Frustrated With Sony’s Proprietary Products

For those who have owned a PSX (Playstation) or PS2 (Playstation 2) may have used a magical device Sony terms the multitap. This device (technically an adapter) gets rid of the 2 player restriction, and essentially turns one controller port into four ports allowing for a maximum of eight controller ports with 2 multitaps plugged in. Of course this all works only if the game supports that amount of players.

In the following post, you will share in my frustration with Sony’s marketing practices. I was a Sony “fanboy”, but with some of the moves they’ve been making lately, I am not pleased.

A while ago, my friends and I got a game night setup. In total there were 4 people so it was a queue for me to bust out the multitap so that we could all share in the multiplayer fun. My multitap worked great since I got it on my 15th birthday, that was until this game night. I noticed power was still going through since everybody was able to enable the analog light on their controllers, but every button we pressed as we tried to get through the menus was not working. I then concluded the multitap was broken and then we finished the night with Guitar Hero.

Tonight I tried to open up the multitap to see if I was able to find a loose connector or something. I felt confident that if a wire was not soldered down properly I would be able to easily fix it since I was able to build a metal DDR pad all by myself.

When I opened up the multitap every little piece of hardware was bunched together that it’d be impossible to pull anything out individually without unsoldering what was already in place. I did not have the patience to tackle this so I will leave it for another time when there is also more light for me to see.

Now, the main reason for this post; I’m not pleased with Sony’s proprietary products. I did not realize this until now, but of all the current generation gaming consoles, the PS2 is the only one with 2 ports! The XBOX, Gamecube…even the Dreamcast all had 4 built-in ports! Sony is being a bully for building the PS2 in that aspect because it forces you to purchase a multitap if you want to play a game with more than two players. Even then, they made their multitap really dorky. The cord that it connects to the first port is only 1.5″ long! I have a feeling mine broke because I may have stored the multitap in a weird position where the cord could have twisted pretty bad causing a wire to disconnect. I think every gamer looking forward to the PS3 can say “Amen” when Sony allowed for built-in wireless controller support, then again, every other next-gen console supports that.

I’m not done there. When Sony came out with the new slimline PS2s, my friend got one to replace his broken one and had to buy another multitap designed for the new slimline PS2s. Why the f**k didn’t Sony allow us to use our older ones? If I were my friend I’d be really frustrated with Sony at that time.

Besides gaming and Sony’s line of consoles, their digital cameras like to support Sony’s Memory Stick over the other standard digital memory formats like: Compact Flash or Secure Digital. I know this was the case back then but if Sony has changed the digital memory support on their newer digital cameras, feel free to correct me.

Even when I’m working at the IT Support Centre, everybody cringes whenever somebody brings in a Sony Vaio laptop. I feel sorry for the co-worker of mine that has to work on it. Why do we cringe? Sony has developed their Vaio laptops with internal hardware that use a software based service/drivers called “Taxi”. Now where this becomes frustrating is that if you do not have the CD that came with the laptop (which is usually the case when someone brings it in), you have to search the internet for these “Taxi drivers” and it’s worse when the reason you’re looking for these drivers is because the internal wireless module was not installed correctly. Maybe it was a spur of the moment but I found it ridiculous that you had to find these drivers on the internet when they were the reason you did not have internet access. Why couldn’t Sony just use some other standard wireless module that had drivers that came with Windows XP?

Of course, I would like to conclude with the biggie, that being Sony’s new data medium: Blu-ray. I think everybody familiar with the whole Blu-ray vs. HD DVD war shares frustration in both mediums because there isn’t going to be one common format like the DVD. I’m not totally familiar with how two formats branched out but Sony has had the reputation for coming out with its own format (like the mini disc) while everybody has been using the standard. I do get the feeling though that Sony was the one to branch out since almost every other production studio besides Sony has hopped on the HD DVD bandwagon. It seems only films produced by Sony are showing up on Blu-ray based on my observations.

Ending on a good note, I am pleased with one of Sony’s new products: the Mylo. Here’s hoping that they’re heading in that direction for the future.