Sony cooperates on convergence

So music has opened the door to video and your entire movie library?
And television library and games and so forth. The interesting thing is that technology companies and pure content companies sometimes have contradictory impulses. For us, the security of the content is still very, very important, and I think by working together now, we can protect content, because without content, most devices are junk. They may be very attractive, but a television, if you can't watch anything on it, is worthless.

I've had a hard time convincing people of that, and I've had a hard time convincing the consumer electronics group to not discard the idea of security or copyright protection as irrelevant, because if you're in China right now, it's very hard to build a content business. You can't do it.

But we're working together in real harmony now, and we understand each other's problems, and we have a better chance of solving some of these issues.

Is it fair to say you're in real harmony at this point? The Connect service is pretty new.
Real harmony may be an exaggeration, but harmony of purpose, anyway. There's nobody saying, "We know what we're doing; you don't," anymore.

Now, together, we can fashion this out. We're working very closely with PlayStation, whereas we didn't two or three years ago, and we're very happy with that relationship. All in all, I think the company is realising that there can only be advantages if we work together. If we don't work together, it's not going to fly.

We've seen what happens when you don't work together -- music suffered, electronics suffered. So with music as a template, you have something that is set. I mean, does Connect have to be solely a music service?
Well, it's more; we're working with PlayStation. They've accepted Connect service. We're working on video players -- so we're working across the company.

Within the company, how is Connect viewed? Do you view it as a distribution channel directly to the consumer?
It's an end-to-end bridge with devices and content. It manages the relationship between both in order to present something to the consumer that is easy to access and manage. Whatever failings we've had in music, we've got to move quickly to solve them in video. We've all agreed on that.

Connect is a service that cannot exist unless it crosses the silos within Sony to develop relationships with devices. I think everybody gets that. It has converts on both sides of the Pacific, and the interchange and interflow of technical and marketing discussions is now daily.

Is video something that the market is ready for?
PSP will play movies. It's ready for it. The next generation will have hard disk drives or flash memory or whatever. But even now, you can take a Memory Stick, and take a movie off PSP and play it somewhere else. That's already revolutionary, and that is coming in March.

But is the market, meaning consumers -- are they ready to accept video on portable devices?
Well, more than half a million PSPs were sold in 10 days in Japan. That's the driver. We haven't marketed movies yet, but it is self-evident that for particular age groups, once you have that device, its sole purpose is extremely valuable.

I never considered video on a portable device because I never thought the screen was worth anything. The screen on the PSP is really sharp. It's better than a movie screen, and God knows we all watch movies on airplanes -- and that is a fairly hideous experience. This is a good experience.

You're a former journalist. What do you think about blogs and their impact on news media? Do you read blogs?
I do, and there's an astonishing amount of information coming at you -- and from a lot of different directions. That, in a way, is an extraordinary way to check and balance. And that is a good thing. The difficulty is sorting it out. That is why God invented editors. I find it very stimulating. I think sometimes that if I retire, I'll become a blogger and finally say all the things I've always wanted to say.