Battered by slumping sales and a strong yen, Sony shares lost 70 percent of their value in 2008.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jiRoFEE4E8pyqLjd8WDQ9yE_Mz0AD95SPNCO0

Sony Corp. yesterday informed the 560 employees at its Westmoreland County television plant -- the Japanese company's last remaining television plant in the United States -- that their jobs would be phased out over the next 16 months.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08345/934065-28.stm

Details on Sony's big restructuring are coming soon, but one report states that Sony may look to rely more on sales of software instead of hardware. Howard Stringer is apparently battling the "old guard" at Sony.

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/sony-to-focus-more-on-software-following-restructuring/?biz=1

I don't know what's happening with Vegas, not too worried really.

But on a similar note the Flight Simulator team was thinking everything was lovey-dovey over at Microsoft with a product line 27 years old and still producing, but the entire team was cut today apparently.

The jist is it can happen to anyone and any division in a stroke of pen. It matters not if it's profitable, growing or not. And no they are not always sold to someone else. That can be anticompetitive and sometimes divisions are worth more for their tax writeoff than could get in a sale.

But I'm not really concerned as far as this product goes.

BigRockies.com Your Home in the Rockies!

Bigrock:

I agree with you on all counts.

Some Dilbert cartoons are a good insight into big business, they are not just satirical, but factual. I worked for a company in 1995 that Dilbert must have been getting his content from.

Point: Logic and rational thought has absolutely nothing to do with some business decisions, especially in very large business enterprises.

Very sad to hear that MS Flight Simulator got the boot.
I really enjoy that program.......
Some interesting times we live in!

Ted

I have no idea about the financial stability of SCS. I only know one thing. Each release of Vegas 8 has been more and more disappointing to me. That's not "too" bad. What really bothers me is SCS's lack of communication with it's user base. (Us)

Is it just me or do we each seem to answer each others questions far better that SCS does. We seem to be getting less and less information form the company these days. (And when we cant help each other any more,..we all just wonder out loud if it will be fixed in the "next release".) Sometimes I wonder if anybody at SCS even reads our posts.

Is it just me or does anybody else feel more and more "disconnected" from SCS'?

If so,...why is that happening? Is it that they dont care or is it that they dont have the resources ($$$) anymore?

CT

What's odd is that they have a key fact (as publicly stated by an SCS executive to a broadcast editor recently), "the Vegas user base increased 50% over the last 12 months," and then they go hide this under a bushel.

They could actually save money if they fired their useless advertising agency (that is like.any.other), and just typed into Word what is so great about Vegas from the standpoint of an editor in his daily work, added a web address to go find deep info and to order, then printed this one page Word document out in one simple clear font and put it on a full page in one of the remaining print pubs.

It would create quite a stir, I believe, especially since prettiness has become so common in advertising that people tune it out.

I have many web sites, and have found in testing that uglier is often better, because customers say it adds to the credibility. No kidding.

No slick marketing messages either, as people often find these revolting.

"Is it just me or do we each seem to answer each others questions far better that SCS does."

If you're talking about this forum, that's exactly what it's for, it's a user forum. We answer each other's questions, that's how it is intended to work and it works very well that way.

I don't feel any more connected or disconnected from SCS than I ever have. I have the exact opposite opinion from you, each version of Vegas has given me new tools and capabilities (and it never crashes.) I'm in Vegas pretty much all day, every day, seven days a week and I just merrily get my work done. I produce hundreds of hours of stuff every year and Vegas hasn't let me down yet.

Vegas Pro 8.0 with it's relatively low and comparatively very low cost compared against the three A's works like a pawn shop in hard times. It draws more people in looking for the same thing but at a lower cost. Oh, and it's better than the other AAA's too.

On second thought....

Sony needs to sell Vegas back to Madison. Then we'd get new innovative features like in the old days...i just started using Vegas at 6, but I heard the old stuff was cutting edge.

I remember when Sony bought Sonic Foundry and everybody was going Wow! Gee wow! Zonka DOO! Holy Cow! YYaahhhhoooooo! Zippity DOO DA! BigTime! Vegas is going to time warp 7 with all the old Sonic Foundry programmers. My how times have changed.
JJK

Tell me if you think I am wrong because I am just guessing, but I think that the entire SCS team is probably under ten employees so why close it down when it is probably a relatively inexpensive operation to keep.

John

I know and have met enough SCS crew to say it's probably over 10 (maybe under 25??? I'd say certainly under 50 though), but sometimes it's hard to remember who is "Sony" and who is Sony Creative Software.

Dave

Cliff - SCS was just available the other day for direct communication (Project manager and a couple others) and it was even posted about here on the user forums. I can't ask for more than that. The lead programmer for my software makes himself available to answer questions in a virtual trade show event. I don't want him taking all his time up answering the questions of people who don't know what their doing, or he'd never have time to get his work done.

I have had no problems getting satisfactory communication from SCS whenever I needed it either ( I just used the support portion of this very website ).

Dave