Sony sells US headquarters for $1.1 billion

Probably to help pay for the PS4′s R&D or something…

@1 Nope , to buy more ram obviously.

Gekidami holds an option. For shure.

They also sold a building back in 2008 for bargain price and have another one up for sale in Tokyo.

Nicole Seligman can also sell his socks on ebay so we are 100% to get that extra ram..

Wow. They really are in great shape. Just peachy. Yessiree.

My last pay check was $9500 operational twelve hours per week on-line. My sisters friend has been averaging 15k for months presently and
she or he or he’s employed regarding twenty hours per week. i can’t believe but simple it had been once i tried it out.
this will be what I do -+-+-+ bit40.cøm -+-+-+

As I said before. Sony is in deep shit.

It’s the next THQ. If Sony won’t do something next gen, they will die like THQ. inFamous, shitty Killzone won’t save them from total destruction. PS4 must be at the level of PS1 or PS2 success.

But hey, maybe PS4 will have 5 or 6 GB of ram this time with decent videocard after selling US headquarters.

80% that I won’t buy PS4 next gen because Sony dissapointed me with PS3 and especially Vita that has No games at all.

P.S. they want to sell Sony Pictures too btw. Oh Sony.

lmao some of you need to do some research before posting jeez. they are not doing great which is for sure but some of you are in the illusion they are on the verge of bankruptcy or going under which is just not true. there is a very long way to go before they even come close to thq levels. ps4 AND ps5 need to be massive failures beyond imagination for that to happen. they have sony pictures which is profitable. ps3 has been profitable since the slim has come out. now they are making a bigger profit from each unit since the new redesign. their camera business is doing good. mobile phones sell very well outside US. the one major thing holding them down is their tvs and they have cut down the number of tvs they offered the past year from like 100 to 25 or something not sure of the numbers . they are building on profitable sides and cutting the fat. they are on track for comeback unless they screw up on multiple levels.

^BTW kaz confirmed they are not selling sony pictures yesterday. he reaffirmed he is not even considering selling one of his profitable divisions

So uh, many money do you have guys?

Jokes aside, it obviously shows they aren’t in the mood to take in any more debt, since interest rates depends on market perspective and any more debt will only hamper their ratings (only fitch, the smallest of the 3 rating orgs have downgraded them to “junk”, most of these times these rating orgs work without any cohesiveness and no reason. Case in point, India, which has the second highest growth rate in the world, is somewhere in Bs whereas us and eu, the epitome of how not to manage the economy has As, yeah right.

Is this bad news, definitely. Are sony going bankrupt anytime soon, keep dreaming.
I can understand how pathetic some you peoples financial knowledge is. THQ and Sony? Yeah right. You know that the sky is falling tomorrow right?
Its a good move to fund your investments with your own money, any layman should know that.
Although obviously, if this things don’t improve in 2-3 years, then some big selling is on the cards, even bankruptcy. Although that is not happening as both sony and external analysts are predicting a profit this year.
I can understand where some of the negativity is coming from, they definitely aren’t hot in us or uk (from where many commentators are from), maybe even japan (they are in much better condition that the likes of panasonic and sharp) but move on the other countries like India and brazil (not sure) etc. and they are doing great. Its about having a global perspective. I would like to know which reputable analyst(not that market ever worked on the basis of their sayings) says that they will go boom soon. Even fitch doesn’t say that. It just says that the recovery will be long, not that it wouldn’t happen.

But whatever floats your boat, keep thinking sony is dead if it makes you happy.

I’m still loyal to sony, in my opinion one of the few companys you can trust to have quality and durable products. I just got a 40 LED TV yesterday, no complaints so far, I have an Xperia U, no complaints at all, it came with a problem in the proximity sensor and they gave me a new phone, like someone said one day: You measure the quality of a company not by it’s products defects but by it consumer care. I got a free headphone with the cellphone (a giveway we had here in brazil) and no complaints about it(actually the best headphone I’ve ever had). Also no complaints about my PS3.

You may call me a fanboy, but I really don’t care, I pay more for their products, but I know what I’m paying for and I’m happy about it.

@8, The actual power of the machine won’t be the saving grace though. You just have to look at the most successful things in this industry to know that raw horse power isn’t key to victory.

Look at the Wii, WoW and DS… by no means the most powerful hardware or best graphics but yet make so much money for Nintendo and Blizzard. They could make it more powerful than most highend PCs and I don’t think they would see better sales than the PS1/2.

@12,
I agree. Its about putting out a console at a right price. Most people wont care if its 3 gb or 4 gb ram.

only the xboxfanboys have a deathwish for sonys playstation. they cant stand that the playstation is soooooo much better than the crap box, and that is a fact.

@12 There I think you are wrong. Wii and DS had their success because of they realeased the games to the masses. But now the cellphones and tablets are dominating this market and we are going to loose a lot of people to it next gen. So the majority of the market will be the traditional gamer, and what the traditional gamer want? Graphics and good price. That’s what made PS1 and PS2 succed over say Dreamcast(had better graphics but were expensive)

@15
You still have to agree a 600$ ps4 is the worst idea,don’t you?
That said, it will not cost less than 800$ here, so no first day buy here.

@15, Thast’s it though, I don’t think the “traditional gamer” is enough of a market to warrent the costs of an extremely high end and expensive console.

I think Dragon is right, in that the console needs to be correctly priced over highly specced.

i actually think sony are going to launch with a 499 premium model and 450 or 399 basic model. they are not going to sell for a loss this time around. those days are gone imo. i highly doubt sony is losing any money on vita at the moment and hence they are in no rush to do dramatic price cuts and are not showing signs of panic with regards to terrible vita sales. they know people will buy their hardware as they bring in more games. with their current first party studio setup they can do one mid budget game for vita and one ps4 game every year from each of their studios. they really have set themselves up pretty good by getting rid of studios that aren’t bringing them a lot of money and expanding studios like naughty dog and santa monica so they can make make more than one game at a time.

600$ PS4 is not the worst idea.

It must be worth 600$. When Sony announced that PS3 will cost 599$ it was a total shitstorm because that gaming system had no games at launch, but stupid promises, giant enemy crabs and no games or even decent online infrastructure.

People buy iThings for 600$ from Apple because they deliver at what they promised. Just for example.

600 or 800 or even 1000 is not an issue at all.

and yes, Hardware matters. Because that’s why 80% of multiplatform titles sells better on the 360 because it runs better and have much better frame rate in the end.

I want a console that have great exclusive games where multiplat title does not suffer from shitty frame rate. PS3 had some good exclusives but at the same time multiplatform titles looked and played like shit.
My favourite multiplat game was Red Dead Redemption and I played it on the PS3.

After finishing it at 100% I wanted to destroy my PS3. Since then I bought less and less console games because I could not stand shitty frame rate and horrible Sub-HD resolution. Blergh…. My eyes deserve much more then that.

@16 and @17 Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you, the price must be right. It can’t be what PS3 was.

And to explain what I meant by traditional gamer. With the current gen, people who never played before and had no interest in it were welcomed in our world. They were a large parcel of the market, the people who bought their annual Call of Duty or Wii casual games. But most of these people (I know a lot of them) are no longer interested in console gaming, they moved to mobile game. So now the market is composed by a lot of the “traditional gamer”, the people who play videogames not as casual (by casual meaning investing only in 1 game per month or less). And this kind of people wants graphics, good story, good gameplay and good price.

@killersense
Exactly. I also think 2 skus is the way to go. Cheaper one for masses, costlier one for enthusiasts.

oh wow SONY is selling one of their buildings this is a sure sign they’ll be under in a month like THQ. You guys are a riot. With all the people they have laid off they can buy a smaller HQ to rebuild structure of their company. Once they bounce back and the company they sold it too goes under SONY will probably buy it back or build an even bigger building. Just all depends if they bounce back

For what is worth I think it was a good move on Sonys part. Right now the cash is more important then the location of the building.

@erthazus
what makes you think multiplatforms are going to suffer with frame rate issues and other stuff this time around? the ram ? you are making a big deal out of a rumor? there is another rumor that the 4gb ram that sony is offering is gddr5 which is apparently faster and more efficient and the 8gb that MS is offering is ddr3 which is slow. i just feel we need to wait for actual info to show up before jumping to conclusions and saying stuff like they have no money to put more ram? really lol? do you realize how silly that sounds? with ps3 they priced themselves out of the market initially and if they had games to back it up they could have salvaged it early but eventually the price was cut and the games arrived and they have managed to bring it back from the grave. they are going to do very well going forward with the ps3 especially to offset any losses that the ps4 may have (i doubt they will sell it on loss anyways). unless microsoft undercuts them they will sell ps4 at breakeven imo.

seriously they need to restructure and this is a good move I agree with O.G. This isn’t bad news at all. Its not like I ever step foot in that building anyway. Its not the twin towers so sell it for cold hard cash buy something smaller to accommodate the fewer employees still working for the company and build back up and expand.

Only a fool whose bleeding out would charge and fight in battle with stronger foes like Apple,Samsung,and Microsoft out there doing very strong. While I think its brave to try its ultimately stupid and could end your place before you know it. Theres so much drama in SONY right now that they’re hurting just as much in the inside as they are on the outside.

@killersense, Why you need faster Ram aka GDDR5 on a console that the major selling point are games?

To load textures and models faster? LOL? Gddr5 is indeed a much faster alternative. It uses an 8n-prefetch architecture to achieve a higher performance for a workstation.
Games on the PC for example just started using 8 GB Of ram. Don’t tell me things like “but teh for PS4 gaems wil b optimised!11″, true, but, only for a console where Xbox successor will be much faster and their OS will work much better in the end. Ram is not just for fun. That is multitasking.

Next Xbox is going to use SKYPE, tablets, connectivity. Their OS is probably going to be based on Windows 7 or 8 which is very good at multitasking.

P.S. Hey Sony fanboys. Start a kickstarter: More Ram for Sony’s next console.

I will give them 50$. I have more money then the company anyway.

It pains me to say this but I agree with OG

like i said we don’t know any of that. need to wait on official information before saying one is powerful than the other and one is going to be better for games etc….

i have just started a kickstarter for sony’s ps4 to get more ram. we have now 50 backers already. the goal is to reach $500.000, it is not enough but it will be a start, and we will get the attention of sony to get things done. please support this because ps4 need more ram.

link:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/619776670/more-ram-for-ps4

For those who actually want a balanced perspective on Sony’s situation: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/business/global/sony-revises-expected-loss-to-6-4-billion.html

Sony has a *lot* of money. This sort of this isn’t close to going to kill them, but their cash reserve is far from limitless. Theyre hemoraging tonnes of cash right now. If it doesn’t turn around, it *will* most definitely become a major problem within the next few years.

I don’t think anyone wants to see that happen. They’ve been a rich part of the gaming landscape for a long time now. The company needs to refocus itself badly.

6.4 billion?

Sony, it was nice to know you. Good bye.

Just had to comment, Erthazus is a complete tool. Biggest troll i’ve seen on VG.

Good bye, Erthazus! Sony isn’t done yet.

@31 6,100,000,000 out of a potential 600,000,000,000+

@34 That’s not even close to accurate Michael. Google is known for being one of the companies out there with the most expendable capital, and they have around 40-60 billion.

Sonys total assets value 160 billion, and so I doubt almost a third of that is hard cash.

@31 Look at the date, man. That was last year.

@35 It’s not about their expendable income. It’s about their overall revenue. You’d be amazed how far into the black these companies can go.

@36 About 8 months, if you want to be fussy. It’s just supposed to give a general idea of how the company has been going in recent years. It’s not like things have been comfortable for them since.

Seraphemz! I love you dude come back as a regular poster I’m back I’m trying to round up the original gang.

@37 Well that’s still not exactly good. Sony has a lot of products (and being a tech company, that means they spend a lot on R&D) but none of them are particularly succesful.

Earning however many billion makes no matter if you’re spending more than that to earn them.

#38 I should be around again. Good to see you again bro!

On topic, I dont see why people are seeing this as a doom and gloom move, they are obviously on the path to getting their ish together.

@37 Check this out:

http://www.notenoughshaders.com/2012/09/08/the-ten-year-decline-of-sony/

Whatever her conclusions are, the numbers pretty much speak for themselves.

Given Sony’s situation, and given the state of the Japanese economy, with everybody practically just waiting for the next recession, I just don’t really see the silver lining.

Best case scenario as I see it, is a massive restructuring that sees Sony as a much smaller, much less affluent company, but with a cohesive selection of products that turn a profit.

That’s what I’d put my 5 bucks on, at least.

I also think the 49′ers are gonna win the Superbowl if they take the Falcons this weekend.

Why don’t we let actual business men at Sony figure out what needs to be done, and stop pretending we know better then they do.

Hey, fanboys: http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/2013/01/sony-to-sell-tokyo-building/

Sony to sell Tokyo building.

Woohoo!

@43

And? Selling buildings doesn’t mean doom and gloom if that’s what you are hoping for.

But it’s a pretty clear indication that you need money more than you need a mortgage.

I’m guessing that banks aren’t lined up to finance someone who owes 80 cents on every dollar they’re worth.

Come on Sony bots…

No matter how you spin all these stories it’s bad news for Sony…

Far to many products, that’s the main problem.

They seriously need to follow Apples example, do 1 or 2 products well.

Next gen they will fizzle out, it’s typical Sony arrogance.

Cutting off their nose to spite their face. I hate the fact Sony use there consoles to sell you there next media format, they deserve to fail because of their greed.

Digital is upon us and Sony can’t hold a monopoly over that, game over Sony… Game over.

@46
Yea like Microsoft and Apple aren’t greedy? Give me a break dude.

Gonna be an interesting year to say the lest.

Yo guys, we will know how sony did in 2012-13 soon. Why not spare the gloom for then. If its 5 billion in negative again, then sony is going dodo. But that’s not happening.
@45
You are right. Any more debt will only do them harm

Sony are the japanese Nokia.

The latter probably still has the biggest phone marketshare, especially outside of NA, hah.

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