Sony Bets the PlayStation 4 Will Make It Cool Again

For almost two decades, Sony’s PlayStation video game console has been the pride of the company’s engineering legion. With innovations such as DVD and Blu-ray movie players and the supercomputer-like Cell processor, the PlayStation has sold more boxes than the company’s Trinitron televisions and rivaled its iconic Walkman music players. Yet the PlayStation 3, Sony’s aging rock star launched in 2006, needs a makeover. On Feb. 20, Sony is expected to reveal in New York the first details of a powerful new machine that pushes the boundaries of gaming and entertainment. “See the future,” the company teases in a short video on its blog.

The question facing Sony is whether this iteration of PlayStation is in sync with the current rage for mobile computing. Consumers can game on their smartphones and tablets in the kitchen, the bedroom, or in transit. Nor are they in awe of the Sony brand as they once were. Kazuo Hirai, tapped to be chief executive officer last year because of his success running the PlayStation business, has said he considers the console to be the centerpiece of a universe of exclusive content, Sony phones, tablets, and TVs operating throughout consumers’ homes. That kind of waterfront strategy has been largely abandoned by Panasonic and Samsung Electronics and is hard to sustain with the rise of low-cost Chinese manufacturers, says Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. “Sony refuses to acknowledge they don’t have a market like they had 20 years ago,” Pachter says. “They’re desperately clinging to the notion they can get it back.” Hirai declined to comment for this story.