Sony cooperates on convergence

Feel free!
I think there are a thousand secrets out there, and there's no particular reason why secrets shouldn't be found out by someone who isn't a full-time, paid journalist. A secret is a secret. I'm much more concerned by the impact of all the news channels than I am about blogs.

The reader or writer brings to a blog a level of scepticism as well as curiosity and even balance. I don't think you say, "This must be true." You do tend to look at news media with the attitude that this must be true. In some ways -- which are more worrisome when there is so much news coming out of those news channels -- that is confusing to the viewer and doesn't involve actual reporting. There is much less actual reporting on news channels than there used to be, let's say, on the network evening news.

I'm concerned that with the costs of reporting and with profit margins on cable news shows, there is less reporting and more talk. So what makes talk great? Most talk is adversarial and combative, but it doesn't contain a lot of facts. What difference is that from much of the blogging that you get? Blogging is the pursuit of actual information, anyway. So the world has changed a lot, and I miss a lot of the first-rate reporting with the reporting brain that looks for facts and draws an informed conclusion from those facts. That is what the best of journalism is all about.

The idea of convergence -- making content available on these devices -- for Sony is unique because of its entertainment and electronics assets, and you had a bit of a head start. When Sony started talking about this idea, it was one of the first, but we come to CES in 2005, and everyone is talking about it. Do you still have that advantage, and is it as great as it was before?
Because we have our own technology experts and software engineers, we're further ahead in understanding each other than any other company. In many ways, PlayStation is a convergence device. Part of its success comes from understanding the needs of the customer to experience games on the device that they made in its own environment. We still have an advantage. Is it a big advantage? It is in a different way.

The ultimate protection that Sony has in entertainment is that in this country, we're perceived as an entertainment company more so than in other countries. Our brand is more powerful here [in the US] than anywhere else in the world. We're cool here. We're not cool in Tokyo anymore. We're not cool in China. We're cool because of PlayStation, because of movies.