Last year, several Sony executives sacrificed their bonuses in an effort to help the companies bottom line, but this year 40 will be making the sacrifice for the companies greater good. The number is “unprecedented”. The report comes from the Nikkei with is Japan’s premier business newspaper, although Bloomberg have corroborated the story since.
Kaz Hirai didn’t take the bonus last year either, but determined to get the company on the right track, suggested the idea to the other executives. The idea cost the executives about 30-50 percent of their pay (yearly).
Sony have been in trouble for awhile now, and Kaz Kirai axed 10,000 jobs when he started his position as CEO. His goal is to make the company much more efficient – and despite the Playstation brand making them money, Sony have other areas which aren’t doing so hot. The Television brand along with Mobile (cell) phones are two areas that he is struggling to fix right now.
Sony will be making about £261 million profit (predicted, the actual results won’t be published until the 9th May) this year, that’s the first profit they have managed to make in four years. Last year, before Kaz stepped into the CEO ring, they posted their biggest loss in a decade. This “win” for the company is fantastic, but has been helped by a plethora of factors. The sale of various buildings in Tokyo and New York (which went for a pretty penny), combined with a weak yen currency right now are likely to have largely contributed to this.
The games branch of Sony is without a doubt one of the most stable, which is quite a turn around from the time the original Playstation 1 was unleashed to the world. At that time, the company were synonymou with televisions and music devices. This will mean that for Sony, a lot of the companies future will ride on the Playstation 4, which will be released at Christmas this year (2013), and will be competing against the yet to be officially named Xbox 720 Durango, and of course Nintendo’s Wii U.
The next generation war will likely be a reflection of this – Sony cannot afford to heavily lose this next war, especially after the costs to design the new Playstation.
