CNET's John Borland has written a fascinating piece that examines the cause behind the spectacular failure of Sony's Connect digital music project. The story doesn't really touch on the Playstation Portable directly, but it's not much of a stretch to say that the failure of Connect has had a significant impact on Sony's support of the PSP as a multimedia device.





Borland's story pieces together the history and relationship between Kinoma Chief Executive Peter Hoddie and Sony and how that relationship's deterioration helped kick the Connect project down the stairs head-first. The head-long plummet culminated, earlier this weekm with the resignation of Phil Wiser, Sony America's chief tech officer and Connect champion.

The idea for Connect sounds pretty simple, Sony wanted to come up with their own iTunes store. But as usual, Sony politics and paranoia got in the way and by the time the software launched it was a painful, insulting pile of useless crap. Oh, and it still doesn't support pay video downloads. Did I mention that? Brian Crecente

How Sony Failed to Connect, Again [CNET]

[news story via kotaku.com]

wow interesting stuff. that kinda sux.