Sony
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It's a Sony.
—Old slogan for Sony Electronics
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A Japan-based electronics Mega Corp that created, among other things:
- PlayStation
- The first mass-market VCR, with Betamax
- The first portable music player, with the Walkman
- Compact Disc (with Phillips)
- Blu-Ray
They make numerous diverse electronic goods, prominently including televisions, stereos, PCs, and cell phones, and game consoles. They also do electronic components, industrial chemicals, batteries, toys, robots, banks, and life insurance. They also have their own visual effects studio, their own Anime studio, their own major record company with numerous labels and even their own Anime channel co-founded with Toei Animation, TMS and Sunrise. One could almost say that, like one of their products, they only do everything[1].
It is also the current owner of Columbia Pictures and Tri-Star Pictures, which along with their record company has led the company to switch sides in the intellectual-property war. Said record company, Sony Music Entertainment, has the dubious distinction of being the only major record company to ship a rootkit (malignant software which takes over your computer) on a music CD, all in the name of the war on piracy.
It's worth noting that Sony Corporation per se only does the electronics and some financial shenanigans. Most of the fingers Sony sticks in other pies are technically indepependant corporations-- Sony Computer Entertainment (games), Sony Pictures Entertainment (motion pictures), Sony Music Entertainment (music), Sony Financial Holdings, etc. That's before getting into Sony Corporation of America, Sony de Mexico, etc... There are dozens of Sony corporations in total (The Other Wiki has a list). One upshot of this is that Sony has been known on more than one occasion to sue "itself" when conflicts arose between, for instance, Sony Music Entertainment and Sony Corporation.
- ↑ including attempts to sue other effects studios for supposedly ripping off one of their own films