The Sony presentation at the CES-2014 conference was quite long. The president of the Japanese company, Kazuo Hirai, very enthusiastically spoke about the history of Sony, about the ups and downs of his company, about the new philosophy, and about many other things.
53-year-old Kazuo Hirai became president of Sony in 2012, but even for some year he has already changed a lot within the company. He began his work at Sony in 1995. It was he who was one of those people who worked on the first game console of the company - Sony Playstation. In 2006, Kazuo was already at the head of the entire entertainment division of Sony Computer Entertainment, and in 2012, he became president of the entire company.
I must say that the presidential chair added to Kazuo Hirai a lot of headaches, because the company was in an incredibly poor condition. The declining demand for the company's televisions and the strong competition from Samsung, the huge losses caused by the launch of the Playstation 3, as well as many other not very pleasant factors led Sony to a very difficult position. Kazuo had to cope with all the difficulties that arose as a result of not the most successful decisions of his predecessors.
First of all, he carried out a complete restructuring of the giant company, reducing the costs of those units that have not brought any profit for a long time. Many assets were sold, including what shocked many Sony headquarters buildings in the United States and Japan. For the first time in the past few years, Sony has got out of the debt trap and turned out to be in a small but positive position.
A new company philosophy implies, above all, exceptional product quality, both in terms of its functionality, and in terms of the design and user experience of its use. In some ways, Sony began to look like Apple, while not losing its unique features inherent to Japanese designers and engineers.
During the presentation, Kazuo said that Sony’s new consumer electronics design philosophy is called Life Space UX. Engineers and designers of the company want to move away from the so-called “limited screens” that accompany us in the form of monitors, televisions, tablets and smartphones. Screens from now on must be available on absolutely any convenient surfaces for us.
The first steps to the implementation of this philosophy will be unique laser projectors with a resolution of 4K, which can be placed close to the surface on which the image will be projected.
From now on, there is no need to hang the projector from the ceiling and move furniture to achieve the desired distance of the projector from the wall and, accordingly, the maximum diagonal of the picture. New projectors are easily mounted right next to a white wall or any other surface, after which you can achieve incredibly juicy and clear pictures with diagonal up to 147 inches.
The first projectors of this series will be available in the summer of 2014 and will cost from $ 30,000 and above. The price still bites, but no one promised that this is a budget toy for the masses.
Sony also shared its vision of the interface of the future. The projector will project the menu onto any surface, such as the kitchen table. And special sensors will track the tips of your fingers, with the help of which you will be able to manipulate any graphic elements. We have already seen something similar in the case of the “touch table” produced by Microsoft, which never gained much success from the public. Sony claims that their technology will be much more practical and easy to use. So far this is just a concept, but who knows, maybe in a year or two, such projectors will hang over the table in every second kitchen and living room.
But the main interest of the public was caused by the new Playstation Now service, which is based on the cloud technologies of Gaikai, acquired by Sony for $ 380 million in 2012. This service will allow you to play games from the Playstation consoles on phones, tablets and even on Bravia TVs. Imagine the following picture: you purchased a new Sony TV, paid for the Playstation Now service, purchased a DualShock 4 controller and can play a huge number of games released for the Playstation, Playstation 2, Playstation 3 and Playstation 4 gaming consoles without any of them . You can also play all these games using the Playstation Vita handheld console, as it is also an important part of the Sony ecosystem. Engineers from Sony and Gaikai have achieved such a speed of data transfer that there are almost no delays in games broadcast from servers. Of course, you should have a decent internet quality in your apartment, which in our country, unfortunately, is still a great luxury. Nevertheless, in the near future things may change for the better, because just a few years ago, some of us used modems at 36.6 Kb / s and could not even imagine a 100-megabit connection.
Playstation Now will be available to US users in beta testing at the end of this month, and closer to the summer the service will work in full force. Starting today, all visitors to the CES-2014 exhibition will be able to personally evaluate the quality of this service at Sony exhibition stands. Anyone can "remotely" play games such as The Last of Us, Beyond: Two Souls, God of War: Ascension and Puppeteer on Bravia TVs and the PS Vita handheld console.
The article is based on materials .
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