SONY Fans loyalty..

james.miller · 23 May 2006 at 10:59

that's true, not supporting cd's on the n64 could have easily been the undoing for nintendo.

Yas786 · 23 May 2006 at 11:16

VIRII said:
I am a fan of the 360 though. I did not expect to be one but it revitalised gaming for me.

My thoughts exactly, i was never into the whole gaming console thingy tbh..maybe as a young nipper where i had the commodore vic20 and c64 and also the atari 2600 but after those, i never really gaving console gaming a second thought tbh.

NokkonWud · 23 May 2006 at 13:22

FrankJH said:
No I wasnt kidding you , ask anyone who has worked for a production company or broadcaster in the last 20 years and they will tell you that Betamax was used faithfully because of its high quality and reliablilty. I stated at the biginiing it never succeeded as a consumer product, but as something that you see on the news etc every day of the week ( until relatively recently) it was every minute occurance.

So it was a retail failure then?

No I dont actually think you can walk into many Virgin / HMV or such like and buy a VHS, they are getting decidedly rare. IF you look at all of my posts I never said minidisc was as popular as a cd from a selling point of view, there are other professions like journalists or production staff, or for personal recording that ATRAC format and minidisc worked well for until mp3 was in the accendancy - i never once stated it was a success as a pre-recorded format (even though I do have a few Meatloaf and Billy Joal minidiscs originals)

Actually, you can. Go into a HMV or a WHSmith and you will see a huge amount of Video's that you can still pick up, all really quite cheap too.
The idea for minidisc is that it would superceed CD's and it never, as a result, much like betamax, it was a retail failure.

deSade · 23 May 2006 at 13:34

NokkonWud said:
The idea for minidisc is that it would superceed CD's and it never, as a result, much like betamax, it was a retail failure.

I don't think it was ever really meant to supercede CD was it, more that it was supposed to become a home recording standard?

I may be wrong.

Ultra_Extreme · 23 May 2006 at 13:36

SEGA once had 'brand equity' my mum still says "Are you playing SEGA again" despite the fact i've only ever owned a Master System over a decade ago. What happened there then?

Other people use nintendo, however the point is dulled there as they still exist.

Sure people do use 'Playstation' to mean 'Games Console' and im sure they will in the future when/if sonys brand dies a death.

Sony itself however are unlikely to fall, as opposed to the aforementioned IBM they are hugely diversified now, which is how IBM saved itself in the end.

Their brand equity however will fade slowly.

JUMPURS · 23 May 2006 at 13:37

deSade said:
I don't think it was ever really meant to supercede CD was it, more that it was supposed to become a home recording standard?

I may be wrong.

Yeap i think it was designed to supercede the Audio Cassette, but 2 factors ruined it
1. Poor marketing by Sony, everybody assumed it was to replace CD and didnt wanna go buy all their CD's again, whereas it was to do what you wanted to use a tape for, for that purpose it was very very good
2. The MP3's, the internet and Napster took off obscenely quick that nobody could have realised and eventually killed it as people just burned there CD's and went back to CD players.

Ultra companies tend to try shy away from 'Brand Equity' these days, as they lose some of their power as it where. It may be slightly different with games consoles, but things like 'hoovers' and 'Band Aids' etc people just buy any generic one and still call it 'hoovers' so they lose some of their brand as people just reffer to everything as them.
Although as i said it might be a wee bit different in the gaming market, but watching US shows i have notices people tend to reffer to 'you playing xbox' a bit more for a generic gaming thing

Boogle · 23 May 2006 at 15:20

Ultra_Extreme said:
Sony itself however are unlikely to fall, as opposed to the aforementioned IBM they are hugely diversified now, which is how IBM saved itself in the end.

No, but the department can. If it is no longer profitable and puts too much of a drain on the rest of the company, it will be put up for sale. Where a company like... MS (devils advocate heh) could buy it.