Culture war at Sony?

The AP reports: Sony Video Chief Admits Strategic Mistakes

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 Corp's video-game unit acknowledged Thursday.

Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., 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.

While the content divisions hoped to lock down content in proprietary formats or in DRM, the electronics developers were prevented from developing the kind of products the market demanded. It sounds like the consumer electronics division is unhappy about ceding the first round in the digital music hardware to Apple.