JUNE 8 | Sony basically has two choices: It can forget about trying to compete against the Wii and concentrate on positioning the PS3 as an integrated home media hub that happens to play games. Or it can cut the price of the PS3 dramatically and try to reclaim some share and drive more software sales.
OPINION: DRM divide6/1/2007 JUNE 1 |Digital rights management continues to face a stiff headwind in Europe. The latest blow came when a district court in Finland ruled that CSS is so ineffective at preventing unauthorized copying of DVDs at this point that it no longer rates legal protection.
OPINION: Time to copy5/25/2007 MAY 25 | The longer it takes the industry to reach a deal on managed copy, and the more complex it makes the process for consumers, the less value managed copy will have in the marketplace.
OPINION: Retail suggestion5/18/2007
Whether intended or not, Amazon’s decision to start selling music downloads without digital rights management provides a valuable lesson in the role retailers could—and probably should—play in promoting the cause of interoperability in the market for digital content and devices.
OPINION: Maverick talk5/11/2007
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s signature issue—the debate over so-called ’Net neutrality—HDNet founder Mark Cuban insisted, is the wrong debate about the wrong issue: another response to scarcity that is likely to result in the wrong outcome.
OPINION: Copy-protection at a cost5/4/2007
The hard costs associated with sustaining the technical and legal structure of AACS is not the only price that gets paid for the studios’ fixation on denying would-be pirates the first copy.
OPINION: PS3 fall guy4/27/2007 I’ve often wondered how committed Sony Computer Entertainment chairman Ken Kutaragi was to the decision to include a Blu-ray Disc drive in every PlayStation 3 console. He is enough of an engineer to have known that including a Blu-ray drive would significantly increase the cost of PS3 consoles, putting it at a competitive disadvantage to the Xbox 360.
OPINION: Two better than one?4/20/2007
Given the current market realities, the best high-def strategy for a studio is to release movies in both formats. At this point, a single-format strategy by any given studio is not affecting the course of the hardware format battle, which is moving under its own internal momentum.
OPINION: PS3 feels Blu4/13/2007 Sony confirmed growing suspicions that it is phasing out the low-end 20GB PS3 to concentrate on the more expensive 60GB model. A plausible reason is that demand for the PS3 has been less-than “overwhelming” and that Sony is having trouble getting the cost down.
OPINION: Territorial behavior4/5/2007
Anti-trust investigators with the European Commission sent “statements of objection” last week to Apple Inc., as well as the four major music distributors, concerning the companies’ use of digital rights management restrictions to impose higher prices in certain territories.
