[Xperia Z3 Themes and Apps] MechaBouncer:
Well that's going to open the floodgates, but I'll try to keep things as brief as I can.

One of the prime examples I have goes back to the PSP and its choice of media. When the PSP came out, Sony was already redesigning their Memory Stick format to create the Memory Stick Pro Duo that the PSP used for saving. However, they created UMDs as the main means of game and media distribution. UMDs were supposed to be Universal Media Discs, but the only thing that ever played them was the PSP. They never made any other players to handle this "universal" media. What they really should have done is used the Memory Stick format from the beginning. Sony is one of the few companies that has control from top to bottom of both the media and the electronics that the media plays on. They could have easily added Memory Stick readers to all of their electronics that could be used to play the content anywhere. I know when the PSP first came out that flash memory capacities were still rather low by comparison, but those ramped up quite quickly in the next couple years. If Sony had gone with it, they could have become a dominant player in the flash memory market and Memory Stick could have actually meant something. Plus it would have simplified the design of the PSP and also made making the Vita backwards compatible so much easier. But look at it now. The format is practically dead. SD formats rule the market and for good reason. Memory Stick never did anything better and cost much more. It's completely irrelevant because Sony never did anything useful with it.

That leads us to the PS Vita. While still a great system, it has languished for several reasons. At this point it's too late to try and jump on the flash bandwagon for content. Everything has moved on to streaming, yet the Vita still lacks in this area when it should excel at it. For a device that was pushed to be a tablet competitor, it couldn't do half the stuff that an Android tablet could do aside from games (which granted are much better than typical Android games for the most part). It took well over a year to get a decent calendar app for it. Basic things like that, let alone the lack of media streaming apps. At least it has game streaming, which was a huge deal for Sony. Except that the system is also hampered by the fact that it is lacking critical buttons needed to play PS3 or PS4 games properly and awkwardly mapping said functions to the touch screens fails pretty hard. You would think that they would have considered this in the first place and perhaps made some sort of accessory to help the situation. But no, they left that up to third party manufacturers to come up with 2 years later. Honestly, it's easier to do Remote Play on a phone with a clamp on the controller to hold it than it is to use the Vita that was supposedly designed for the feature.

And that leads us to the Xperia Play. It had a lot of potential, but Sony did little more than an initial half-assed attempt at supporting it, and then forgot about it. It didn't help that the phone was quite underpowered before it even released. It also didn't help that Sony didn't want to cannibalize potential sales of the Vita. But now look where that is. Yet despite being far less powerful, the Play was far more functional than the Vita could ever hope to be thanks to it being an Android device. What's more, I remember playing OnLive games through the app on my Play years ago while Sony is still trying to get PS Now off the ground. I still think that will be the future of PlayStation as a service you connect to and play your games from anywhere. The Vita is dying and unlikely to get a successor. However, the Xperia Play is much more deserving of one and if it featured true PS Now support, Sony could have a real victory on their hands. But that doesn't mean that they will actually do it.

These are a few of the places where I feel Sony has dropped the ball on something that could have been great had they done some things differently. But all I can do is decide whether what they actually do deserves my money or if they should be ignored. I still see a lot of potential, but I don't know if it will be realized.