Sony’s forthcoming PS3 is touted as part of the next generation of high-definition consoles, but high-definition comes with a high price. In addition to charging 20 percent more for high-def support, Sony is also opting not to bundle the pricey high-def HDMI cables with the unit.
The reason that HDMI is so expensive is that it has been designed to be that most proprietary of technologies, an anti-copying system. Sony customers are accustomed to paying giant premiums for consumables like cables and adapters and memory, thanks to Sony’s addiction to deliberately introducing proprietary elements just to jack up prices (I learned this the hard way when I discovered that the power-brick for my $200 Sony speakers cost $150 to replace). But with HDMI and its Siamese twin HDCP, you get more than mere proprietary technology — these technologies are under license from a body that claims to prevent copying by ensuring that no one makes a competitive compatible device.
A condition of licensing HDCP/HDMI is that your devices have to be built to resist user-modification, hardened against its owner. This is pretty perverse, like requiring cars to be built with the hoods securely welded shut, and while it’s doomed to fail, it’s an expensive failure. All that armor designed to protect Sony from its customers comes at a high price — one that gets passed on to you.
So in addition to springing an extra hundred bucks for the high-def PS3, be prepared to part with anothe chunk for the pricey, useless over-engineering in that fancy wire.
Sony makes great game devices. The PSP, for example, turned out to be a hacker’s dream-playground, and it immediately amassed a fantastic developer community who worked to make that hardware more valuable by adding functionality to it. But rather than welcoming all this free labor and publicity, Sony responded by adding countermeasures to prevent people from running the software of their choice on a PSP. There’s a long tradition of this at Sony — remember when they threatened to sue to the kid who figured out how to make his Aibo robot-dog dance?
No community gives more to vendors than gamers. They go back to the store to buy the latest and greatest hardware, they buy games, they buy t-shirts, they see terrible movie tie-ins, perform game-music with their school orchestras, make additional fan-levels for their favorite games, dress up as game characters, buy the comics and the toys. They evangelize games, form guilds and hold tournaments, read, live, watch, talk and breathe games.
But the console people have a hard time coming to grips with this. Practically any other industry would lop off an arm for this kind of devotion, but when it’s someone tweaking their Sony consoles, Sony is so blinded by its fear of losing control of the ability to restrict games-publishing for its platform that it pushes these fans away.
The arms-race against gamers keeps on escalating, and Sony may be winning. They managed to patch the PSP often enough that the hackers largely moved on. Sony won — people stopped paying attention to (and buying) PSPs.
What happens when the PS3 gets the same treatment? Will Sony keep fighting its customers?
(via Digg)
Update: Dave sez, “Here’s a company that sells HDMI cables for $4.49 for 3 foot to $15.49 for 9 foot. Quite affordable, actually, as long as you avoid the overpriced big-box store brands.”