PS3: Glass half full or empty?
I've just been reading about Sony's financial results, in particular the PlayStation sales.
First, the good news: Sony's games division has made the first profit in two years.
Here's the bad news: Sony is cutting its sales goal for PS3 to 9.5 million units for the year from 11 million.
So is PS3 succeeding or not?
It depends on how you measure it. In comparison to the Wii, the PlayStation is a failure for Sony. Wii sales are stronger, faster and despite predictions of being short-lived, show staying power.
But compared to 360 sales, it may be good news for Sony. Xbox 360 sales are slowing - and worryingly for Microsoft they are slowing during a period of arguably its greatest games line-up.
So what does 2008 hold?
I don't believe titles like Haze or Metal Gear Solid 4 will shift that many more PS3s. But I do think Blu-ray's impact will begin to bite Microsoft.
Few observers believe that HD-DVD will ever be anything more than the second placed finisher in a two horse race. And the growing library of Blu-ray titles, coupled with the PS3's capability to take on new features, makes the console an ever more practical choice as a next-gen disc player.
Throw in the console's ability to connect to a PSP remotely - and remember sales forecasts for PSPs are positive - plus the growing media hub functionality, and PS3 may not be the lame duck some thought it was 12 months ago.
Sony boss Howard Stringer believes PS3 is now "out of the woods".
But let's not forget the R&D costs associated with the PlayStation 3 - Sony are many, many years away from recouping the costs of that development effort into the Cell processor and Blu-ray technology.
Until that happens, the PS3 is still camping in the forest.
We didn’t vote en masse, we all have individual votes from a long list of about 70 names, which contracted and swelled as we immediately struck out some names – eg Richard Branson – and added others, such as Don Estridge, who led the team behind the original IBM PC. We all gathered to discuss the names, but in truth there was minimal debate and I have no idea how the others voted. 
Perhaps – because it wasn’t among the most talked about tent-pole titles at the start of the year.
Reuters have been trialling a
Wall Street marked the shares down sharply - more evidence of the way the mood around technology stocks has darkened - but that was because of Apple's typically cautious guidance on future earnings, not because of a performance in the last quarter which was difficult to fault.
On the tube, I was obviously offline – but surely at the sparkling new St Pancras International station, wi-fi would be everywhere? But the fact that the ticket office was closed because of a “software problem” didn’t bode well. My iPhone detected something called “Free Public wi-fi” but didn’t seem to like the look of it, so I hopped on the Nottingham train in search of something better. 
When, after a certain amount of cursing and fiddling, I eventually got the laptop online it was hardly worth the bother. It took about three minutes to load the BBC homepage, and then choked and gave up. Having enviously watched all those businessmen with similar devices furiously tapping away on trains, I’m now convinced they are just playing Tetris.
My destination was the Computing and Informatics Building at Nottingham Trent University – surely here of all places I would be able to get online at lightning speed? Not a chance. Once inside, neither my laptop nor my iPhone could spot a trace of wi-fi. Apparently there is a network right through the building and across the campus – but you cannot even detect it unless you are a bona fide student who has signed up to the university’s conditions of service.
Frustrated beyond measure, I headed for the student union bar – and suddenly found myself in wi-fi heaven. My phone locked on to a wi-fi hotspot operated by The Cloud, which provides free access for iPhone customers (once they’ve signed up to O2’s hefty monthly subscription). For a few brief minutes, I emailed, sent photos, and learned more than I needed to know about the nervous breakdown unfolding on the stock exchange.
This was a concept model from 2001, built to show the potential of 3G technology and future PDA designs. Sadly, the Ace never saw the light of day because in the same year Psion dropped out of the PDA business due to pressure from competitors. 
Another sign of the continuing buzz around web 2.0 businesses comes in the results of the Crunchies – the awards for start-ups sponsored by the leading technology blogs 
So the letters from Mattel and Hasbro accusing Scrabulous of stealing their intellectual property have winged their way to Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, rather than to Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the two brothers who designed it. Mind you, they are rumoured to be making $25,000 a month from selling advertising on Scrabulous, so they too will be in the sights of Scrabble’s two owners. But my point is that, as Google has already found, the early dreams of being a happy-clappy, open-source, “do no evil” kind of business soon fade when the realisation dawns that you are worth suing.
But let’s start with the MacBook Air. Its looks will certainly win over many an admirer but ultra-thin laptop PC users will probably be shrugging their shoulders. Sony's TZ Series and the Asus Eee all offer similar features and increased mobility.
That's a lot of activity. I had begun to find my enthusiasm for Facebook waning somewhat, but that might just be because I'm too old.
First, the upside. As a mobile internet device it is simply the best I’ve ever tried, especially when connected to a wi-fi network. This morning I googled chart hits from the 70s, watched a few on YouTube, then downloaded tracks from iTunes as I lay in bed compiling a CD for a forthcoming party. And it was all very fast.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~32~RS~)