PriceSCAN Blog

But first, a couple of words to qualify (or disqualify) my review. I am not much of a computer-based gamer. I played a little PACman and knocked off a couple of Klingons in the very early stages of each of computer based gaming, but since I've always had a job that kept me at my computer for many too many hours anyway, I've never found the games to be of much interest.

I can also add that I'm no longer 10 years old. If I were, I might have a more charitable view of this. But then, again, if I were I'd probably be more interested in angling my parents to take me to Disneyland rather than go through this rather dull display.

However, I do like to use computers for information storage (particularly my photos and my music) and as a control element in my (largely TV based) entertainment system. Nothing very elaborate, mind you, but I like having 30 or 40 hours of reasonably findable television available.

So, insofar as the "Sonywonder"land is devoted to gamers or 10 year olds, it will miss me. Otherwise, though, I am a pretty good market for their products, typing this review on one of my desktop Sonys, carrying a couple of laptop Sonys, having a reasonably elaborate (but sub-aficianado) home HiFi setup from Sony, an MD walkman or two and other pieces of Sony flotsam and jetsam from previous ages.

Three Pieces

There are three pieces of the Sony Headquarters Experience to discuss.

The Store

The store was a disappointment to me. It seems much smaller than the one associated with the Metreon in San Francisco. I saw some of the low-line headphones and walkmen there, but have a hard time believing that it is anything like a complete presentation of Sony's line.

But perhaps in the rush of a pre-Christmas weekend, the crowds made everything seem smaller, narrower and harder to look at.

In any event, I'd expect to see a more interesting display at a J&R or other large volume sales outlet.

Sonywonder: The Experience

The Sonywonder struck me as a bit bizzare. First, you wait in line for an elevator which takes you up about 4 stories in the atrium of the building. Coffee is in sight, a giant Spiderman hangs upside down on the wall, but there's no opportunity to investigate Sony products. You just stand there.

The elevator takes you up four stories and from there you will gradually walk down ramps for two or three stories. All of this seems to be necessary to accomplish some crowd `control', and to space out the arrivals as some of the steps in the process of going through the `maze' take a considerable time and otherwise backed up lines throughout the exhibit would be unavoidable.

Your first offical activity is to get `registered' by creating a picture and voice record that can be used to follow you through the exhibit place. Most of the time all that is done with this is that your picture will occasionally appear on some screen as you wander through the exhibit. I guess I am not Narcissistic enough for this. I'd actually rather see Britney Spears on the screen rather than my own face. I get enough of that shaving in the morning.

As one of the many available experiences I did the `Sound Lab'. What it was supposed to be about I'll never know. All I can say is that I managed, along with some of the other visitors who shared the experience with me, to produce a perfectly terrible sounding piece of musical junk for which I kept getting wonderful congratulations about how well I was doing and how wonderful it sounded (from the machine, of course, not from anyone associated with the Philharmonic). If kids have to put up with this kind of barrage of compliments for the terrible junk that they, on occasion, produce, it is no wonder that we witness a decline in `taste'

I might add, I guess, that I found the description of what we were supposed to be doing quite incomprehensible. Perhaps there was no point to it. If so, they managed to ommunicate that---at least by example.

At the end of all of this you're given a `document' with your name and picture on it. No sound clip, and a reproduction on pretty uninspiring piece of paper. I think I'd rather have had a shot of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Mischa Barton or whomever. I would have thought that the kids might too---perhaps with a breathy bombshell saying something come hither with your name. Oh well.

Qualia

I guess this must have all prepared me for the visit to the Qualia part of the store. I don't get that either. Here we have considerable incredibly expensive New York floorspace devoted to displaying (along with TVs you'd see at a Best Buy) three of the current four items in Sony's `Qualia' line. The items I saw were numbers 10, 16 and 17. I know a number 4 exists, but I don't think I saw it. I suppose numbers 11, 12, ... exist too, but I don't have even the vaguest clue of what they are about---the may well exist only in Japan for all I know---so I can only review the three items I saw.

And bizzare items they were, too.

Headphones One was a set of headphones. You might ask `What's odd about that?' Well, nothing is odd about that until you look at the price tag and realize that it is not saying $26.00, it is saying $2600.00. (The first listed prices were $3200.00, but as time has passed it has fallen, even with the dollar's collapse) Just let little Johnny get his peanut-butter hands smeared all over that one. But these days it's probably only a fifth of his tuition to grade school anyway.

I understand that there is a group headphone aficianados---HeadFi people---who are deeply into headphones, but I rather suspect that they are small in number, and while some of them may be willing to spend huge amounts, it is hard to make up much sales volume out of items that have prices so far out of scale.

MD Player Then there's a $1900.00 MD player. Certainly it's very nice looking. But it looks more designed to sit on a desk than to actually be carried about, and I thought that being carried about was why MD players were so useful.

Camera A $4000+ camera completes the list. This looks fine too, but their specs don't seem to indicate that they are really all that wonderful. The camera itself seems oddly conflicted. It is incredibly tiny, but a 2 megapixel camera is nothing special these days, and while the camera itself is tiny, it comes packed in briefcase-sized case, necessary to handle all of the addons that connect it to its world.

So where's the market?

I haven't got a clue. Certainly only the rich. Given the emphasis on style, one would have to suspect that looking good is an important part of it. None of this stuff looks durable enough to put up with `pro on the battlefield' conditions. None of the specs indicate to me that any normal person will be able to see or hear the differences between what is produced by this equipment and stuff that costs about one-tenth its price.

Sony might say: "Sweets to the sweet..."

I keep thinking "Have some nuts!"