Does Sony want my money?

Well, I'm back in Guangzhou for another business trip. Consequently, I have no access to photo's of Gerry which means that my enforced period of blogging about Gerry has come to an end. Don't worry though, I will of course blog about him again in the near future (he is after all, my favourite blog topic)!

Anyway, now that I've finished blogging about Gerry, I reckon its time for me to go back to moaning and complaints!

As many of you are no doubt aware, I am not a fan of Sony. I really don't like how this company does business and I feel justified in this considering the amount of crap which Sony has been involved in over the years. As that stuff has happened in the past, I'm not going to waste words going over it again. Besides, there's plenty of new stuff from Sony that I can bitch about instead...

In one sense, I feel like I'm taking the moral high ground in not purchasing Sony products. However, I only recently realised that not only do Sony not care that I don't purchase their products, they don't even want me to purchase their products! Imagine my shock!!

Basically, what happened is this. OXM, a magazine focused on the Xbox, conducts a review of one HDTV every issue. They reason that people with a shiny new Xbox 360 may want a shiny new HDTV to get the full graphics experience. For the March 2008 issue, they wanted to review the Sony Bravia HDTV. To this end, they contacted Sony PR for the purpose of getting a TV to review. The Sony PR rep said no.

According to the author, the reason for this rejection is that OXM is a microsoft focused magazine and that Sony are a Playstation creating company. In the words of the rep, "I have to support our friends over at our sister company."

The first thing I want to say is that I fully support the rights of Sony to decline to provide a TV for review purpose. An HDTV is expensive and I'm sure Sony PR won't give out a TV to just any Tom, Dick or Harry who asks for one. If they had said, "we don't think your publication has enough of a readerbase to justify sending a TV to" or "Sony will pass on this opportunity" (without embellishing), I wouldn't have cared. That decision is perfectly within their rights and I would have nothing to blog about.

However, their decision not to send a TV for review seems to be based on the fact that OXM is focused on a Microsoft product. I don't own a PS3 either and have no intention of ever buying one. Does this also then mean that they wouldn't want to sell me a Bravia TV as they need to "support" their friends in the Playstation division?