Science and technology news blog

Never try to introduce the same product twice. That was the lesson from the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May. A year earlier, at E3 2005 in Los Angeles, Sony had wowed the videogame industry with demonstrations of the upcoming PlayStation 3’s unprecedented graphical muscle. The machine wouldn’t be available until months after Microsoft’s next-gen console, the Xbox 360. Yet based on the spectacular preview, many gamers had no problem waiting for the PS3. Then, early this year, Sony dropped a bombshell: The PS3 release would be pushed back until November. So when E3 came around again this spring, everyone trooped out to the retro Hollywood lotusland of the Sony Pictures lot – only to view the same console they’d been promised the year before. Not great.

Delays are nothing new in tech, but Sony seemed intent on making the worst of it. The crowd was kept waiting nearly an hour. Then Kaz Hirai, who heads PlayStation in North America, took the stage to declare, “The next generation doesn’t start until we say it does!” He meant it as a dig at Microsoft, but to gamers who’d been salivating for a year, his words were like a bitch slap. The demos that followed were no more impressive than those the year before. Finally, PlayStation chief Ken Kutaragi came forward to make the one announcement everyone wanted to hear: the price. $600 for the high-end model? The room gasped, then fell silent. Almost immediately, the blogosphere lit up with denunciations: Sony has turned its back on gamers. The PS3 will be a failure. Kutaragi and Hirai are idiots.

PR fiascoes tend to be a sign that nobody’s thinking about the customer. E3 was Sony’s second in seven months. Last October, a security researcher reported on his blog that CDs from Sony BMG - the music label half-owned by Sony – contained antipiracy software that covertly embedded itself in computer operating systems, spying on their owners and leaving the machines themselves vulnerable to identity theft and zombie takeover attempts. Sony BMG pooh-poohed the problem and released a software fix that made it even worse. Millions of CDs had to be recalled. As class actions multiplied and even the Department of Homeland Security warned music labels against undermining computer security, angry consumers declared themselves ready to boycott anything with the Sony name on it.

Sixty years after its founding in the ashes of postwar Tokyo, the company that gave us the transistor radio and the Walkman portable music player is deeply wounded. Only once in the past five years has Sony’s all-important electronics division posted a profit; during that same period, the company’s share price has fallen by nearly half. Its hit products of the ‘90s – Handycams, WEGA TVs, VAIO computers – were succeeded by stillborn wonders like the AirBoard, a $1,000 videoscreen that could be carried around like a laptop, and the Net MD Walkman, a too-little-too-late attempt to challenge Apple’s iPod. Neither this latter-day Walkman nor Sony Connect, the online music store The New York Times once called “Sony Disconnect,” would have anything to do with MP3 files – only Sony’s cumbersome and proprietary Atrac3 format would do. Now, having ceded to Apple the portable-music-player market, Sony desperately needs to stay on top in videogames. It’s not just that Sony needs a win; PS3 is critical to its entire strategy.

In the battle for the dominance in the digital music industry Sony and Yahoo have made a daring step: they are now offering more expensive tracks, but with no DRM.

The first MP3 that can be downloaded from Yahoo Music is Jessica Simpson’s A Public Affair. The implication of being DRM-free is that the tune can be played on any MP3 player, no matter the brand (iPod from Apple, Zen from Creative, Sansa from SanDisk, etc.). Other famous sites that allow music downloads only offer tunes with DRM, which makes them incompatible with some MP3 players (it is the case for Apples iTunes, Napster or Rhapsody).

DRM (digital right management) forbids users to make more copies of the downloaded tunes than those specified in the DRM and does not allow customers to share them (in some cases).

Although up until now record companies and record labels have refused to enter the DRM-free market, consumer advocates think that this is the beginning of a trend.

“It’s about time,” says Fred von Lohmann, a senior attorney with the public interest group Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This is an important signal that the labels may be finally realizing that DRM is hindering the size of the market.” (more…)

Sony has withdrawn the PlayStation Portable advertising campaign at the centre of a racism row.

The image in question, which shows a white woman gripping a black woman by the jaw, was created as part of an advertising campaign to promote the new “ceramic white” PSP model in Holland.

However the ad quickly caught the attention of those outside the Benelux region for which it was intended – attracting the ire of California Assemblyman Leland Yee, who called it “insensitive at best and racist at worst”, and the NAACP, whose president Rick Callender who said the ad “sparked painful feelings in the global community”.

This week Sony relented under pressure and said it had withdrawn the campaign – although it maintains the position, as expressed in a statement last week, that the ads had “no other message or purpose” beyond their remit of promoting the ceramic white PSP.

“Whilst the images used in the campaign were intended solely to highlight the contrast between the different colours available for the PSP, we recognise that the subject matter of one specific image may have caused concern in some countries not directly affected by the advertising. As a result, we have now withdrawn the campaign,” Sony said in a statement this week.

“We further recognise that people have a wide variety of perceptions about such imagery and we wish to apologise to those who perceived the advert differently to that intended. In future, we will apply greater sensitivity in our selection of campaign imagery, and will take due account of the increasingly global reach of such local adverts, and their potential impact in other countries.”

Sony’s actions drew praise from Leland Yee, who said “Sony did the right thing”, while Callender said he hoped the company would “employ a better litmus test to their ad campaigns to determine if they will be sour to the taste of worldwide consumers”.

Sony has announced that the release date of the first Blu-ray movies has been pushed further by a month.

As requested by Blu-ray hardware manufacturers, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has decided to postpone the launch of Blu-ray content to coincide with Blu-ray player launches from late May to late June.

Now, it will not be available on May 23 as originally declared, but will be shipping a month later, on June 20.

In a statement, Benjamin Feingold, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, said that the majority of their retail base and hard-ware partners have requested that they reconsider the May 23 date to better coincide with the first commercially available Blu-ray compa-tible hardware.

Meanwhile, the June date also coincides with the release of the first Blu-ray player, which Samsung expects to be in the shops on June 25.

Feingold further said that the first eight Blu-ray disc titles from Sony wouldn’t ship until then in an effort to ensure a more coordinated launch.

The news of the latest delay further widens the gap between the already released HD-DVD format and the Blu-ray format, the two of which have been in a neck-n-neck race to win over consumers in the ongoing Gen-Next format war.

Sony movies due on Blu-ray on June 20 include The Fifth Element, The Last Waltz, Hitch, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, House of Flying Daggers, A Knight’s Tale, 50 First Dates, Underworld Evolution, and XXX: State of the Union.

Blame it on cost-cutting and organizational restructuring but Sony, which dreamed up the Walkman, VCR and Camcorder now has given up its dreams of robocompanions. Despite selling over 150,000 Aibos (robotic dogs) since 1999, Sony has had to do away with the Aibo line as a result of its need to focus on profitability and strategic growth.

The $2,000 pet Aibo that was in its third generation had become more of a technological marvel than a consumer necessity. Debuting as an early application of Sony proprietary technologies, Aibo gradually added enough sophistication to speak 1,000 words, respond to commands or action, blog with pictures snapped by their behind-the-eye cameras, besides play music. One Aibo fan even published these pictures online to reveal shots largely of ankles and table legs given the short stature of the robot. (more…)

Embattled music label Sony BMG Music Entertainment has agreed to settle consumer complaints about its controversial attempt to copy-protect CDs.

Under terms of a settlement consolidating several lawsuits, Sony will give consumers who purchased an estimated 10 million CDs a combination of cash, replacement music and free downloads.

The CDs from artists including Alicia Keys, Santana, Neil Diamond and Bette Midler used software from companies First 4 Internet and SunnComm that limited the number of times a CD could be copied on a PC. The software also made the PCs susceptible to viruses and spyware programs.

In November, Sony recalled CDs using First 4 Internet’s XCP copy-protection software, offering consumers replacements. The label had said it wouldn’t recall SunnComm’s MediaMax CDs, but now says it will stop making them.

Widespread problems with the CDs spawned several lawsuits against the label, including one by privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. The settlement, which must be approved by a New York court, consolidates most of them. A handful are still outstanding, including a lawsuit by Texas’ attorney general. (more…)

The offers are part of a proposed settlement of lawsuits against Sony BMG over the use of software aimed at thwarting illegal copying of CDs.

The programs used left consumers open to attack from viruses that hijacked the music maker’s software.

The proposed deal also forces Sony to stop using the controversial software.

Legal trouble

The row about the software Sony BMG used to try to stop illegal copying of its CDs blew up in October when programmer Mark Russinovich noticed his PC had been infected by a type of malicious program known as a “rootkit”. (more…)

Microsoft Corp. will get the jump on Sony this Saturday by introducing the next-generation Xbox 360 in its rival’s backyard, but winning over Japan’s notoriously finicky video game fans will be an uphill battle for the American interloper.

Microsoft is still smarting from the failure of its original Xbox in Japan, the world’s second-biggest video game market after the United States and a realm long dominated by Sony Corp.’s PlayStation. This time it’s determined to break into the stronghold.

Part of its strategy is beating Sony to stores. While the Japanese electronics giant is working on a new PlayStation 3, it won’t go on sale until next year. Microsoft hopes the Xbox 360’s earlier release will convert hard-core gamers who can’t wait that long.

Xbox 360 debuted last month in the United States to winding lines of wide-eyed fans, store-aisle brawls to snag machines and top billing on Christmas wish lists. The Japan launch begins with a countdown party at 6:45 a.m. Saturday in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya district. (more…)

Xbox 360 rocks. Microsoft’s newly minted, next-generation game console is packed with a fire-breathing processor, an outlandish graphics processing unit, and high-definition TV outputs for blasting pixels onto huge HDTV screens. It even looks sweet, with a curvaceous, Apple-esque design that both soothes and entices. There can be no doubt: This month Xbox 360 will incite store riots and lure grown men into acts of depravity, just to have one by the end of 2005.

Or will it? Sony’s PlayStation 3 may rock even more—once it comes out next year. It’s got the processor, graphics, HDTV support, and Zen-inspired chassis design. All that, and it’s going to come equipped with a high-definition-capable Blu-ray optical drive that will let the console read super-dense discs packing more than 25GB of data (no, that is not a misprint). If you want a next-generation console, it sure as heck ought to handle next-generation media—and PlayStation 3 does just that.

So what’s a gamer (or the parent of a gamer) to do? With the holidays looming large, folks have a decision to make. Do they snap up an Xbox now and wrap it in colorful paper, despite the fact that it historically has been the less-popular game console? Or do they give the gift of sweaters this season and wait several months to see what the reigning champ of game boxes has to offer? (more…)

“The release date is critical because it gives Microsoft a six-month head start over the projected launches of Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution,” said Yankee Group analyst Michael Goodman, who pointed out that some 50 to 60 percent of all gaming consoles are sold during the holiday season.

Gamers got their fix today with the official launch of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 , made available at some 4,500 retailers throughout the U.S. just after midnight. Long lines were the norm as the first major new game console to emerge in years made its debut.

The Xbox 360 is aimed primarily at hardcore gamers, but the software giant is touting the platform as a multipurpose home-entertainment device that plays CDs, DVDs, MP3s, and digital content from all kinds of devices, including portable-music players and digital cameras as well as Windows XP PCs. (more…)

The XCP technology came under fire after security experts unmasked the anti-piracy technology as a major security risk. After weeks of pressure Sony said last Friday that it would stop shipping CDs with the technology and would take back any CDs that consumers had purchased.

The technology used by Sony BMG to prevent piracy of audio CDs is allegedly based on stolen code, according to Sebastian Porst and Matti Nikki, two individuals from Germany and Finland who looked into the application.

First 4 Internet, the English developer of the controversial XCP anti-piracy technology deployed on some of Sony’s audio CDs, is believed to have included software that is governed by the General Public License (GPL).

Under terms of that license, First 4 Internet is obliged to release the software that uses the GPL code. It did not do so.

“Sony is infringing on open source programmers’ copyrights by distributing code which they have no right to use. Even though the code in question was developed by [First 4 Internet], Sony has still been distributing it,” Nikki wrote on a Web page where he explained the license violations. (more…)