THE ENTERTAINER COMPANY Sony Corp., President and CEO NET WORTH $5 million AGE 62 ADDRESSwww.sony.com BIO Everyone owns a Sony something. Name your pleasure and Sony's got the goods:
movies, music, video games, even robotic companionship (check out Aibo, the
hard-wired terrier). Some even say Sony's got the slickest set of PCs (have you
seen the Vaio?). The king of all this cool stuff is Nobuyuki Idei, co-CEO of the
$56 billion company since May 1998 (the co- dropped from his title in June). In
April Idei announced a reorganization of the company to focus on home
networking--not connecting that PC and printer in the den, but linking all those
(Sony) gadgets, entertainment systems and appliances elsewhere in the house. The
heart of Idei's smart-home vision: the next version of Sony's hugely popular
PlayStation game console. Idei boasts that the new box, due out in Japan in late
1999, will do more than knock your eyes out with graphics-rich games; it will
become the nerve center of the networked living room. BEST LINE "I am certain that PlayStation has already surpassed the stage of a
mere game machine." FORWARD TILT Watch Sony's evolving relationship with Microsoft for signs of
where entertainment and info tech will merge. They are partners in WebTV and
co-developed a piracy-proof digital-music format called MS Audio. But they could
also end up as rivals. The chip that powers PlayStation 2 could be the sword that
slays the Wintel dragon.
