
You've all heard it said: "Sony is a hardware company and Microsoft is a software company." But that isn't really true for either company. They each may be more focused on one side or the other but each has strengths in both sides of the equation.
Microsoft: Keyboards, Mice, Controllers, phone systems, zune, game systems all have been made by them and with the exception of one game systems reliability they have been rated very high to excellent quality. Who here doesn't own at least on Microsoft hardware product.
Microsoft develops the Hardware and farms out the manufacture to other companies which may be the reason for spotty quality control. If using other companies in the manufacturing process is what makes Microsoft not a HW company the same can be said about Sony. (IBM, Taiwan Semiconductor, NEC) all manufacture for Microsoft
Sony: Embedded devices all have software (Sony mp3 players, Internet capable fridges, data storage and transfer equipment), SCEI is the world largest developer for games (leaving aside SOE which is not part of SCEI but huge in and of itself), Sony has created many standards for Computing and Data Storage. Sony also has created their own extensions for their computers and their own data services. Sony employs well over 4000 people in the software development side....
Sony does the same as Microsoft does for hardware manufacturing: NEC, Sharp, Toshiba, LG all make product for Sony (in fact LG used to be a 2nd party Sony manufacturer) Sony has Sharp make 40% of their TVs, Toshiba and IBM supply embedded chips etc...

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Everytime i go the store to buy software i have to make sure its Sony so i know its going to be of the best quality possible you know what they say.
if it aint Sony then i wont buy it.
Sony is a hardware company first, always has been. It's evident in their forward thinking technology. It explains why the PS3 software features are a little behind the 360 features because MS is a software company first. That doesn't mean they can't do the other very well though.
Is farmed out to development studios and are just published by Sony.
"Who here doesn't own at least on Microsoft hardware product."
Guess who?
I never touched any M$ product since the age of 19 again! Before that
time I've develop over 4 years under Windows using M$ tools and
products like VC++, MSJournal, MFC, Win95, and WinNT 4.0. However,
there was a day were I've thrown it all out of the window due major M$
bugs, flaws, instability issues, and whatsoever. But I have to admit that
I've learned a lot, and yes, VC++ was (is?) a really nice tool. The
situation, on developing under windows, might have been changed
somewhat, but I don't even care. Serious developing is only done under
[linux], at first instance. Of course, there is a lot of developing going on
under windows, but I'm luckily far off from this rather dependend
community. Many "windows" developers would change over to linux if
they would have the ability to do so, but most of them are "forced" to
stick with it due to either a given business model, the type of application
or simply by money contrains.
I've gone another way.