Worries about content rights were a mistake, Sony admits

TOKYO — Sony missed out on potential sales from MP3 players and other gadgets because it was overly proprietary about music and entertainment content, the head of Sony's video-game unit acknowledged yesterday.

Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, said he and other Sony employees have been frustrated for years with management's reluctance to introduce products like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, mainly because the Tokyo company had music and movie units that were worried about content rights.

Now, Sony's divisions are finally beginning to work together and share a common agenda, Kutaragi said at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo.

"It's just starting," he told reporters. "We are growing up."

High-ranking Sony officials have rarely publicly said their proprietary views were a mistake. Kutaragi, who has long been viewed as a candidate to lead Sony, was unusually direct in acknowledging Sony had made an error and blaming proprietary concerns from its entertainment division.

Sony's music players initially did not support MP3 files and played only Sony's own format, called Atrac.

Kutaragi said Sony's original spirit of innovative technology had grown "diluted."

"We have to concentrate on our original nature — challenging and creating," he said.

Once the powerhouse of global electronics, exemplified in its Walkman, Sony has lost some of its glamour lately, losing out in profitability and market share to cheaper Asian rivals.

Kutaragi — known as the "Father of the PlayStation" for making the game machine a pillar of Sony's business — said the new handheld, PSP or PlayStation Portable, will grow into a global platform for enjoying music and movies as well as games.

Sony is boosting production to 1 million a month to meet demand for the PlayStation Portable, which went on sale last month in Japan. It is set to go on sale here this spring.