Anyone miss the old Sony?

[yankii]

Sony was probably one of my favorite companies back in the day, not necessarily for the quality of their consoles or other stuff, but because how they weren't afraid to try out new things. Those tiny ass VAIO laptops [and the CHONKY ones], the PSP GO, the Xperia phone, not to mention their MiniDisc players. I also loved that they made a big ass [43", I think?] CRT, though of course I didn't have one.

I also love how many physical ports their old consoles had. Hell, even the Vita has a port that I have no idea what it's for.

3G in a console is also fucking awesome. I wish Nintendo would give us a cellular Switch so I can embarass myself by losing at Smash in public.

Also, SACD playback on PS3 is awesome. Literally the reason I got one.

We arguably have better, more stable products these days but they don't have any uniqueness at all. I get that standardization is good for the customer and all but part of me can't help but miss the old days when you had no idea what a company was going to come out with next.

 

[lightwo]

Can't that be said for many other companies as well? Nowadays the homogenisation of consumer electronics has reached an extreme level, it's hard to expect any company to really innovate in this regard nowadays.

I had this exact same thought a few hours ago. I cherish the times when tech was fun and interesting. Nowadays, entertainment is all about owning a black rectangle, a glorified tablet, or a generic x86 PC where the whole selling point is the DRM.

As for Sony in particular, they've always had a DRM-first reputation, but I can't lie, thinking about Xperias really makes today's normalcy feel so much more boring.

 

[yankii]

Can't that be said for many other companies as well? Nowadays the homogenisation of consumer electronics has reached an extreme level, it's hard to expect any company to really innovate in this regard nowadays.

I had this exact same thought a few hours ago. I cherish the times when tech was fun and interesting. Nowadays, entertainment is all about owning a black rectangle, a glorified tablet, or a generic x86 PC where the whole selling point is the DRM.

You could, but I can't think of a single company that was as hardcore as Sony about trying out new stuff.

I do hate how everything these days is a glass/metal x86/ARM sandwich, yes.

Things are less about having fun, period, and more about making money and it's good if you have fun along the way - which could be said of the companies of yesteryear, they're for-profit entities after all, but they still had something we don't these days.

Or maybe we're too scared of failure with online bashing being so common...

 

[lightwo]

Things are less about having fun, period, and more about making money and it's good if you have fun along the way - which could be said of the companies of yesteryear, they're for-profit entities after all, but they still had something we don't these days.

Or maybe we're too scared of failure with online bashing being so common...

I feel like a lot of this boils down to how processing power and efficiency reached the peak for most uses long ago, and there are way fewer areas to innovate in, as uses of said processing power have already been thoroughly explored. All evolving technologies go through early, experimental phases (3D-capable consoles, phones, etc.), and I suppose nowadays there's not much further to go.

 

[subcon959]

I think Sony was my first ever tech obsession. First TV, Hifi and even Betamax. I will still fight anyone that says VHS was better.

 

[Skv0ra]

Well, Sony was always pushing entertainment as a whole over just gaming, so there's zero surprise to most of their gaming systems being robust and useful outside of the gaming niche. What I CAN firmly go without are allllllll the overpriced, failed media formats they tried to push that could have been done otherwise save for select few like BR.

 

[tech3475]

One thing I really miss is the Sony that made more mid-level qwerky stuff that was never going to be a massive hit but had a charm to it e.g. flower, vib ribbon, etc.

Just the other day I was thinking about the game Kula World, which was one of the first 3D games I played via Demo 1.

 

[ChibiMofo]

You mean the old rootkit Sony that made up it's own reviews for movies it produced and intentionally shipped free Sony-published malware on its discs, and lied through their teeth at E3 about PS3's graphical abilities such that people actually still to this day believe it was more powerful than the Xbox 360 when it clearly was not? No, I really don't miss that Sony at all.

 

[CMDreamer]

Sony was probably one of my favorite companies back in the day, not necessarily for the quality of their consoles or other stuff, but because how they weren't afraid to try out new things. Those tiny ass VAIO laptops [and the CHONKY ones], the PSP GO, the Xperia phone, not to mention their MiniDisc players. I also loved that they made a big ass [43", I think?] CRT, though of course I didn't have one.

I liked the Sunny of a Beach, from the PSX/PSOne era.
Back then they were more interested on providing good games to the customer than copying software and hardware ideas from other IP's.
That's the reason they are -imo- the greatest copy-cat of them all from today.

I also love how many physical ports their old consoles had. Hell, even the Vita has a port that I have no idea what it's for.

The Vita IS a great console, but it was developed with the wrong goals/intentions in mind.

The Vita still is one of my favorites, but only for emulation purposes; most of its AAA games are pure crap.
The MD card is/was stupidly expensive, a prove of Sunny of a Beach's greed and limited interest on what the customers really wanted.

Today the Vita is awesome but thanks to the scene, and indie devs/games, as well as the emulators we can use on it.

3G in a console is also fucking awesome. I wish Nintendo would give us a cellular Switch so I can embarass myself by losing at Smash in public.

3G is/was tied to AT&T, no other carrier was possible unless the owner "freed" the service, and that was no easy task.
In the end, it just was a good idea with very badly performed, as a result -again- of their greed and zero interest on what the customers would want.

Also, SACD playback on PS3 is awesome. Literally the reason I got one.

We arguably have better, more stable products these days but they don't have any uniqueness at all. I get that standardization is good for the customer and all but part of me can't help but miss the old days when you had no idea what a company was going to come out with next.

Stable products, but a very little amount are from Sunny of a Beach, their consoles have an increasing failure rate, and this, even on their most recent ones.
Bad design, overprice, limited quality/quantitiy of games, zero interest on allowing the owner decide what to do with them (i.e. overpriced shitty faceplates).

The list is huge.

 

[wamble]

Sony were really innovative before the purchase of CBS, but their fingerprints are still in so many products today, including Blu-ray, PlayStation, and they are still kings of camera sensors, pro broadcast devices, etc.

I cannot wait to see their new portable to compete against the Switch. Both the PSP and Vita were so polished compared to Nintendo's competition, in my opinion. The PSP had a freaking optical drive and the audio could be encoded to satisfying, modern standards, unlike the DS, which decimated audio quality so it could fit more cheaply on relatively expensive cartridges. Both Vita and PSP had Sony's overpriced memory sticks, which I felt was a slap in the face to customers, especially in the Vita era. I always felt Sony's Vita pricing was ridiculous, but look at the prices of Switch and Switch 2 now. LOL. Sony price-corrected Vita console prices later, but much of the damage had been done.

Like any successful company, Sony have their failures and like any successful company they have over-estimated the prestige of their brand by taking customers for a ride. I regard them as the most influential company when it comes to consumer electronics. I can't think of any other company that has done more.