In this report I intend to outline
the history of Sony as a company, the history of the development of Sony
consoles and my experiences of the Move.me software. Detailing the
history of the company and its products, both gaming and otherwise, has enabled
me to understand Sony as a company and what it would aim to get from releasing
software like Move.me.
"Originally
called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Company),
Sony’s roots go back over half a century to 1946 when it was founded by Masaru
Ibuka and Akio Morita." (http://sony.co.uk/article/id/1060176719725)
The first invention from the Tokyo Tsushin
Kogyo (TTK) company was the electric rice cooker which is still widely used
today. After finding success in Japan the company knew they would need to
expand and begin trading globally. The name TTK was already used so the company
changed their name to Sony in order to appeal more to a worldwide market. Sony
comes from the Latin word Sonus meaning sound and is also said to derive from
the American phrase 'Sonny boy'. It was also chosen because it's a word that
sounds the same and is pronounceable in every language.
Although the name of the company was not
officially changed until 1958 the very first 'Sony' branded product was the
TR-55 transistor radio. This went on sale in 1955 and was followed shortly by a
'pocket sized' transistor radio.
Sony's success and growth as a company
continued in the 60's with the formation of the Sony Corporation of America
(SONAM) Sony became the first Japanese company to offer shares in the USA. The
decade also saw the company develop the world's first direct view portable TV.
The 1970's were also important for Sony in
terms of invention. They saw the invention of the Betamax and the Walkman,
which were arguably two of Sony's most important inventions. The Walkman
especially was a massive hit and was revolutionary in terms of personal
entertainment, for the first time ever people were able to take music with them
and carry it wherever they went. To this day the Walkman brand still exists in
Sony brand mobile phones.
The Walkman and
Betamax really propelled Sony into a household name company all over the world.
Sony's innovation as a company has seen them produce a lot of ground breaking
products and their passion for creating something new and efficient was one of
the reasons for them becoming such a successful company. Sony’s passion
for their products and standard of the hardware of their devices has meant that
they have stayed a household name for many years.
Although Sony
started with electronic items they further branched out into Mobile communications,
music and video games, the latter is what I am going to focus on in this
report. The question is how did
Sony progress from a successful electronics company into one of the leading
video games companies worldwide?
The Playstation was first coming into
creation as early as 1986. Nintendo had been trying to develop CD technology
since the Super Nintendo but they had come across a lot of problems. CD's could
easily be tampered with and there was a serious piracy threat. Nintendo
approached Sony in order to get them to come up with a CD drive that would be
used on the console.
In 1989 the console was due to be announced
but Nintendo are said to have become worried over details of the contract that
would mean that Sony almost have complete control over the console. Hiroshi
Yamauchi (Nintendo President at the time) was so furious that he secretly
cancelled the contract with Sony and instead announced a partnership with
Phillips. Following this development Sony decided to take the technology
they had designed for Nintendo and produce their own console.
Headed by Ken Kutaragi the
Playstation's development was underway in 1990 and was announced in 1993 having
made a lot of changes. They had originally planned to include a cartridge
slot and to make a multimedia system that did more than just play games. This
was all scrapped in favour of making a "Dedicated games console". Key
to the success of the Playstation was the decision to make the console focus on
3D games using a high power CPU and GPU. Once they had the console designed
Sony then had to focus on software, as they were pretty new to the console
world they knew that without a strong line-up of titles the console would fail
so they set about rounding up third party developers. With arcades doing so
well in Japan it was a good idea to get them on side. By setting up deals with
NAMCO, Konami and Williams they were sure to get gamers interested.
On December 3rd 1994 the Playstation was
released in Japan the console was hugely popular in and Sony described it as
their most important product since the Walkman.
By 1995 Sony had its sights set on America.
At E3 in May 1995 the Playstation was unveiled to the US. Sony definitely stole
the show with titles like Ridge Racer, Wipeout and Tekken. On September 9th
that year the Playstation was launched in the US and was an instant success
with many stores selling out of games and peripherals. Sony had made the clever
decision of aiming the console at a slightly older market than usual and the
Playstation was seen as the serious gamer's console.
After the huge success of the Playstation,
Sony set about developing its successor the PS2. It was announced in 1999 and
released in Japan in March 2000.
Due to the success of the Playstation I
think a lot of people were expecting very good things from the second Sony
console. The PS2 was more of a multimedia system with the ability to play DVDs
and also was backwards compatible with Playstation titles. I think the
backwards compatibility was a very wise move as the library of Playstation
games was so huge.
The PS2 initially sold very well due to the
Sony branding and, as with the Playstation, an impressive number of launch
titles. It sold over 98 million units in Japan just one day after its launch.
To this day the PS2 still sells well and has sold an impressive 150 million
units worldwide. It also became the fastest console to reach 100 million units
sold, doing so just over 5 years after its launch.
Although the PS2 had competition from the
Xbox and the much cheaper Gamecube it was the exclusive titles and backwards
compatibility that allowed Sony to stay ahead of the game. Securing titles such
as Grand Theft Auto 3 and the Metal Gear series really helped Sony stay on top.
In September 2004 in conjunction with the release of GTA: San Andreas Sony
released a slim version of the console which breathed new life into the sales
of the console.
The third console from Sony was first
released in 2006 in Japan on November the 11th. It features a blu
ray player instead of the traditional DVD drive as blu ray discs can hold a
larger amount of information and also features the online gaming aspect of the
Playstation Network (PSN).
In 2010 Sony released the Playstation Move.
A camera and controller attachment for the PS3 to compete with the motion based
Wii and Xbox Kinect. The Playstation Move uses controllers similar to the Wii
but has the addition of a camera to detect motion and depth of field.
Sony and Microsoft’s motion add-ons were an
obvious response to the success of the Nintendo Wii console which has sold a
huge number of units and has become one of the bestselling home consoles in the
short number of years since its release in 2006. Seeing that motion control was
vital in the future of gaming, Sony and Microsoft both decided to develop
motion software in order to compete.
Testing the move.me
The move.me software for Playstation 3 is
an application to create games and software in order for people to help take
the Move in a new direction so that its purpose isn't solely for gaming.
The potential applications for the move are
massive it would be applied to anything from bomb disposal to more creative
things like painting and modelling. I also think it's a great idea to get people
from various communities, be they students, professionals or just
enthusiastic hobbyists, to get involved in creating and programming their own
ideas. In recent years we have seen the popularity and success of a lot of open
source communities such as those seen surrounding the Little Big Planet game
and others such as Minecraft and even the App store for iOS. People like being
given tools to develop their own thing and share it with a community so I think
it's definitely a good idea for the Move.me to be available to anyone who has a
PS3 and the Move controllers.
I was happy to be given the chance to test
the move.me and really think about the potential it has in greater depth. I
tested it with four fellow students at University.
My experience of it was pretty limited. We
had access to the console and Move controllers but we didn't have any way of
inputting any code and we found it impossible to come across a lead that would
allow us to connect the PS3 console to a personal computer of any kind.
As we couldn't input anything we were
limited to just waving a sword around, which was interesting but I would have
liked to be able to see more from the program.
The move.me software needs to be more
accessible. The layout is very clinical with lines of code showing on screen
and it's very off putting to someone like me who knows nothing about coding. I
would also say that it needs to be easier to connect to a PC or to have some
way to directly input code to the console. I think the key factor in the
success in something like this is making it accessible to everyone and I think
in its current state it would put a lot of people off and would only really
appeal to coders or those with a lot of technical knowledge.
We agreed that the sword was good fun and
that it would be really great if there was a way you could easily import your
own pictures or 3D models into the software without having to input masses of
code. This way, players could easily build environments or use their own
artwork so anything could be added to the Move controller, not just the
onscreen sword. If there was some way you could load the images onto the PS3
and import them easily I think this would make the software a lot more
accessible to people and give results quickly to get people interested. I think
this is one of the key things about successes like the customisation in Little
Big Planet, it's very simple and a lot can be done quite quickly so anyone can
do it.
I also think that Sony could produce
something similar to the App Store or Xbox 360 indie game marketplace by
creating somewhere that people can upload and share what they have created with
other PS3 owners. I think that the sharing and community part of anything like
this is really important, being able to share and get feedback from other
people worldwide is an attractive factor to a lot of people and would give an
incentive to use the application. Given that Sony already has the Playstation
Network (PSN) I would have thought this would be relatively simple and could be
a specific section or branch of that.
I think the main thing would be to make
things as simple as possible and available and accessible to as many people as
possible. We found the experience of the move.me very limited and not very fun
as we couldn't do anything with it, I think this would be the case for a lot of
people unless it's made more user friendly. I'm sure it would be great if
you had access to a PC and knew how to program but I think the majority of
people wouldn't and would be immediately put off using the software. As I said
even just on appearance my first impressions as someone who isn't a
programmer were fairly negative and I don't think this should be the case as
the Move.me has the ability to produce some really creative and innovative
applications.
In conclusion I think that Sony have definitely become known as a
company that places high importance on innovation and making things available
to the masses. I think they can definitely maintain this with the Move.me
software as I think it has huge potential to be a successful piece of software
as long as it is accessible to as many people as possible.
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