A couple of news bits usually best left for the financial pages, but they do have some impact on Sony's future for PlayStation, so I'll dig into them here.
Firstly, Sony just announced its
first ever share buyback program. This common corporate tool (in all senses) is used when companies are making a "bit too much" money. They buy back their own shares to boost the stock price in the short term, so investors can sell their holdings for a bit of a lift, and perhaps buy more as they sniff out future buybacks in a cyclic feeding frenzy.
This is straight of the lazy MBA playbook. And, while Sony shareholders have had a bit of a battering over the decade, the last three years have been very rewarding, so there's no real need.
That near $1 billion is useful money. It could - and in Sony's case definitely should - be invested in PlayStation 5 features, like a Vita compatible remote player (just saying) and in adding to the hardware power of future products. Also, future game development, not just AAA titles but funding for smaller studios, encouraging indies and so on.
Okay, so the money covers all of Sony, including Xperia phones (still not selling well), cameras (a dying market) and TV screens (no profit), but since PS4 has made Sony most of its revenue in recent years, it would seem only fair to reinvest it in that future.
Even if that's not acceptable, while Sony's debt is way down from the dark days, given the uncertain nature of the console biz, minimizing it might also be a better use of the money! Note, any exec who says having debt is a good thing is a brain-dead idiot! I have proof.
The Jim Ryan Show
Next up is Jim Ryan appointed as the new
Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO from April. The usual corporate bullshit from the demoted John Kodera, likely weeping into his payoff at the humiliation, says:
"Jim has extensive knowledge around the game business and industry, as well as deep understanding of the PlayStation culture and strengths. I am confident that he will lead us to greater success as CEO of SIE. I will continue to support Jim by contributing to further strengthening user engagement, and to the overall growth of the PlayStation business."
I'm trying to think where Jim Ryan expressed an actual opinion rather than just
toeing the company line or sounded less than a Sony automaton (one PlayStation Pets family anecdote does not a human make). He does indeed
know his stuff, but he's been at Sony for 25 years and damn well should! The problem is where do the new ideas come from if he's firmly singing from company song sheet?
Sony's board and senior leads are all pretty much the old-boys PlayStation club, and you can bet that the institutional level antipathy to cross-platform play, their
aversion to retro gaming and backward compatibility, and death to anything portable will continue.
Vita performed poorly as we know, and as corporate souls first and foremost, they never talk about or look to see what went wrong and where can we do better (like Nintendo did going from the calamitous Wii U to Switch!) With that sort of work ethic, it doesn't sound good for any future Sony portable hardware.
I'd love Sony to prove me wrong, but whereas Nintendo and Microsoft are throwing ideas around to see what sticks, Sony feels very stuck-in-its-ways to me.
