The 9 Worst Fails In Sony History

Sony's seen better days. The tech giant that helped usher in the era of personal consumer electronics is currently embroiled in a catastrophe so large that everyone from government officials to consumers have been left shaking their heads, wondering how the company will recover. The calamity we speak of is the Playstation Network service outage and hacking that's left millions of PS3 users without access to online content, and possibly with their personal billing information in the hands of cyber criminals. Suffice to say, it's not pretty. Will Sony bounce back from this disaster? We think so; it always does. While this is surely the company's worst screw-up, it's not its first. From payola scams to panned technologies, take a look at the 9 Worst Fails In Sony HIstory.

Date: July 2006

To celebrate the release of the white PSP, Sony plastered these

controversial billboards all over Holland, with one in particular showcasing a

tall white woman aggressively holding the mouth of a short black woman. Even

though complaints were pouring in from activist groups and the gaming community,

Sony stood by its campaign stating the ads were focused on “the contrast

between the Black PSP model and the new Ceramic white PSP model." Nothing

more, huh? Riiight.

Date: 1987

Sony's signal recording and digital-encoding format was

billed as the "cassette tape killer" when it was introduced back in

the mid 80s. While it offered higher quality audio output, the DAT had

many frailties. Not only was the recording process more complex than cassettes,

it was known for occasionally breaking down. And, like most of Sony’s gadgets, it

was overpriced. Sony also encountered copyright issues as the

RIAA lobbied to prevent the sales of DAT players causing other electronics companies

to delay production on the players and cassettes. After CDs and minidiscs came onto the

scene, it was a wrap for digital audio tapes.

Dates: 2005–April 2006

Sony recalled nearly 10 million defective laptop batteries due

to reports of excessive overheating and explosion hazards. Dell, Apple, HP, and Lenovo were most affected by the recall and set new manufacturing

and specification standards for all notebook and handheld batteries. Dell CEO, Michael Dell, let the public know ASAP that Sony was at fault: "The batteries were contaminated and were no good no matter what you did with them…We know the batteries, under rare circumstances, catch fire, (which is why we recalled them)." One

year later, a Japanese couple sued the manufacturer for ¥2

million yen after their laptop battery exploded, resulting in the man suffering from burns on his fingers and the woman seeking treament for mental distress.

Date: Oct. 31, 2005

In 2005, Mark Russinnovich of Sysinternals discovered that

Sony BMG CDs were pre-installed with DRM (Digital Rights Management) software,

which automatically installed a rootkit onto a user’s PC that created loopholes in Microsoft Windows that made it susceptible to malware. The software also limited users capabilities to share, play, or edit the music giant's copyrighted material. Sony’s prepackaged

uninstaller made matters worse as it installed a dial-home program that created

bigger security risks. Another uninstaller had to be created to remove all DRM

software. Several class action lawsuits followed and in one involving the FTC

in January 2007, Sony was forced to recall all unsold BMG CDs and reimburse

customers up to $150 in computer-repair damages.

Date: July 2000

What does a film studio do when its films receive piss poor

reviews and are at huge risk of bombing at the box office? If it's Sony, it creates a fake film critic named David Manning, credits him to a small

Connecticut newspaper called the Ridgefield
Press, and makes sure he gives every film under the Columbia Pictures

imprint glowing reviews. The scheme stemmed from a marketing executive at Sony

Pictures Entertainment, but was foiled after Newsweek reporter John Horn played investigator and discovered the Ridgefield Press never

heard of him. Once the scandal broke, Sony apologized to the newspaper, and in a 2005 class action lawsuit against the company, it reached a settlement of $1.5 million and refunded $5 to anyone

who felt manipulated by the bogus reviews and paid to see Hollow Man, The Animal, The Patriot, A Knight's Tale, or Vertical
Limit. That's still not enough for enduring a Rob Schneider comedy.

Date: June 2005

Ever wondered how artists like Good Charlotte and J.Lo got

crazy spins on every major radio station in the mid 2000s? Well, let's just say

Sony left no Benjamin unspent when it came to pushing their talent on the

airwaves. Elliot Spitzer ran an investigation on Sony BMG and discovered the

music label was showering radio station DJs and employees with cash and gifts

to push its artists records. The former New York Governor and prostitute lover disclosed e-mails from Sony record execs discussing the number of spins and money spent on

certain artists: "Please be advised that in this week's Jennifer Lopez Top

40 Spin Increase of 236 we bought 63 spins at a cost of $3,600." Caught

red-handed, Sony agreed to a settlement and forked up $10 million

to non-profit organizations that promote arts and education. Turns out crime does pay.

Date: May 10, 1975

Though it was considered

the superior technology at the time, Betamax suffered from bad marketing and

limited space. The tapes only recorded up to one hour of video, as VHS tapes held up to

two. Sony also took its time licensing the

technology and refused to let the pornography industry produce video via its cassettes. Who

turns down porn money during a time when its films are being featured in nationwide

theaters and making a killing on VHS sales? Answer: Sony. Betamax would go on

to become a long-running joke on Married
With Children as the Bundy's obsolete video player, preserving its place in

pop culture as one of the biggest tech flops. Ever.

Date: December 2007

Sony hired marketing agency, Zipatoni, to create an Internet viral

campaign and PSP fan page (alliwantforxmasisapsp.com) as part of a marketing

scheme to push PSP sales during the holidays. The site featured videos of PSP fanboys,

one named Charlie, who tries to persuade his friend Jeremy's parents to buy

him a PSP for Christmas. SomethingAwful.com questioned the legitimacy of Sony’s

ads and discovered two things—the PlayStation brand was listed under Zipatoni’s

client list and fake comments were being created, which linked back to its YouTube

video page to increase view counts. Sony fessed up and put out the following

statement: “Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out

(maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn't a real hip-hop

maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be

just a little too clever.” Epic fail!

Date: April 20, 2011–

While not the biggest security breach in history, the hacking and shutting down of Sony's Playstation Network will go down as one of the most poorly managed corporate crises in history. What started as a hack by the international hacker collective known as Anonymous, snowballed into a nearly month-long worldwide service outage which lead to the theft of personal data from over 77 million user accounts.

To make matters worse, Sony waited a week after the initial hack to inform users that their information may be at risk, as well as its repeated attempts to restore the PSN service. It was revealed that while Sony encrypted user's credit card info, their other information was not. In an interview with Bloomberg, Sony spokesperson Shigenori Yoshida said that all services would not be back up and running by May 31, 2011.

As of today, May 12, 2011, the Playstation Network is still down. Users are not able to play any PS3 content downloaded from the Playstation Store, nor are they able to use online video services like Netflix and Hulu.

To its credit, Sony has offered $1 million identity theft insurance to all PSN and Qrocity users, and says that it has not seen any evidence of credit card fraud as a result of the hack. Still: poor security + poor public relations plan + poor contingency plan + poor solutions = FAIL.