Here's my addition to the conspiracy theory. Listen, it's really long but interesting.
The Sony Corporation, world-renowned Japan-based conglomerate of electronics & media.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony
Michael Jackson, Sony Music's biggest artist & the biggest star in the world period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson
Sony Corporation is the origin of the company & the overall ruler of Sony's 5 fingered Sony Group.
The Sony Group's "5 Fingers" are Electronics (under Sony Corporation), Music (under Sony Music Entertainment, Inc.), Movies/TV (under Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc.), Videogames (under Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.), and Financial Services (under Sony Financial Holdings, Inc.).
Sony backdrop
By founders Masaru Ibuka & Akio Morita, Sony began in 1946 in the aftermath of WWII as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha or, translated, Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation, a media/tech company which dealt with the intracacies of communication technology and the substances that communications transmitted on. Basically they wanted to make the recorder & the record. The tape player & the tape itself.
Bell Labs (of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell thus 'Ma Bell' [AT&T], Southern Bell, & the more modern BellSouth) had licensed transistor technology to the company in the early 1950s (thanks to the efforts of Ibuka) & the tech previously used for military purposes was began to used for civilian uses. This led to the company making the 1st commercially-successful transistor radio & later 1st transistor TV (period) in the world. They were very successful & got very rich.
After 12 years of successes they renamed themselves the Sony Corporation in 1958 in order to better reach a larger market outside of Japan. In 1960 they set up their American branch, Sony Corporation of America, in New York City along with the branch's future divisions like Sony Electronics, Inc.
Their success in selling record players, tape players, TV sets, & radios as well as the media each device used led to them wanting to own the companies in charge of putting the content on those media for the record players, tape players, TV sets, & radios.
Not only did they want to make the recorder & the record, the tape player & the tape. They wanted to make the person recorded & the person taped. Sony wanted to own the entire tree of production from top to bottom. Make the record player, make the record, own the recording company, own the artists who record for the record company, make the tape player, make the tape, own the batteries that went into the tape player so it could play the tapes. Own the mics the artists sung into. Own the cameras the artist sung live on the TV sets that we make.
With more power comes the thirst for more control. This was the way Sony did business. Sony was to control & have ownership of media, of communications, of message. They weren't the only company who thought this way, of course. But they had become successful at it.
In 1968, Sony Corp. made a 50/50 venture with U.S.-based CBS Records to form CBS/Sony Records (The 'C' stands for 'Columbia' as in Columbia Phonograph Company, Columbia Records & Columbia Broadcasting System). All that Rock 'n' Roll music playing on the Sony radios & all those Rock 'n' Roll stars showing on the Sony TVs got the company interested into getting into the music business. They were loving all of this American stuff!
By the way, in 1953 CBS Records when it was still just CBS Records created the jazz/classical music label called Epic Records.
Back then, they reserved the Columbia Records brand for the "mainstream" artists. Beginning in 1960, Epic branched out to more musical forms which later included stuff like 1970's Philly soul.
Michael backdrop
In the 1970s, there was a group from Gary, Indiana called The Jackson 5 which included 5 young talented teen/pre-teen Black brothers, the youngest of the 5 being the most outstanding. They got their big break signing with Motown Records, an independent Black-owned label owned by Berry Gordy.
They met with much success at Motown but as they grew up, they found themselves fighting with Motown over artistic control like most Motown artists. Father/manager Joe eventually started scouting out better deals for his sons & stumbled upon a good one at CBS Records.
The complication of one brother, Jermaine, who married into the Gordy family with loyalty forced the others to leave him behind professionally & officially adding youngest Jackson brother Randy into the mix under the new legally clear name The Jacksons (clever one Michael). The brothers started trying out their new sounds at Philadelphia International Records (AKA TSOP 'The Sound of Philadelphia' Records). This was where all that good Philly soul came from & was basically the rival of Motown in the 1970s.
Still a little under owners Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff's creative thumb, the Jacksons do it all by themselves on their 3rd after-Motown album, Destiny, on CBS Records' Epic label. It was successful & proved that there was professional life after Motown. But that outstanding one from the original J5 was about to make an EPIC release on the suitably-named Epic Records.
In the midst of Destiny's victory comes Off The Wall, Michael's 1st adult solo album. It begins to overshadow the brothers' efforts & pushes the outstanding one to a more outstanding level. At the end of the 1970's, a child prodigy was on his way to becoming one of the biggest stars in the world.
Sony & Michael cross paths
Sony had been successful with their Trinitron TVs and Walkman portable radios (the 1st portable music player). You could see rock 'n' roll stars like Michael Jackson give his acceptance speeches at the Grammy Awards on your snazzy Sony brand TV & hear his music anywhere anytime on your Walkman.
The co-op with CBS Records had been lucrative for Sony but when Michael made his solo followup called Thriller, all hell broke loose!
The biggest-selling album of all-time shocked the folks at Guinness as well as everyone else alive & alert. Here it was, an Epic Records artist, a CBS Records artist, a Sony/CBS Records artist on top of the world with his jhericurl, spangly military jackets, & glittery glove. The biggest THANG since Elvis & The Beatles!
Sony must have asked, "Did 'The Making of Thriller' sell better on our Betamax video format or on that ugly VHS video format?" Sorry Sony. It sold better on VHS. They didn't like your Betamax. Sorry.
Sony misses the videogame boat
Sony hadn't seen failure quite like this. It was now the 1980s. Technology had come so far since the days of the transistor radio. The 1940s mainframe computers led to the home computers of the 1970s through Apple. Apple got inspiration from none other than Atari, the company that took the little computer games played by poindexters on the mainframes of MIT & made that form of gaming a business.
1980s is all about music videos & videogames. Michael Jackson & Pac-Man Fever, baby! And strange how a company primarily based in electronics totally missed the boat on this videogames scene.
Atari opened up this biz in 1972 along with the 1st home videogame console the Magnavox Odyssey & then after their fall from grace starting in 1983 here comes some little Japanese playing card/toy company called Nintendo picking up where they left off. Sony's nowhere to be found!
Were videogames a fad? Something like the pet rock? Or were they instrumental in the proliferation of this new Computer Age?
Michael adds to Sony's success
Sony pushed forward on their long-laid plans & took over the partnership between CBS Records & themselves buying out the CBS portion in November 1987, 2 months after the release of Bad, the biggest star in the world's 3rd adult solo album.
Regardless of Guiness status or not, Bad was a success. Bad was Good...for business. So good that Sony awarded their top artist the biggest recording contract in music history!
Why not? He helped Sony sell so many CDs (compact discs). CDs being the technology developed by Sony and European electronics company Phillips in 1982. Leave Me Alone could only be heard on the CD version of Bad not the cassette. And with those CDs sold we at Sony sold so many Discmans, the Walkman's CD-based compadre. CDs were originally meant to replace the old VDs or vinyl discs (records, LPs, 33s, 45s, etc.). But they had use in this new-fangled computer world too.
They could be good for data storage. It'd sure be better than those sorry little 3 1/2 inch floppy disks.
Sony diversifies
Sony failing to get people to accept the Betamax video format made them try harder not to fail pushing their formats onto people. It also made them want to seek broader avenues for their business in order to better push their formats. How about movies? How about videogames?
Sony comes after another (unrelated) Columbia company one more time buying Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. from Coca-Cola in 1989.
Sony forms Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. in 1993 after a falling out with partner Nintendo a few years back over royalties concerning the "Nintendo Play Station".
That music company Sony bought out was renamed Sony Music Entertainment, Inc. in on New Years Day 1991 (same year Dangerous was released).
That movie company Sony bought out was renamed Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. that same year.
The 5 Fingers of Sony are now complete. Electronics the original, Music, Movies/TV, Videogames, and Financial Services (including such things as life insurance & banking). This is the Sony Group of industries.
Backed by their powerful finances, Sony was out to mass deliver their productions of tech & media out to the world better than ever before.
But in the 1990s Sony lost some of its luster to a number of upstart competitors in electronics. The saving grace which did right by the pedstaled Sony name was their videogame console, the PlayStation of 1994/1995.
Sony the videogame company
One lone Sony electronics engineer named Ken Kutaragi saw the potential of videogames looking at his daughter play the Nintendo Famicom (Family Computer AKA the Nintendo Entertainment System) & risked his job in order to show his superiors the benefits of this new media avenue.
He became known as the Father of the PlayStation & oversaw the game console's rise to power with his design input. He rose up the ranks alongside the console's record breaking success (obliterating the achievements of Nintendo & its NES of the 1980s).
CDs became standard as an all-around device thanks to the PlayStation which did away with game cartridges as a medium. CDs in your music player, CDs in your computers, CDs in the game systems. All profits gained by Sony...and, of course, Phillips.
Michael in the 1990s
Michael's reputation while more positive than negative in the early 1990s was damaged after his acts of kindness were taken for weakness by the Chandler family in 1993. He was still Sony's top artist but now they set sights on prioritizing other stars like Mariah Carey for instance.
His Thriller success led to him single-handedly owning the ATV (Associated TeleVision) Music Publishing catalog which included songs by Elvis & The Beatles in 1985 (part of the reason behind the negatives his image faced before the allegations). A diversifying Sony saw a Michael Jackson stripped of his lucrative Pepsi endorsement deals as a result of the character smear & offered The King $90 million for half-ownership.
It was a deal Michael would eventually regret.
Michael focused on family life in the aftermath of the HIStory album era stepped away from the music scene for a good while in the later 90s while Sony broke records with its 100 million selling PlayStation console.
The PlayStation 2
Sony's work in the computer world would lead to the DVD (Digital Video Disc), a super-powered, higher-storage version of the CD. And they pushed this technology partially through the PlayStation 2 of 2000, the successor to the original PlayStation.
Once again Sony hit paydirt & DVD was made just as standard as CDs were before it. They finally beat Betamax rival, VHS, with this superior medium. The PlayStation 2 (PS2) was even more of a success than the PS1 breaking all records as the best-selling videogame console of all-time.
Michael & Sony at odds
A quiet Michael returned in 2001 with album Invincible but the Internet portion of the Computer Age had forever changed the music industry. MP3s, Napster & all kinds of peer-to-peer file sharing services had gutted the record stores' ability to sell. Why buy a $15 CD when I can download a song or whole album for free?
Head honchos of the Sony Music arm of the Sony Corporation were trying to help the company wrangle control of that Sony/ATV catalog away from Michael. Ruin his earning power by not promoting the album & he'd be forced to sell his half.
Michael who had sent a loving message to Sony co-founder Akio Morita as he was nearing death (listen) was now calling this honcho named Mottola devilish. Why Michael was Sony Music's biggest artist! The biggest artist in the world! He had the stroke to be able to separate from 1 of the 4 most major overlord record companies in the world & still own half of that company's music publishing!
A company as giant as Sony was said in equal weight with one skinny 5'11" man named Michael Jackson.
Michael protested his raw deal very publicly frankly & openly. This was just not done! And Michael was not usually one to complain. In the end, Mottola was no longer head honcho of Sony Music. That'll show that devil.
Then Martin Bashir & the 2nd set of allegations came! Michael always talked about conspiracy but never elaborated. Was it simple greed & glory-seeking that caused assaults on his character or was there something larger at work?
He beat the 2nd set of character assassinations handily in a U.S. courtroom & went on with his life. But in the process Neverland was lost along with a lot of hard-earned money. It was rest & recuperation time for The King now staying with the Prince of Bahrain.
Sony losing the game
In the meantime, Sony's videogame department, makers of the PlayStations, ran into difficulty trying to squash their videogame world competitors. Nintendo, a much much smaller company with a vastly superior financial sense, clung to power with their handheld Game Boy Advance consoles. In Japan, that go-go-go country, you don't operate without some type of handheld device when you're on the trains that travel throughout the land to school & work. Nintendo was the king of the handhelds with the Game & Watch and the many versions of the record-selling Game Boy.
The PlayStation disrupted their living room presence but the kids still played Pokémon & all sort of Super Nintendo-reminiscent games on the GBA. That Super Nintendo (Entertainment System) that was supposed to be the Nintendo Play Station, that once-planned co-op between Nintendo & Sony.
Sony tried to finish Nintendo like they did Sega (Michael's favorite game company) with the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The PSP was supposed to be the Walkman for the 21st century. It was supposed to simultaneously stop Nintendo & beat Apple to the punch with its iPod devices. The PSP played music, movies, & games too. The very embodiment of Sony's expansion campaign.
And they got beat by Nintendo's new DS handheld with its simple touchscreen & stylus pen.
The PlayStation 3
Now even the bright spot in the company was getting a little dimmer. The PlayStation 3, the PS2's successor had a lot riding on it. Microsoft the monster had jumped into this videogame thing with the XBox (lost billions doing it but) & had their sequel called the XBox 360 ready to steal Sony's thunder. Meanwhile Nintendo on a rising tide had this little Revolution waiting for them all...soon to be named Wii.
Sony wanted Blu-ray DVDs to be the new standard like each PlayStation made standards before. They pooled all of their 5 Fingers wants & desires into one single console. It was to simultaneously raise the tides of every Sony sector which had been eroded by competition over the years.
Trying to be a supercomputer in a game console with this processor called Cell (made by Sony, Toshiba, & IBM together), it was expensive. $600 U.S. expensive! Consoles don't sell too well after the price point of $300.
End result, Nintendo's Wii crushes all competition at record pace, Microsoft's XBox 360 steals much of Sony's remaining audience & Sony's PS3 ranks at bottom losing money constantly due to price tag being less than manufacturing cost. That's called lossleading. A strategy sure to lead you in loss if you don't transition.
Spiderman movies helped but the PS3 ate up all of the profits the record-selling PS2 made. In about 2 years the PS3's losses ate through the profits the PS2 made in its best-selling 9-year lifespan.
Losses for Sony were so bad that its 2009 fiscal year (ending March 31, 2009) showed a $1.1 billion loss, the first yearly loss the company had since 1995!
Today, Sony in total is in crisis mode trying to stem off losses. No longer the 'it' brand of electronics, music players, radios, or nothing, it's trying everything to reorganize & keep from losing more money. It needs every asset it can get.
Could Sony benefit from Michael's death?
The death of Michael Jackson would be beneficial to many people because a star of his magnitude would surely become more legendary in death. More money can be made from selling his image & sound once people know he's no longer on this earth.
The PS3 is an embodiment of Sony's fall from grace. Is it possible that total control of the Sony/ATV catalog can help Sony get the funds it needs to bring itself back to its former prominence? Is Sony part of the conspiracy that Michael always talked about?
John Lucas
The Sony Corporation, world-renowned Japan-based conglomerate of electronics & media.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony
Michael Jackson, Sony Music's biggest artist & the biggest star in the world period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson
Sony Corporation is the origin of the company & the overall ruler of Sony's 5 fingered Sony Group.
The Sony Group's "5 Fingers" are Electronics (under Sony Corporation), Music (under Sony Music Entertainment, Inc.), Movies/TV (under Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc.), Videogames (under Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.), and Financial Services (under Sony Financial Holdings, Inc.).
Sony backdrop
By founders Masaru Ibuka & Akio Morita, Sony began in 1946 in the aftermath of WWII as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha or, translated, Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation, a media/tech company which dealt with the intracacies of communication technology and the substances that communications transmitted on. Basically they wanted to make the recorder & the record. The tape player & the tape itself.
Bell Labs (of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell thus 'Ma Bell' [AT&T], Southern Bell, & the more modern BellSouth) had licensed transistor technology to the company in the early 1950s (thanks to the efforts of Ibuka) & the tech previously used for military purposes was began to used for civilian uses. This led to the company making the 1st commercially-successful transistor radio & later 1st transistor TV (period) in the world. They were very successful & got very rich.
After 12 years of successes they renamed themselves the Sony Corporation in 1958 in order to better reach a larger market outside of Japan. In 1960 they set up their American branch, Sony Corporation of America, in New York City along with the branch's future divisions like Sony Electronics, Inc.
Their success in selling record players, tape players, TV sets, & radios as well as the media each device used led to them wanting to own the companies in charge of putting the content on those media for the record players, tape players, TV sets, & radios.
Not only did they want to make the recorder & the record, the tape player & the tape. They wanted to make the person recorded & the person taped. Sony wanted to own the entire tree of production from top to bottom. Make the record player, make the record, own the recording company, own the artists who record for the record company, make the tape player, make the tape, own the batteries that went into the tape player so it could play the tapes. Own the mics the artists sung into. Own the cameras the artist sung live on the TV sets that we make.
With more power comes the thirst for more control. This was the way Sony did business. Sony was to control & have ownership of media, of communications, of message. They weren't the only company who thought this way, of course. But they had become successful at it.
In 1968, Sony Corp. made a 50/50 venture with U.S.-based CBS Records to form CBS/Sony Records (The 'C' stands for 'Columbia' as in Columbia Phonograph Company, Columbia Records & Columbia Broadcasting System). All that Rock 'n' Roll music playing on the Sony radios & all those Rock 'n' Roll stars showing on the Sony TVs got the company interested into getting into the music business. They were loving all of this American stuff!
By the way, in 1953 CBS Records when it was still just CBS Records created the jazz/classical music label called Epic Records.
Back then, they reserved the Columbia Records brand for the "mainstream" artists. Beginning in 1960, Epic branched out to more musical forms which later included stuff like 1970's Philly soul.
Michael backdrop
In the 1970s, there was a group from Gary, Indiana called The Jackson 5 which included 5 young talented teen/pre-teen Black brothers, the youngest of the 5 being the most outstanding. They got their big break signing with Motown Records, an independent Black-owned label owned by Berry Gordy.
They met with much success at Motown but as they grew up, they found themselves fighting with Motown over artistic control like most Motown artists. Father/manager Joe eventually started scouting out better deals for his sons & stumbled upon a good one at CBS Records.
The complication of one brother, Jermaine, who married into the Gordy family with loyalty forced the others to leave him behind professionally & officially adding youngest Jackson brother Randy into the mix under the new legally clear name The Jacksons (clever one Michael). The brothers started trying out their new sounds at Philadelphia International Records (AKA TSOP 'The Sound of Philadelphia' Records). This was where all that good Philly soul came from & was basically the rival of Motown in the 1970s.
Still a little under owners Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff's creative thumb, the Jacksons do it all by themselves on their 3rd after-Motown album, Destiny, on CBS Records' Epic label. It was successful & proved that there was professional life after Motown. But that outstanding one from the original J5 was about to make an EPIC release on the suitably-named Epic Records.
In the midst of Destiny's victory comes Off The Wall, Michael's 1st adult solo album. It begins to overshadow the brothers' efforts & pushes the outstanding one to a more outstanding level. At the end of the 1970's, a child prodigy was on his way to becoming one of the biggest stars in the world.
Sony & Michael cross paths
Sony had been successful with their Trinitron TVs and Walkman portable radios (the 1st portable music player). You could see rock 'n' roll stars like Michael Jackson give his acceptance speeches at the Grammy Awards on your snazzy Sony brand TV & hear his music anywhere anytime on your Walkman.
The co-op with CBS Records had been lucrative for Sony but when Michael made his solo followup called Thriller, all hell broke loose!
The biggest-selling album of all-time shocked the folks at Guinness as well as everyone else alive & alert. Here it was, an Epic Records artist, a CBS Records artist, a Sony/CBS Records artist on top of the world with his jhericurl, spangly military jackets, & glittery glove. The biggest THANG since Elvis & The Beatles!
Sony must have asked, "Did 'The Making of Thriller' sell better on our Betamax video format or on that ugly VHS video format?" Sorry Sony. It sold better on VHS. They didn't like your Betamax. Sorry.
Sony misses the videogame boat
Sony hadn't seen failure quite like this. It was now the 1980s. Technology had come so far since the days of the transistor radio. The 1940s mainframe computers led to the home computers of the 1970s through Apple. Apple got inspiration from none other than Atari, the company that took the little computer games played by poindexters on the mainframes of MIT & made that form of gaming a business.
1980s is all about music videos & videogames. Michael Jackson & Pac-Man Fever, baby! And strange how a company primarily based in electronics totally missed the boat on this videogames scene.
Atari opened up this biz in 1972 along with the 1st home videogame console the Magnavox Odyssey & then after their fall from grace starting in 1983 here comes some little Japanese playing card/toy company called Nintendo picking up where they left off. Sony's nowhere to be found!
Were videogames a fad? Something like the pet rock? Or were they instrumental in the proliferation of this new Computer Age?
Michael adds to Sony's success
Sony pushed forward on their long-laid plans & took over the partnership between CBS Records & themselves buying out the CBS portion in November 1987, 2 months after the release of Bad, the biggest star in the world's 3rd adult solo album.
Regardless of Guiness status or not, Bad was a success. Bad was Good...for business. So good that Sony awarded their top artist the biggest recording contract in music history!
Why not? He helped Sony sell so many CDs (compact discs). CDs being the technology developed by Sony and European electronics company Phillips in 1982. Leave Me Alone could only be heard on the CD version of Bad not the cassette. And with those CDs sold we at Sony sold so many Discmans, the Walkman's CD-based compadre. CDs were originally meant to replace the old VDs or vinyl discs (records, LPs, 33s, 45s, etc.). But they had use in this new-fangled computer world too.
They could be good for data storage. It'd sure be better than those sorry little 3 1/2 inch floppy disks.
Sony diversifies
Sony failing to get people to accept the Betamax video format made them try harder not to fail pushing their formats onto people. It also made them want to seek broader avenues for their business in order to better push their formats. How about movies? How about videogames?
Sony comes after another (unrelated) Columbia company one more time buying Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. from Coca-Cola in 1989.
Sony forms Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. in 1993 after a falling out with partner Nintendo a few years back over royalties concerning the "Nintendo Play Station".
That music company Sony bought out was renamed Sony Music Entertainment, Inc. in on New Years Day 1991 (same year Dangerous was released).
That movie company Sony bought out was renamed Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. that same year.
The 5 Fingers of Sony are now complete. Electronics the original, Music, Movies/TV, Videogames, and Financial Services (including such things as life insurance & banking). This is the Sony Group of industries.
Backed by their powerful finances, Sony was out to mass deliver their productions of tech & media out to the world better than ever before.
But in the 1990s Sony lost some of its luster to a number of upstart competitors in electronics. The saving grace which did right by the pedstaled Sony name was their videogame console, the PlayStation of 1994/1995.
Sony the videogame company
One lone Sony electronics engineer named Ken Kutaragi saw the potential of videogames looking at his daughter play the Nintendo Famicom (Family Computer AKA the Nintendo Entertainment System) & risked his job in order to show his superiors the benefits of this new media avenue.
He became known as the Father of the PlayStation & oversaw the game console's rise to power with his design input. He rose up the ranks alongside the console's record breaking success (obliterating the achievements of Nintendo & its NES of the 1980s).
CDs became standard as an all-around device thanks to the PlayStation which did away with game cartridges as a medium. CDs in your music player, CDs in your computers, CDs in the game systems. All profits gained by Sony...and, of course, Phillips.
Michael in the 1990s
Michael's reputation while more positive than negative in the early 1990s was damaged after his acts of kindness were taken for weakness by the Chandler family in 1993. He was still Sony's top artist but now they set sights on prioritizing other stars like Mariah Carey for instance.
His Thriller success led to him single-handedly owning the ATV (Associated TeleVision) Music Publishing catalog which included songs by Elvis & The Beatles in 1985 (part of the reason behind the negatives his image faced before the allegations). A diversifying Sony saw a Michael Jackson stripped of his lucrative Pepsi endorsement deals as a result of the character smear & offered The King $90 million for half-ownership.
It was a deal Michael would eventually regret.
Michael focused on family life in the aftermath of the HIStory album era stepped away from the music scene for a good while in the later 90s while Sony broke records with its 100 million selling PlayStation console.
The PlayStation 2
Sony's work in the computer world would lead to the DVD (Digital Video Disc), a super-powered, higher-storage version of the CD. And they pushed this technology partially through the PlayStation 2 of 2000, the successor to the original PlayStation.
Once again Sony hit paydirt & DVD was made just as standard as CDs were before it. They finally beat Betamax rival, VHS, with this superior medium. The PlayStation 2 (PS2) was even more of a success than the PS1 breaking all records as the best-selling videogame console of all-time.
Michael & Sony at odds
A quiet Michael returned in 2001 with album Invincible but the Internet portion of the Computer Age had forever changed the music industry. MP3s, Napster & all kinds of peer-to-peer file sharing services had gutted the record stores' ability to sell. Why buy a $15 CD when I can download a song or whole album for free?
Head honchos of the Sony Music arm of the Sony Corporation were trying to help the company wrangle control of that Sony/ATV catalog away from Michael. Ruin his earning power by not promoting the album & he'd be forced to sell his half.
Michael who had sent a loving message to Sony co-founder Akio Morita as he was nearing death (listen) was now calling this honcho named Mottola devilish. Why Michael was Sony Music's biggest artist! The biggest artist in the world! He had the stroke to be able to separate from 1 of the 4 most major overlord record companies in the world & still own half of that company's music publishing!
A company as giant as Sony was said in equal weight with one skinny 5'11" man named Michael Jackson.
Michael protested his raw deal very publicly frankly & openly. This was just not done! And Michael was not usually one to complain. In the end, Mottola was no longer head honcho of Sony Music. That'll show that devil.
Then Martin Bashir & the 2nd set of allegations came! Michael always talked about conspiracy but never elaborated. Was it simple greed & glory-seeking that caused assaults on his character or was there something larger at work?
He beat the 2nd set of character assassinations handily in a U.S. courtroom & went on with his life. But in the process Neverland was lost along with a lot of hard-earned money. It was rest & recuperation time for The King now staying with the Prince of Bahrain.
Sony losing the game
In the meantime, Sony's videogame department, makers of the PlayStations, ran into difficulty trying to squash their videogame world competitors. Nintendo, a much much smaller company with a vastly superior financial sense, clung to power with their handheld Game Boy Advance consoles. In Japan, that go-go-go country, you don't operate without some type of handheld device when you're on the trains that travel throughout the land to school & work. Nintendo was the king of the handhelds with the Game & Watch and the many versions of the record-selling Game Boy.
The PlayStation disrupted their living room presence but the kids still played Pokémon & all sort of Super Nintendo-reminiscent games on the GBA. That Super Nintendo (Entertainment System) that was supposed to be the Nintendo Play Station, that once-planned co-op between Nintendo & Sony.
Sony tried to finish Nintendo like they did Sega (Michael's favorite game company) with the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The PSP was supposed to be the Walkman for the 21st century. It was supposed to simultaneously stop Nintendo & beat Apple to the punch with its iPod devices. The PSP played music, movies, & games too. The very embodiment of Sony's expansion campaign.
And they got beat by Nintendo's new DS handheld with its simple touchscreen & stylus pen.
The PlayStation 3
Now even the bright spot in the company was getting a little dimmer. The PlayStation 3, the PS2's successor had a lot riding on it. Microsoft the monster had jumped into this videogame thing with the XBox (lost billions doing it but) & had their sequel called the XBox 360 ready to steal Sony's thunder. Meanwhile Nintendo on a rising tide had this little Revolution waiting for them all...soon to be named Wii.
Sony wanted Blu-ray DVDs to be the new standard like each PlayStation made standards before. They pooled all of their 5 Fingers wants & desires into one single console. It was to simultaneously raise the tides of every Sony sector which had been eroded by competition over the years.
Trying to be a supercomputer in a game console with this processor called Cell (made by Sony, Toshiba, & IBM together), it was expensive. $600 U.S. expensive! Consoles don't sell too well after the price point of $300.
End result, Nintendo's Wii crushes all competition at record pace, Microsoft's XBox 360 steals much of Sony's remaining audience & Sony's PS3 ranks at bottom losing money constantly due to price tag being less than manufacturing cost. That's called lossleading. A strategy sure to lead you in loss if you don't transition.
Spiderman movies helped but the PS3 ate up all of the profits the record-selling PS2 made. In about 2 years the PS3's losses ate through the profits the PS2 made in its best-selling 9-year lifespan.
Losses for Sony were so bad that its 2009 fiscal year (ending March 31, 2009) showed a $1.1 billion loss, the first yearly loss the company had since 1995!
Today, Sony in total is in crisis mode trying to stem off losses. No longer the 'it' brand of electronics, music players, radios, or nothing, it's trying everything to reorganize & keep from losing more money. It needs every asset it can get.
Could Sony benefit from Michael's death?
The death of Michael Jackson would be beneficial to many people because a star of his magnitude would surely become more legendary in death. More money can be made from selling his image & sound once people know he's no longer on this earth.
The PS3 is an embodiment of Sony's fall from grace. Is it possible that total control of the Sony/ATV catalog can help Sony get the funds it needs to bring itself back to its former prominence? Is Sony part of the conspiracy that Michael always talked about?
John Lucas
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