Despite being hacked and having to pull its network down for around six weeks, affecting 77 million customers, Sony says it was “pleasantly surprised” by the results of the experience, claiming all its clients came back and that network performance was better than ever.
“We came back strong and we’re ready to go,” president of Sony Network Entertainment, Timothy Schaaff told the audience at Mobile Beat 2011, adding that sales had remained strong despite bearing the brunt of a serious hacker attack a few months ago.
The firm took its entire network offline in a dramatic episode that left its customers without service for weeks. Schaaf, however, shrugged the whole incident off, saying “it was dramatic but the lesson we learned through this process is that there are some crazy things going on in the world right now.”
Shifting his focus to Sony’s current plans post-hack, Schaaf declared that the goal was to build a collection of entertainment services around unified connection experiences, or in other words, content available to a plethora of devices. “It’s not about proprietary. It’s about opening the door to customers to work with other firms’ apps or services,” claimed Schaaf.
The firm is also redoubling its efforts to invest in Android, though it says it has not closed its mind to the possibility of working with other operating systems, or even of having its own app store, with Schaaf maintaining there was value in having a direct marketing channel to help customers cut through the clutter.
“Most consumers struggle with discovery on app stores,” he said. “If we can help with organizing that, it’s very valuable.”
Schaaf also compared the current app ecosystem to the music space, noting that while the tools for content creation have become more “democratized” that didn’t mean it was easier to for developers to succeed. “But just because it’s easier to make a piece of music doesn’t make it much easier to be a rock star,” he told the audience, telling them that the main difficulty to overcome was still in getting the customer to notice them.
“You can’t underestimate the value of the more traditional channels,” said Schaaf, admitting that Sony was planning to take on much more aggressive advertising campaigns on behalf of certain chosen app developers which could differentiate its products.
Music, he said, would certainly fall into the differentiation category as well, with Sony having worked a long time on its own service.
“Consumers’ experience of music is fundamental to a device,” he claimed. “If you don’t have a good music experience on your device, it’s a lesser device.”
The same philosophy extended to other types of multimedia, he said. “We have to have a great story about music, TV programs, films, books and gaming,” Schaaf declared, noting that his firm firmly felt there was a business opportunity still to be had in the entertainment space and that it had no plans to outsource that to others. “You can’t really offer a compelling global position if you’re not doing it yourself,” he added emphatically.
Schaaf also told the audience he didn’t believe 4G was a game changer for software providers and hinted at an Android powered Sony tablet coming soon.
