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Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

It was the record companies and not Sony specifically. They had to play by the rules. You probably ended your relationship with Sony for plenty of reasons that came together in these changing times. Flat screens came along and you probably got out of gaming too. I have an uncle who once had everything Sony. But now, no. That TV is LG and his music setup is Apple.

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> It was the record companies

Sony is (and already was back then) a record company. They were a huge chunk of the group making the rules, and were in a much better position than any other electronics company to fight them.

The Sony media tail was wagging the Sony hardware dog. That was the whole problem - they hamstrung their own products. End result was that they burned their own brand to the ground - there was a time when Sony hardware was cool.

What's really sad is that the entire reason Sony bought the media companies was to prevent them from interfering with new Sony hardware innovations. The record companies resisted the audio CD and the studios resisted Betamax. Sony seems to have forgotten this after Akio Morita stopped running things.

Well, it wasn't "the record companies" as a whole. The creative nomad player was during the same period and had no such limitations. Sony, being a record company and a hardware company, limited their players in this way. And basically paved the way for other companies to take over the market.

Sad because their walk-man was basically the standard before, and sony makes some good hardware.

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