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Why do you think Sony was successful?

The reason Sony gained success in consoles was because they sought a different audience. Sega and Nintendo were marketing towards children and families (with a few more mature games on the side, EX- Mortal Kombat). But Sony decided to go after the teenage crowd. (A market that really hadn't been tapped.) This let the PS1 fill a gaping hole in entertainment options. And people bought the product. This set the foundation for later systems.

But as for why their other divisions aren't doing so well... It comes down to the fact that there is much stiffer competition. Consider smartphones... For other big names you have Samsung, Google (via the HTC brand), LG, Motorola, apple, Blackberry, Microsoft (and Nokia), plus a number of other smaller names like Hauwei. That's easily 8-10 other choices compare to the console scene where they have basically only Microsoft and Nintendo to contend with. (Note I said console scene... I am not including PCs or mobile gaming here because those are different situations and don't compare so easily.)
Sony also suffers from problems with their marketing just not being there. I mean how many people have heard of the Xperia phone? How many people know how many of them there are? (I didn't even know they released the Z4 until like 6 months after when I was looking up the Z3 again and noticed it.) And the phones actually are pretty decent, specification wise, compared to other popular phones (the iphone 6s plus and Galaxy Note 5).

Sony Pictures is in a rough spot because they had management that made some choices which didn't go over well. Rebooting Spiderman too early was one major thing, then the whole Ghostbusters fiasco.
 
I think the huge fan base for games like Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Gran Turismo, Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot, Twisted Metal, etc which all sold millions of copies made Playstation successful because if you wanted to play a game series like Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts, you needed a Playstation console.

Game series like Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Spyro the Dragons are also very great at advertising the games to gamers who are into RPGs and action games.

I think people don't really buy Sony Electronics because of all the cheaper alternative brands like LG, Samsung, Sanyo, Insignia, Motorola, and other electronic brands which make similar electronics which are similar to Sony, and cost less.

People who want to buy more expensive electronics sometimes buy brands like Bose, Beats, Alienware, Nikon, Canon, and Apple because these brands are better at advertising their products to people who need higher quality electronics.
 
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VZ hit it spot on, actually if it wasn't for Sony's gaming division (which back then the Sony excs were iffy about starting one after the Nintendo partnership fell through) I would say its safe to say Sony would be the next company to completely shut down.

But what keeps their gaming division going today is that they make actual games at high standards. Nintendo does the same but not at same standards tech wise. This is why MS failed with Xbox one because they focused more on tv and sports than games.
 
Better management of the division is what id say. People behind Playstation identified a market gap early on, built upon that and give what the gamers want. Whereas the other divisions kind of lose focus and although are good spec wise just don't really appeal to anyone.
 
When Sony first came on the scene it just seemed as though they had so much diversity and games that were officially read to be purchased on their console that it was impossible to stop them. Their ability to upgrade and even become more compact held the Playstation Brand in longer standing than most of its competition. Playstation was so much like X Box is today except where we now have x box kinect Sony was dishing out PSPs PS1s and analog controllers to go with all of the amazing games that they had.
 
Sony actually has a fairly good line of HDTVs besides the Playstation line so they are not a 'one-trick pony' by any means. Sony got lucky in that Sega and Nintendo continued to use gaming cartridges rather than CDs which left them at a big disadvantage to Sony when it came to how much content/graphics could exist for a particular game as well as the amount of storage available for saved games and other information. Quite possibly, if Nintendo made the N-64 a CD-based gaming system using a memory card as storage, they could have stopped Sony in their tracks as Nintendo was the Leviathan of the gaming industry in the mid-90s. Instead, game developers could created more content rich features and gameplay on the CD medium so the Nintendo-64 set them back by several years and they have never recovered from the head start they gave Sony forcing them to target the younger age group demographic.
 
Better exclusives, plain and simple. I was thinking about getting a PS3 or an Xbox 360 back around 2009/10 and I only settled PS3 because of games like Uncharted and Heavy Rain. Not to mention Last of Us, or Little Big Planet. I eventually got an Xbox 360 as well, but performance wise I never saw a difference.
 
There's no doubt for me that the success of Sony as been down to how they've handled themselves when it's come to gaming. The gaming arm of this massive corporation as no doubt played its part, but also the marketing of the consoles as also been fundamental in that success also.

Sony are seen as a company that cares about what it does in the gaming industry, whereas I think Microsoft are seen as only bring in it for the money. Wether that's true or not doesn't matter, it's what people believe that counts, and I think that's where Sony have won the war, by convincing gamers that they are on our side.
 
I think Sony is successful because you can play online for free. I also think Sony has cheaper games. Xbox is expensive and playing online cost money.
 
I'm pretty sure its just because it was a different department in Sony vs the many other areas that struggle. It's true that all of its other tech is hardly innovating but that's probably because most of it isn't affordable. I mean, I saw a video the other day with some very cool projector they made that can be placed under a wall or a screen. Which is unheard of but then there was the price tag making it unfeasible for the majority of consumers. So in reality they make cool stuff but not at a realistic price setting!
 
The Sony PS3 and the XBox 360 were fairly similar in terms of quality and variety of games that were available for each platform and you could have made the case that the XBox would have won out over Sony given the huge PC/Laptop/Tablet base that utilize the Window OS and Windows Software packages. However, the XBox One was clearly inferior in gaming quality to the titles available for the PS4 and I suspect this gap will persist for at least the next two years.
 
If you read any of the leaked Sony e-mails highlights you would understand why their movie division is struggling. I've seen Sony jump on upcoming market trends and fads a little to early in the last decade, 3D was a disaster, 4K is just now about to payoff. Sony's product is higher quality, but it's usually the highest priced in the retail marketplace as well.

The Playstation has the benefits of being one of a few competitively priced gaming options with a very well defined and hungry grouping of potential buyers. However much luck they had with their initial they've made the best of it, especially with having a roster of first party titles while never committing to any mascot's that would eventually date their brand.
 
I think that the reason they were so successful was because they brought something new to the gaming arena. When they launched the PS3 they launched it with a blueray drive, at the time that the others were still using CDs. This means buy the time it got onto the market they weren't only thinking of the gamers but also people that just wanted to watch blueray movies. The CPU used at the time was the first with multiple cores both in the console world and the pc world, it had 6 cores in relation to the 1 core used by other consoles and was developed in partnership with Toshiba. There were even some Linux operating systems developed for the PS3. It had something for everyone.
 
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