by business needs, he said, and tight budgets tend to favor inexpensive, but more weighty, laptops.

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Already reeling from a string of laptop battery recalls, Sony Corp. saw its shares drop nearly 3 percent Tuesday amid fresh worries about the upcoming release of its much-anticipated PlayStation 3 video game console.

Sony has already twice delayed the product’s launch amid intensifying competition from rivals Microsoft and Nintendo.

The PlayStation 3 will hit stores in Japan on Nov. 11 and in the United States on Nov. 17. In Europe, they won’t go on sale until March, four months later than planned.

Investors worried about the product after Macquarie Equities analyst David Gibson wrote in a report that PlayStation 3 units on display at the Tokyo Game Show about 10 days ago operated erratically and had to be repeatedly reset.

“While the reason for this is unknown, we suspect it may be due to overheating as a result of enclosing the units and the high temperatures at the venue,” Gibson wrote in the report Monday. “We are concerned that such a problem has occurred so close to full production and is clearly negative news for the company.”

Earlier in the day, investment firm Goldman Sachs Group Inc. lowered Sony’s stock rating to “neutral” from “buy,” citing confusion over the release of PlayStation 3 and concerns that disappointing sales of PlayStation Portable may weigh on its earnings in electronics operations more heavily than expected.

Sony denied that there was any technical problem with the PlayStation 3.

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