Sony made the almost fatal mistake of of underestimating Microsoft AND getting completely blindsided by that slumbering behemoth, right at home, who flooded the market with adroitly merchandised cheap thrills, and captivated the public at large with motion control. Pride goeth before a fall, and their serene assurance that launching a year later would make no difference was shattered by a tsunami of public backlash, over exorbitant pricing and other policies. Unlike Western corporations, Japanese businesses plan way ahead and are straightjacketed by entrenched and intransigent bureaucracy, that makes turning on a dime and doing a 180, difficult or impossible. Only now are they recovering their bearings and charting a more realistic course. In the meantime, the corporation as a whole has fallen on very lean times, and is a shadow of it's former self. Junk debt status is rather ignominious for an erstwhile titan of industry.