CE-Oh no he didn't! Part LI: Stringer's flip-flop edition

Merely days after Sony's Howard Stringer was scrutinized for calling the format war a "stalemate," the exec has apparently decided to tweak his tone a bit. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Stringer was quoted as saying that Blu-ray had "the momentum and the scale" it needed to eventually reign victorious over its rival. Additionally, he noted that Blu-ray was "just a better format," and he even went so far as to tout BD's excellent security features, which were effectively subverted just weeks ago after being hailed as practically impenetrable. Furthermore, he didn't seem worried over the new, lower prices associated with standalone HD DVD players, but who knows, maybe he'll be singing a different tune next week.

[Via Electronista]

[Michael Marquez @ Nov 22nd 2007 5:27AM]

You're not a wartime consigliere, Howard. Things may get rough with the move we're trying.

[JeffinLA @ Nov 22nd 2007 3:49PM]

Excellent quote!!! ^^

[Tittylickaaaa @ Nov 22nd 2007 5:32AM]

What the hell else is he gonna say... He's the chief exec officer of the company... lol
"Yeah ive decided everything Sony makes is overpriced crap"
He's not gonna tell the truth folks.

Of course he doesnt have to, because i just did ;)

[Jason @ Nov 22nd 2007 3:27PM]

I think we all know, there is only one company that makes crap, I mean come on 35% of your consoles failed to date, and rising...

As for engadget's lousy reporting, they know fully well, like most, that Stringer did not say the original quote, is was twisted out of all context by the gutter press, desperate for a story.

[4cr JaXs @ Nov 24th 2007 1:26AM]

Well said.

[Gregor @ Nov 22nd 2007 6:03AM]

Actually CEOs do occasionally admit they make utter rubbish - the best example of this was Gerald Ratner in the UK. It's now called "doing a Ratner".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doing_a_Ratner#The_speech

[brian @ Nov 22nd 2007 6:42AM]

This Engadget post is another example of bad journalism leading to more bad journalism. Stringer's original comments were clearly taken out of context in the original AP story and heavily spun. See this:

http://tinyurl.com/2nx2qg

[brian @ Nov 22nd 2007 7:09AM]

From the same Steven Adler interview of Howard Stringer that was quoted in the AP story:

---begin excerpt---

Adler: Of course, one of the big fights right now is Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD for the high definition video market. I mean, the first and most obvious question is: Shouldn't there just be one format? Why should people have to choose between the two? And is there any possibility that we'll be heading there?

Stringer: I should point out that that is not part of the software battle. I mean, that's actually in some ways sort of anachronistic. We're fighting over a packaged goods hardware that will not go on forever, from a classic sense. We have a more expensive version, as Sony tends to, and Toshiba has a cheaper version, which seems to keep getting cheaper. I believe it has slowed down the progress of high definition packaged goods. Oddly, the studios kind of liked it for a while. They were able to leverage one of us against each other. But in the end, it's counterproductive. We have a sort of stalemate at the moment. As you know, they had fewer studios, but then they paid a lot of money for Paramount. So we have four studios and they have two or three studios. It's a difficult... it's a difficult fight. There was a chance to integrate it before I became CEO. This is something I inherited. And I don't know what broke down. I wish I could go back there, because I heard it was all about saving face and losing face, and all the rest of it. But it's not a battle about the digital future. That's what's so strange about it. If it doesn't work out, that doesn't say very much about where we're all going. It's just... it's a scorecard: one-nothing or something. But it doesn't mean as much as all that. PlayStation 3 will still go on playing games. It would have to have a different disk drive. And that's about it really.

Adler: So when a consumer now has to choose between the two, if they want to get into the high definition video, Wal-Mart was selling the Toshiba HD-DVD for $99 last Friday for a couple of days. Usually, it's been $199 there. I think your list price is $499 for Blu-ray. That's an enormously big difference, particularly in a slowing economy. Can you play that game with the difference being that great?

Stringer: Well... we've been selling them as fast as we're making them because the brand -- first of all, we're not the only ones selling them at that price. So is Panasonic, so is Samsung, so is Sharp. And one of the reasons it's more expensive is because it does more. The bandwidth is greater. If you just want a two-hour movie, the Toshiba version is a high definition picture. But we thought that to drive high definition into the customer's imagination, you should future-proof the disks so that you could have director's cuts, which are fairly obvious. We have six to seven hours of bandwidth available. You can have interactivity in three dimensions. We would be prepared to allow the package goods to survive much longer by making it much more innovative. But that does make the player more expensive. Now, they all come down. The race is to bring costs down. It always is in consumer electronics. So it isn't going to stay at $499.

Adler: But are you surprised by how little Toshiba can sell its unit for?

Stringer: No, because -- look, I can sell it for a dollar. I'd lose a lot of money, but if you want to go that route, it's a tough competition, and it seems to be about a lot of things, including face. So if you want to cut the price down and engage us in a price war, that's a different system. We were trying to win on the merits, which we were doing for a while until Paramount changed sides.

Adler: Microsoft seems to have an interesting role in this. They're selling add-on HD-DVD drives for the -- they're taking HD-DVD to the Xbox, and Xbox competes strongly with you. Is Microsoft kind of working in cahoots or in alliance with Toshiba on HD-DVD? Is that a competitive challenge to you?

Stringer: Only the spirits know. [laughs] Yeah... you never know with Microsoft do you? You never know. Xbox versus PS3 is sort of a subplot. What Microsoft's role is in that? I don't know. We're still selling software at a faster level than Toshiba. Obviously, we care about the software side more than the Toshiba does. It doesn't have a studio. It doesn't own a studio. So it's in our interest to -- actually the most significant thing in some ways about Blu-ray, going back to Microsoft... the Blu-ray Disc has a very high security level, which Fox in particular, but also other studios, was most excited about -- wanted to have some protection from instant ripping. So the specs that went into the Blu-ray, which were done in conjunction with many studios, had this security level. That is probably not in Microsoft's interests. The Toshiba disk is certainly far easier to rip. Whether you like that or don't like that depends on your consumer enthusiasm.

---end of excerpt---

His comments sound consistent to me and can hardly be characterized as flip-flopping when read in their full context.

[Jonto81 @ Nov 22nd 2007 7:50AM]

Just something I picked up from what you have posted - He refers to having enough bandwidth for 6 or 7 hours "We have six to seven hours of bandwidth available."

It would probably help if the CEO knew what he was talking about before opening his mouth (just a thought)

[Matt @ Nov 22nd 2007 1:20PM]

He certainly seems to believe that BD is a better product...this has got me thinking. My understanding is that the video in both formats is basically identical due to the same codecs used to do the encoding. So, what are the differences that make BD better "on the merits"? Is he referring to a theoretical difference in disc capacity? Seriously, I always just sort of favored HD-DVD because they were less expensive and not Sony (I haven't forgot about the root kit or Stringer words about people not understanding what it was, so what did it matter). Is BD better as Stringer says, or is he just doing the corp speak we would expect a CEO to do?

[mike @ Nov 22nd 2007 8:51AM]

To the above comment: thank you.
Sony doen't need another trouble to solve its troubles. I don't know where and how they stumbled upon this idiot. Can't they afford a decent CEO, like Steven or Bill... Come on sony you can do better than that.

[matjet @ Nov 22nd 2007 9:32AM]

you're the one who is flip flopping. you praise those that point out that stringer didn't actually do anything worthy of criticism, yet you then immediatly call him an idiot?

[farfisa @ Nov 22nd 2007 9:28AM]

"We have a sort of stalemate at the moment."

Well, isn't that just true? I read the dude's comments from the first article and he seems, I don't know, refreshingly candid. Totally not what I'd expect from Sony, a company who makes good products but always seems to want to tell me exactly how to use them...

[K1Bond007 @ Nov 22nd 2007 1:24PM]

I like engadget, but this is just terrible journalism. Shameful, really.

[hothotdisco @ Nov 22nd 2007 3:20PM]

Brian is right; his comments were taken out of context. I hope Engadget updates this piece of half ass journalism to make the proper corrections.

[GhostDoggy @ Nov 23rd 2007 7:29AM]

In a 60 Minutes interview, Stringer admitted the reason why he was hired over a native Japanese candidate was because the Japanese leader couldn't do one thing: Fire Japanese employees. The concept of modern Japanese corporations is that they do not 'downsize' and as a result hired whitie to do their dirty bidding.

I feel that in time Sony will be happy with a sufficient amount of 'whities downsizing' and replace him with a more traditional Japanese candidate.