Sony

Sony has moved into the next generation of the console wars. In broad strokes, the company announced the PlayStation 4 to media at a Wednesday night event in New York City, touting a device with an eye on the cloud and social interaction at its center. What Sony didn't do, however, was actually show the PlayStation 4 itself to its eager audience. A parade of Sony executives and an impressive lineup of game developers came out to tout the console's features. Live game demos showed off its high-performance...

Sony has a $100 billion reason to consider Daniel Loeb's breakup proposal. Loeb, whose Third Point hedge fund has taken a $1.1 billion stake in Sony, is pushing the Tokyo-based company to sell as much as 20 percent of its entertainment business and focus on the "considerable and underappreciated value" of its electronics unit. After Loeb's proposal sparked the biggest rally in Sony shares in more than four years, the $21 billion company still languishes at a cheaper valuation relative to profit than 90 percent of similar-sized consumer...

A group of investors led by Sony closed a $2.2 billion purchase of EMI Music Publishing on Friday, just hours after the Federal Trade Commission announced that it was no longer investigating the proposed deal. EMI's publishing arm owns more than 1.3 million copyrights, with a diverse catalogue of songs including classics such as "Over the Rainbow," Motown favorites, and hits by Beyonce, Norah Jones and Rihanna. The FTC and the European Union were concerned that the proposed purchase would impede competition in the music publishing...

LONDON — Four young computer hackers who masterminded cyberattacks on targets from the CIA to Sony Pictures and Rupert Murdoch's News International were sentenced to up to 32 months in prison on Thursday. The hackers, who were affiliated with the group Lulz Security, had all pleaded guilty to hacking charges. Prosecutors say they also targeted the websites of Britain's National Health Service and the U.K.'s Serious Organized Crime Agency, and posted stolen information including emails...

Sony's PlayStation 4 announcement delivered lots of top-of-the-line gaming specs sure to stir the heart of any video game enthusiast. But it did little to market its console to non-gamers, a risky strategy for a company that's watched the gaming market drift away from its PlayStation brand. Console gaming is falling in the face of a rise in mobile games that users play on smartphones and tablets. Sony reported a 15 percent year-over-year drop for the segment in its latest quarter.

Sony's got something cooking, and a new teaser video drops heavy hints that the Japanese electronics giant is set to show off a brand new PlayStation console. All will be revealed at a Feb. 20 New York event Sony said is dedicated to the "future of PlayStation. " The teaser, posted on Sony's official YouTube PlayStation channel, doesn't tell eager fans much apart from the date of the big event. The company last released a new console, the PlayStation 3, in 2006. The PS3's shipments trail Microsoft's Xbox...

What will you play on your  PlayStation Vita  when it arrives stateside on February 22nd, 2012? You can pick from a list of twenty-five US launch titles that Sony just pushed out. We're happy to see that  Uncharted: Golden Abyss, BlazBlue, Hot Shots Golf  and  Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3  will headline the group, as that'll save us  quite a few dollars on early imports , just as we're sad to hear that the likes of the gorgeous  ...

Sony is offering to remove some of the trial software it crams onto the hard disks of new laptops -- for a fee. Buyers of theconfigure-to-orderversions of its Vaio TZ2000 and Vaio TZ2500 laptops can opt to have Sony remove the some of its own applications, in addition to trial software and games. The "Fresh Start" option, billed as a software optimization, costs US$49.99, and is only available to customers choosing to pay an additional $100 to upgrade the operating system to Windows Vista Business...

Sony has been a bit slow to get into the tablet game, but its first entry into the space — the unusually shaped, Android-powered Tablet S — has generated a lot of curiosity. The excitement isn't just about design, either. The company is one of the few with a footprint and ecosystem big enough to take on the Apple iPad. From a hardware perspective, it's clear that the company is making a statement about how you'll live and work with this device. The basic shape of the Tablet S calls to mind a...

Following its impressive Xperia smartphone showing at CES earlier this month, Sony has revealed an Android tablet companion with some eye-popping hardware — the Xperia Tablet Z. We previously had seen that the Xperia Tablet Z was coming soon , but now it's official. For specs, it features 10.1-inch screen with 1920-by-1200-pixel resolution, Qualcomm 1.5GHz quad-core processor, NFC, LTE, and an 8.1-megapixel camera. The device runs Android 4.1 and weighs 17.4 ounces.

NEW YORK — Stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market: NYSE Sony Corp., up $1.87 at $20.76 A hedge fund proposed that the conglomerate spin off 20 percent of its entertainment unit and use the money to boost its electronics unit. Trina Solar Ltd., down 52 cents at $5.41 The Chinese solar panel maker cut its first-quarter estimate for module shipments and may revise its full-year shipment outlook.

NEW YORK — Stock indexes are moving higher in early trading on Wall Street as a record-breaking advance on the stock market got moving again. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 26 points at 15,117 shortly after the opening bell Tuesday, a gain of 0.2 percent. The broader Standard and Poor's 500 index moved up five points to 1,639, or 0.3 percent. The Dow and the S&P 500 closed at record highs on Friday. Both indexes are up 15 percent so far this year. Sony...

TOKYO — The U.S. hedge fund manager renowned for shaking up Yahoo Inc. has set his sights on Sony Corp., proposing that the Japanese electronics giant spin off up to 20 percent of its movie, TV and music division and use the money to strengthen its ailing device manufacturing unit. Sony rejected the plan, but analysts latched onto the idea as a way for Sony to unlock hidden value. Sony's U.S.-traded shares closed up $1.87, or 9.9 percent, at $20.76 on Tuesday after...

TOKYO — Sony Corp. is back in the black for its fiscal fourth quarter, recording a 93.9 billion yen ($948 million) profit, with big help from a weaker yen that boosts overseas earnings. The Japanese electronics and entertainment company also dragged itself back to profit for the fiscal year ended March 31, following four straight years of red ink. It reported Thursday annual earnings of 43 billion yen ($434 million), a reversal from a loss of 457 billion yen...

Sony has announced two new phones — the Xperia SP and Xperia L — to broaden its smartphone lineup this season beyond the flagship model Xperia Z the company revealed in January. Sony currently holds a fourth-place position in the worldwide smartphone market , with 4.5 percent of the total market, sandwiched between Chinese smartphone makers Huawei (4.9 percent) and ZTE (4.3 percent). The firm has said that it's trying to move into the third-place spot behind Apple and Samsung —...

Mozilla Firefox announced several key carrier and manufacturing partnerships that may give it a fighting chance at gaining a foothold in the smartphone market. Mozilla makes for an interesting new player in this space, particularly in emerging markets overseas It announced Sunday at the Mobile World Congress that it will work with carriers such as Deustche Telekom, KDDI, Telefonica and Sprint around the world to offer another smartphone platform to consumers. Right now the platform war for...

Eavesdrop on any conversation between a journalist and a camera manufacturer, and you're guaranteed to hear some variant of the question, "what are you doing about the rise of smartphone cameras?" At a recent Sony briefing in New York City, the company didn't even wait to be asked — it addressed the question head on, and told us that overall, point-and-shoots are on the wane. Point-and-shoot camera sales were down 20 percent last year across the industry, with entry-level shooters declining the most sharply, and many expect...

Sony and Google?s tag-team tactics might not hurt Amazon and its Kindle reader, but this is certainly a step in the right direction. For who, exactly, we?re not so sure. Sony announced a bit ago that Google has opened up more than half-a-million of its books to Sony?s eReader. The catch? All of Google?s archived books are about as old as your granddad, if your granddad were 80-years-old.

Sony's PlayStation 4 announcement delivered lots of top-of-the-line gaming specs sure to stir the heart of any video game enthusiast. But it did little to market its console to non-gamers, a risky strategy for a company that's watched the gaming market drift away from its PlayStation brand. Console gaming is falling in the face of a rise in mobile games that users play on smartphones and tablets. Sony reported a 15 percent year-over-year drop for the segment in its latest quarter.