Sony is Afraid

Recently, Sony started making a lot of brand damaging decisions, mostly focused around video game censorship.  However, it's a bit more nuanced than that.  Thanks to Microsoft being far behind Sony in the TV based console space, and Nintendo focusing on the Handheld Console Space (where they've always been very strong and made a huge amount of money) Sony has almost a monopoly in the videogame console space.  You might think that this would be great news for Sony. 

You'd be wrong.

Virtually the only part of Sony that has been making money has been videogames.  Pretty much every other area of the company is either a catastrophe like Sony Pictures or far behind their competitors like Apple and Samsung.  How has Sony responded to this?  By monkeying around with it's one profitable division (and the only thing that has been keeping the company afloat, the Playstation division).  Yes, they did something very expensive and moved it from Tokyo (where it was a well-oiled, money making machine) to San Mateo, California.  Now, a lot of people might point out that this move of headquarters happened two years ago.  Sure.  But in corporate time?  These changes don't get felt immediately.

We are feeling these changes now:

NEW SONY CENSORSHIP POLICY IS FORCING JAPANESE DEVELOPERS TO CENSOR THEMSELVES EVEN IN JAPAN

The developer noted they were hoping to release the game for PlayStation 4 soon after New Year’s as development on the game is complete, however, Sony has been reluctant to approve the game.
Furthermore, Sony is confusingly asking Japanese developers to plead their approval only in English, making the process even more difficult for developers whose staff only speak or write in Japanese.
The developer noted if they were to release the game for Windows PC (via Steam) they could release it next week.
The big question is, why is Sony doing this.  Why risk their position as Market Leader in the one area of the market where they actually are market leaders?

I believe the answer can be found in Sony's huge debt load.  Sony is feeling pressure to make a lot of changes.  None of these changes appear sensible.  Who doesn't think that Disney would love to buy the failing Sony Pictures?  Or perhaps one of Disney's competitors?  Is Sony punishing Sony pictures for it's incompetence?

Nope!  Sony is punishing videogames.  I would say Sony is punishing Playstation, but Playstation is only a home appliance that mostly plays content made by people other than Sony.  It's also possibly the most popular Blu Ray/Streaming device on the market.  However, Sony isn't punishing Blu Rays or telling Netflix they need to censor their series.  They are going after small studios in Japan, and telling them to censor stuff that would be considered acceptable on American prime time TV. 

In the United States we had a hard fought, complicated political battle to put a neutral, independent and transparent rating system in place.  One outcome of this battle was a "gentleman's agreement" about what content would be allowed on game consoles.  All three game consoles allow games up to an M-Rating (the equivalent of an R-Rating for movies), none of them allow Ao rated games.  For practical purposes, this means that most companies try to fit into the Kids, Teen, or Mature rating.  If they feel their rating is too high (for example and M game gets an Ao) they will then edit their games so the rating board will accept it at a lower rating. 

Sony is changing this system.  Their goal?  Their goal is to assert monopoly status over gaming.  The important thing about an independent rating board is that it was accountable to industry leaders, the public and other industry parties.  It didn't exist to favor one company (Sony) over other companies (Nintendo, Microsoft, Valve). 

This is why Sony has decided to create a second, opaque, unaccountable rating system that only they control.  They want to use it to shape the market to their advantage, likely under pressure from their debt holders who are expecting huge profits and more importantly huge growth from them.  By killing the Japanese videogame production industry, they harm their Japanese competitor, Nintendo.  By doing things that explicitly favor Western brands, they form relationships that harm their American competitor Microsoft.  By killing other content creators, they hope to privilege the content that they themselves create for their own consoles, which is not as strong as that created by Nintendo or even Microsoft (Sony doesn't have an in house brand as strong as Halo, for example).

How will this end?  In my opinion we need only wait, and the debt monster Sony is running from will eat them.  However, depending on how much damage they do to the videogame industry itself, they may actually create a situation for another total crash and take the entire console industry with them.

Hold on to your hats!

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