Playstation 4 success aside, and even with the recent unveiling of their new building in Silicon Valley, Sony is still on the ropes with a $ 1.1 billion loss. This time, they are rumored to be considering the sale of their old headquarters in Shinagawa Ward, known as the NS Building.
The NS Building has little relevance to Playstation, but it is important to Sony, and perhaps even, to Japan. It was here that founder Akio Morita developed his 1st string of innovative devices that equated Japan to consumer electronics to the world throughout the 50s to 70s. These include the tape recorder, transistor television, and the Betamax. Morita would make Sony a global brand before the likes of Samsung and Apple. To put things in some perspective, in this same era Hiroshi Yamauchi spent a decade playing with different businesses (the love hotel and taxi service) before settling onto toys in the 60s.
Moving back to here and now, this cut will not lead to the displacement of any employees. The 1,000 employees working in the medical sector in these buildings now will move to the head office.
To be fair to Sony, they already unloaded from the location in 2007, moving said head office to Minato Ward. If plans push through, Sony will still have its own historical museum and several smaller properties in the area.
Still, it may be confusing to see the success of the Playstation 4 and resolve it with its parent company’s stumbles and attempts to cut costs. Not all my agree, but as I see it, Sony is investing in gaming heavily as one of their current bright spots. Whether Playstation will continue to have a future under Sony, however, must seriously be called into question if this contraction continues in the coming years.
