Sony Calls PlayStation Phone ‘Speculation’
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Sony is involved in a pair of intriguing products: first, a phone that could download and play PlayStation games, as well as an iPad-like tablet device.
The entire story is written in the so-called "voice of God": no sourcing, except for an unknown number of people "familiar with the matter". But there is a respectable amount of detail, including a ship date for the phone (2010) as well as details of the Sony internal reorganization that resulted in the project's inception.
PCMag.com phone analyst Sascha Segan tends to dismiss unsourced stories - which, unfortunately, are both the genesis of scoops as well as rumors that are later proven to be unfounded. In the WSJ's case, the paper' is banking on its reputation.
Personally, a phone that plays first-generation PlayStation games seems perfectly reasonable, given the processor limitations of the first-generation console. After all, the PlayStation debuted in 1994. Sony reportedly would team up with Sony Ericsson, the existing joint venture between Sony and Ericsson.
Sony declined to confirm the story. "As already announced, Sony (including SCE) and Sony Ericsson have been strengthening their collaboration in the networked mobile space. However, it is not our strategy to discuss future products or business plan before we make a formal announcement. Any media report that suggests details of the product or business is based on speculation."
Consider that "DOOM," basically the first mass-market first-person-shooter, debuted a year earlier in 1993. That game has been ported a number of different platforms, including the Android mobile-phone operating system. Could a 3D game like the original "Metal Gear: Solid" be ported to a phone? I can't see why not.
However, as the WSJ points out, Sony's portable game player, the PSP go, has struggled both critically, and in the sales market, of late. Asking buyers to repurchase a PlayStation game in yet another format smacks of a George Lucas-style re-re-reissue of the Star Wars trilogy.
Sony has already shipped a solid, inexpensive e-reader, so an extension into a more full-featured model doesn't seem that far-fetched, either. But Sony also has lingering issues associated with its DRM scandals of a few years ago, which continues to tarnish its reputation.
Related information:
In finance, speculation is a financial action that does not promise safety of the initial investment along with the return on the principal sum.[1] Speculation typically involves the lending of money or the purchase of assets, equity or debt but in a manner that has not been given thorough analysis or is deemed to have low margin of safety or a significant risk of the loss of the principal investment. The term, "speculation," which is formally defined as above in Graham and Dodd's 1934 text, Security Analysis, contrasts with the term "investment," which is a financial operation that, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and a satisfactory return.[2]
In a financial context, the terms "speculation" and "investment" are actually quite specific. For instance, although the word "investment" is typically used, in a general sense, to mean any act of placing money in a financial vehicle with the intent of producing returns over a period of time, most ventured money—including funds placed in the world's stock markets—is actually not investment, but speculation.
Speculators may rely on an asset appreciating in price due to any of a number of factors that cannot be well enough understood by the speculator to make an investment-quality decision. Some such factors are shifting consumer tastes, fluctuating economic conditions, buyers' changing perceptions of the worth of a stock security, economic factors associated with market timing, the factors associated with solely chart-based analysis, and the many influences over the short-term movement of securities.
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