Tokyo and tech through the eyes of a split pea

Surprise! ATRAC on its way out!

Sony’s Connect service, which saw its writing on the wall even before it was officially launched, is now officially shutting down.  And Sony’s longtime controversial proprietary audio codec ATRAC is headed to the trash.  Surprise, surprise :)

Readers of M@Blog may recall a few entries I posted while working in Sony’s Audio Codec Development Group – the folks responsible for ATRAC.

- Sony get a hint
- ATRAC vs the world

The sad part of all this is that many of the engineers will simply be shuffled around to other groups (and the smart ones will be cherry picked by other companies), when what’s needed is a clean sweep of 20% of the C- and VP-level “managers”.

In fact, who cares?  Sony should keep the old farts and “decision makers”; that leaves more for us startups :)