number1contender.net

Sony CES Press Conference

 

January 6, 2010

Las Vegas Convention Center-Las Vegas, Nevada

 

 

 

Due to the horrendous scheduling and transportation issues at CES 2010 we were unable to cover the Sony CES Press Conference live. In an effort to make amends we have summarized what happened at the press conference below:

 

 

This place is packed. The crowd is so thick that people at the back cannot see or hear what is happening on stage, even with big screens and speakers set up. This is being held at the Sony booth on the convention floor with the stage set up near where people enter. This is a press only event and people are packed all the way from the stage to the kiosks demoing Gran Turismo 5 at the far opposite side of the Sony booth. The people over by Gran Turismo are generally giving up on being able to keep track of what is going on up front and are just taking advantage of the free snacks and open bar provided by Sony. (As a tip to all aspiring journalists, always tip everyone. Also, always say "please" and "thank you" when asking for a beverage or anything else.)

 

A voice over the loud speaker has instructed the audience to put on their 3-D glasses, because the presentation is going to begin with "A special 3-D Experience". The curtain has opened and viewers are being treated to footage of a Jimi Hendrix concert in 3-D. (Without the 3-D glasses, the video has the distorted look that most people there must have had of the concert.)

 

Sir Howard Stringer, the head of Sony, is now taking the stage. He opens by making fun of how the audience looks wearing the 3-D glasses. (Finally, someone at this show pointed out how stupid everyone looks in these glasses.) Stringer continues by saying that 3-D is the best way to experience this form of entertainment, though. He then announces that Sony has signed a deal to license almost all of the Hendrix archived footage and music. That means by the end of 2010, Sony will have almost every Hendrix concert, video and piece of archival footage available for viewing in 3-D. Some of this content has never been available to people now. This content will be available in a wide variety of packages and formats, worldwide. This means people should expect a remastered CD box set sometime later this year.

 

Another key thing that video showed, was that Sony can convert 2-D video to 3-D video. Sony is also intent on delivering concerts in 3-D and to demonstrate that they are going to have a live concert and record it in 3-D. Coming out to perform is the new "Brand Ambassador for Sony Electronics" Taylor Swift. She is going to document the next year of her life with Sony products and share it with her fans via video blogs and other things. This will start when her tour kicks off in February in Australia and Japan. Of course, all of these recordings will be in 3-D. She has to hurry, because she has to be at the People's Choice Awards, which begins in a few hours. (She picked up the award for "Favorite Female Artist" at the show.) Therefore, Swift quickly begins to play a song along with her band that moved into the background unnoticed. I have no idea what the song is, but Jimi Hendrix was playing "Purple Haze". It sounds really nice, though. As it appears the song is winding down, an air cannon has gone off shooting bright gold confetti into the air. This concert is being shown to the live audience simultaneously in 3-D on the big screens. For them that confetti cannon probably looked great. The song is over and Swift receives a very enthusiastic applause with some cheering. Last year, Sony had Usher perform at the end of a more then 2 hour long early morning press conference. There were no enthusiastic applause to be had there.

 

Swift rushes off the stage laughing. She appeared to nearly break up laughing when the air cannon sent out the confetti. As Swift exits, Stringer proclaims that 3-D may be the future, but Swift may be the once and future queen of popular music. Not sure if Madonna will give up that crown easily. Stringer then begins to prattle on about nothing in particular. He than admits that much. Stringer just has to kill time for them to clear the stage of the concert equipment, until then he cannot move on with his presentation. This was so awkward and painful it seemed like Stringer might start talking about the weather, because he had absolutely nothing to say.

 

Finally, the band equipment has been cleared and Stan Glasgow, President of Sony Electronics, is taking the stage. First, he is giving a glorified shout out to the various Sony executives from around the world in attendance. Glasgow has the people who are not important enough to get on stage, but they want to acknowledge stand up. They have them stand as a group, not even individually. Glasgow is now saying that the next day at the Ford Keynote there will be an announcement of a new partnership between Ford and Sony. This is a shot at Microsoft, who has had a several year partnership with Ford with the Ford Sync that is powered by Microsoft. No idea what the announcement was.

 

Now to sales numbers, and the obligatory 2009 was bad 2010 will be better opening. Apparently for the holiday period of 2009, Sony experienced year-over-year (YOY) growth from 2008. In reality, that is a somewhat bogus stat. Revenue was up and profits were down. There is also a good chance they gimmicked that stat even more. The way it is figured, in some sales charts there were 4 weeks in December 2008 and 5 weeks in December 2009. Glasgow singled out for the strong numbers are e-readers, Bravia LCD TV's and Cyber-shot digital cameras. Glasgow talks about their new strategy of "make.believe" (it should be said "make dot believe"). He says it will be more then just a marketing slogan. Glasgow then spends the next minute trying to explain "make.believe", but explaining nothing. He then throws to a video that will show one "make.believe" story. It is a video that explains how the person who does album covers for Sony dreamed of doing art as a kid. Therefore, he achieved the creative dream he believed in as a kid or something like that. It made no sense and explained nothing. If anything, seeing the statement without the explanation was less confusing then the last 5 minutes. This statement will now appear on all Sony packaging and in all of their media.

 

Glasgow is now introducing new products based on "make.believe". The first is a new Bravia LCD TV with a monolith design. How that ties into creativity and making things is a mystery. They are showing off the NX-800. Sony will be launching a series of new TV's that range from 22" to 60" to meet a different range of customer needs. The new monolith designs are tailored to have better visibility for lowered television stands. Still confused. Glasgow says that Sony was the early leader in Internet connected televisions and they still have more content with 27 different providers. These new Bravia TV's are going to have wireless Internet hook-ups. These televisions will begin shipping in March. They are already taking pre-orders. People who pre-order will get their televisions in early March.

 

Now for how "make.believe" influences Sony in home theaters. It too is going to have a monolithic design. They are going to be doing optional wireless rear speakers and optional multi-room wireless audio. In addition, it integrates "beautifully" with Sony's new Blu-ray players and televisions. Sony has the widest variety of Blu-ray players. Their newest Blu-ray player plays in 1080p and can connect wirelessly to the Internet. That allows it to easily hook-up to a home network and it can also be used to directly stream content. Glasgow says Sony is committed to people getting content everywhere all the time. This leads to another video package.

 

This video package actually has a point. It is announcing a new Sony product called "Dash". It is being described as a personal Internet viewer. It is pretty much just a tablet PC. There is an unusual catch, though. It has to be plugged in at all times to work. No price is given, but it needs to be very cheap with that catch.

 

Now Kaz Hirai, who is in charge of all video game stuff at Sony, is taking the stage. He is the one guy at Sony who can talk about having a great year. Hirai went from being the head of the Sony video game department in the United States to worldwide after the 2 people ahead of him left the company following the disastrous launch of the PS3. He opens with the actual positive news and says in the 5 week long December, Sony sold 3.8 million PS3's worldwide. Of that total, 1.7 million units were sold in North America alone. Hirai notes that they had some great games that sold well in 2009. He singles out for North America: Assassin's Creed II, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, the latter is a PS3 exclusive. Hirai also notes in Japan they had a lot of success due to Final Fantasy XIII, which is not available in other territories, yet.

 

Hirai is now talking about the Play Station Network with a focus on its Premium Video Content. He says they are looking to increase its availability throughout Europe in 2020. Apparently, there are more then 38 million registered PSN accounts. It is available in 36 countries, 12 languages and 22 currencies. More than 780 million pieces of content have been downloaded, so far. His big announcement is that the PSN is going to be expanded to be available on other Sony devices besides the PS3 and PSP. The first way people will see this is that PSN Premium Video Content will be available to be streamed on all Internet equipped Bravia televisions in HD and standard definition starting in February. This will also be available on Sony computers and any other Windows enabled PC's. That will also be starting in February, shortly after the content is available on Bravia televisions. However, it will only be available on Sony computers and Windows PC's in standard definition in 6 countries to start. A big part of this is that users will be able to use all of their PSN account information on the new platforms. If a person does not already have a PSN account, when they create one to buy content on a different platform, they can use that ID logging into the PSN on the PS3 and PSP. Hirai is now announcing that Sony established a new company in December, Sony Network Entertainment, Inc. The group reports directly to Hirai and basically exist solely to oversee the PSN across all platforms.

 

Glasgow is retaking the stage. He is going to introduce a new Sony e-reader. This leads to an announcement that Sony has signed an agreement to get 2 exclusive features covering the Dow Jones for their e-reader. They are going to have the only digital version of the New York Post for an e-reader. He is now saying they are going to give consumers more options on the type of memory they can use for their camcorders and digital cameras. Last year, they had Tom Hanks. This year, they are talking about the different size SD memory cards they are making available. Tonight they are introducing 17 new models of camcorders to do various types of recording. They have created a special camcorder that takes 18 still photos in rapid succession. it is deigned for people to film their golf swings. Glasgow ties that back into the "make.believe" theme. Here, it actually makes sense. They really should have said this about 30 minutes ago.

 

Another new product is being announced and it is called "Bloggie". It is an mp4 camcorder designed for video blogging. It records HD video like high end camcorder, but is small and portable. It allows users to easily upload content to many popular social networking websites, and it even comes in hot pink. It is available immediately.

 

It looks like they are going to close talking about Cyber-shot digital cameras. Sony is unveiling 2 new cameras at CES. They will be the first still shot cameras that take movies in HD incorporating full HD 60i AVCHD video. One of the cameras includes a GPS and a compass. No camera has ever had that.

 

Glasgow is now moving on to demonstrate Transfer Jet technology. Nigel Barker, a professional photographer on America's Next Top Model, is being brought out for this demonstration. This guy is a giant. The camera is having a hard time keeping both Barker and Glasgow in frame. The top of Barker's head keeps getting out of frame, because the size disparity is so great. Barker is also bringing a welcome dose of charisma to this press conference. Last year for a television star Sony brought out Dr. Oz. He lectured the audience on obesity. This resulted in Abraham Washington level go away heat. Dr. Oz seemed oblivious to it and refused to take it home when the audience that had been there for about 1.5 hours desperately wanted to leave.

 

Barker is doing an amazing sales pitch of the new Cyber-shot cameras. He basically says that the new cameras are equivalent to what the pros are using. Except, he used examples and said it about a million times better. Barker showed that using Transfer Jet he could transfer images to a camera held by Glasgow in under a second, merely by touching the cameras together. He also showed that he took way too many pictures of Taylor Swift in the green room backstage. Sometimes stuff like that is done as a joke at press conferences, but no he actually just took an embarrassing amount of pictures of Swift. Apparently, there is a picture of Stringer and Swift they keep trying to keep away from the camera. I think they legitimately screwed up on that, and are not working. Otherwise, they would show the photo to payoff the joke. Forty companies already support Transfer Jet and Sony intends to put it into several other products. Sony is going to expand their use of Transfer Jet to their computers and digital picture frames.

 

Now it is time to talk about how Sony is helping the environment. Sony has recycle more than 24.5 million pounds of electronic waste since 2007. The company has set a goal that by 2016 they will lower every products energy consumption by 30% compared to 2008. They will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their plants by 30% from where they were in 2000. It seems like all of these things would have happened anyway based on the evolution of technology, and the fact they picked different years is very interesting. Sony is also introducing a new notebook that is so green it does not come with a printed users manual, which actually saves Sony a ton of money. Part of it is made of recycled CD's and DVD's. It will ship in a package made of recycled bottles. There is no price announced, which usually means it will cost Sony less to make and the environmental marks more to buy.

 

Glasgow is now announcing a new multi-media and gaming laptop series. The F-series will have full 16:9 wide screen display. All of the models will come equipped with Blu-ray players, and HDMI outputs so they can be hooked to TV's. They will also all have quad-core CPU's. Joining this will be a small high performance series of laptops, the Z-series. They will weigh under 3 pounds. They all have solid state drives. On these models the Blu-ray player and HDMI output are options, not standard.

 

Stringer is finally retaking the stage. He immediately jokes that he sees most of the audience is still here, which is a good sign. Stringer got his start in television at CBS and is very charismatic, while Glasgow is not. It should also be noted, that the line to get into the Microsoft Keynote had already started forming by this time. They actually started letting the press in to get their seats for the Microsoft Keynote around the time Stringer is retaking the stage. He is back to talk about 3-D. Stringer is revealing a new network that is the result of a collaboration between Sony, Imax and Discovery Entertainment. The network will launch in 2011 with all the content people expect from the Discovery Channel family of networks, Sony and Imax. There are going to be a lot of shows talking about dinosaurs in 3-D. Stringer then plugs Shark Week in 3-D, which does sound amazing, joking they may have to equip everyone who signs up for the network with a defibrillator.

 

At this point, Stringer, who has neglected to take off his 3-D glasses, calls up people from Imax and Discovery to speak. The head of Discovery is going to speak first. The most notable thing about his speech is how obviously he was straining to read the teleprompter. The person from Imax talks about how they were a leader in 3-D and then says they are glad to be in a partnership with Sony.

 

Now sans 3-D glasses, Stringer announces that Sony is going to open the Sony 3D Technology Center on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, California in February. This center will be available to people outside of Sony to learn about cutting edge 3-D technology. Also in the future, select theaters will be playing a Kenny Chesney concert that was filmed in 3-D. Chesney is a Sony recording artist and they plan to do the same thing with other Sony artists.

 

Stringer is announcing another new partnership and this one seems natural. Sony will be partnering with CBS to establish "The Sony 3-D Experience". It will be a consumer research group focused solely on 3-D. It is being headed up by CBS research and will be run out of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. It will begin operations by June.

 

They must be running out of time, because Stringer is starting to go real fast. Sony 3-D cameras will be used to cover the World Cup this year. Sony Pictures is going to produce the official 3-D movie of the World Cup on Blu-ray and other formats. Sports will be a major driving force in the adoption of 3-D. Therefore, Sony has signed a deal with the PGA. Sony will be an official sponsor of ESPN 3-D, which is carrying the World Cup in 3-D. To talk about this partnership the head of ESPN and ABC Sports George Bodenheimer is joining Stringer on stage. Last year's sports celebrity was Reggie Jackson. The network will air at least 85 sporting events in 3-D in its first year. Apparently, they can only guarantee that 25 of those will be World Cup games. They are running very long, so that is all the time for the Disney executive.

 

Stringer says that the PS3 is Sony's foothold in the 3-D marketplace. There will be a firmware upgrade in the summer to make all PS3's 3-D compatible. Now, it is time to talk about the televisions that will show that 3-D content. To do that Stringer is bringing back out Glasgow. Glasgow says that in the summer Sony will launch its first full 3-D HD integrated television. the televisions will come packaged with 2 pair of active 3-D glasses and a built in transmitter. These televisions will be available in up to 60" and will of course employ the monolithic design. To demonstrate the technology, Barker is being shown on a couch watching one of the new TV's with 2 women. All 3 are watching the new television wearing the 3-D glasses, and Barker is pretending into a tissue at the picture on the screen. The screen is showing a PSN game in the Geometry Wars mold. The unfortunate women have no idea what to think, while Barker is clearly having way too much fun amusing himself.

 

There will also be 2 other models of 3-D televisions made available this summer. They will be sold without the glasses and transmitter. Consumers can purchase those at a later time when they want to upgrade. For the previous model, owners who want a show with more than 1 person will have to buy more glasses anyway. Luckily,the extra glasses appear to be available in a wide array of colors. Glasgow then shows off a 3-D OLED television. That television makes fish more interesting then seemed possible. Sony is going to be coming out with new 3-D Blu-ray players and releasing Blu-ray movies in 3-D soon. The first title Sony will have available to consumers will likely be Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. To get the new technology over, they are going to demo it at all 42 Sony stores around the United States. They will also do the same thing all around the world. With that it appears the press conference is over and everyone is free to leave.

 

 

We are almost done with our CES coverage. With the imminent release of Mass Effect 2 the thread on THE BOARD at f4wonline.com with our coverage of the game from CES has been updated. As a warning it is spoiler heavy and can be found here: http://forum.f4wonline.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=90299 There is probably only going to be 1 more CES related article and that will be on the problems in the lack of standardization in the formatting of 3-D glasses. There will also be some posts on THE BOARD to follow up on this coverage of Sony. Then number1contender.net will return to focus on boxing.