Minidisc, like most of Sony's formats, met limited success. It still works, it's still sold, and it's still a "good" format. I don't like it, don't use it, never will; but some people do.

Memory Stick is just as successful as any other flash card; not hugely successful, but it definitely has a following, especially with some of the extra things that they've added with it like TV support and such.

Betamax, a failure? Not quite. It didn't take off in the consumer market the way it could've, and quite possibly should've, given it's superiority to VHS. Beta, however, still makes Sony *loads* of money because it is the broadcast standard. That's right, I'm willing to bet 90% of taped shows/movies that you watch on television are playing off of one form of Beta or another (They have 4, SP [the original], SX [a digital version of the original], DigiBeta [upgraded digital] and MPEG IMX [don't know much about that one]).

I don't think you can really call any of Sony's expenditures "failures"; but I would have to say Sony is *far* overzealous and they really expect far too much out of every new technology they put out.

Quote:
'd respectfully disagree with Rob on this one. Minidiscs were far better than portable CD players

I'd have to disagree with you on that one. Before MP3 players existed and it was between MD and CD, Mds were recording on a 1:1 basis - which meant for 80 minutes of audio it would take 80 minutes to record. It took them a while for the consumer (price wise) level to even compete with USB 1.1 transfer speeds of the first MP3 players; and quite honestly I don't think there's any comparison between an MD player of today and a Karma, though that's just me.