Why betamax lost

This meant consumers could easily find and purchase VHS decks. Ultimately, with Sony always reacting, they were unable to ever gain a lead against VHS and Betamax was virtually forgotten. This is the paradox of technology and the challenge for the designer. The above quote from Norman relates to Sony in that if they introduced too many functions, consumers may be reluctant to purchase their product.

Sony wanted a sleek and easy to use recording device. As Norman comments on, consumers want a product that is usable and understandable, attractive and affordable, all while being reliable. Sony had some of the above aspects but were ultimately unreliable in implementing and incorporating human-centered design.

If Sony could have forecasted their downfalls, we may still have Betamax tapes lying around. Unfortunately, there is no crystal ball. What we can learn from Sony is to listen to consumer demand and design.

If Sony was so concerned about picture quality and sound, a better option would have been to introduce varying levels of Betamax tape decks.

Sony could have marketed a high-quality play version, with limited playback for a higher price and then a lower end version with less picture quality at a lower price. This way, consumers could choose the features that mattered to them. Norman, D. The design of everyday things: Revised and expanded edition. Basic books. Raskin, J. The humane interface: new directions for designing interactive systems.

Addison-Wesley Professional. It impacts everything from material costs to assembly time to shipping costs. Second, the earliest Betamax tapes played for only one hour, VHS played for 2 hours -- enough time for a movie. The ultimate killer, though, was the rental market. When this market grew, VHS dominated in titles. While you could for a while find both formats eventually retailers began giving shelf space to the slightly more dominant brand, which then dominated even more.

So, the Betamax versus VHS dispels the notion that simply being first to market is the most important issue. For any mass manufactured object, the winner is usually the one that is just good enough. When we look at the failure of technological objects in the marketplace we tend to be very pat and trace failure to a single cause. Yet technological things fail in the marketplace for many reason. So, in this series Bill takes a deeper look at the failure of three famous engineered objects: the Picturephone ; the Betamax video cassette recorder, and the Dvorak keyboard.

But then many formats have fought similar battles. Which may be one reason why vinyl is still hugely popular. The nature of digitising discards information which is reconstituted later in the process — for a purist, this loss of information is unacceptable. A high-definition extension of an existing global standard, HD DVD had the early backing of major film studios while Blu-ray looked to be a riskier, unsupported option. Blu-ray was a new technology and format — more delicate than HD DVD and initially more costly to produce as it involved completely new production facilities.

Sony was a major player in Blu-ray as a standard and it wanted a way to give the public access to the new disks — so they made a Blu-ray player the main drive in the PS3. Sony made significant losses on the PS3 in its first years as it was such an expensive drive.