The future of Sony Connect

Care to take a stab at guessing this one? I'll give you a hint: it's fabulous news. As you may have gathered from Sony's abandonment of SonicStage, the company is giving its Connect music store the ax as well. Considering the new Walkmans are now PlaysForSure devices capable of playing both purchased and subscription WMAs--and they support unprotected AACs purchased from iTunes--it only makes sense to get rid of the faltering (and horrifically designed) store. For my part, I'm pleased as punch by the death of SonicStage and Connect. Yes, I'm a little bit sadistic...especially this week. For a less insensitive take, check out the News.com story.

This e-mail from Sony sums it up nicely.

[make_or_break]

Early reports of S-word Connect's timely demise...

...were spot-on true, after all. All those S-word fanboys who gave it up for dead-out-the-box ATRAC must be crying in their corn flakes about now. I admit my arm hurts BIG TIME from patting myself continuously on the back, but I KNEW this was one venture that was destined to FAIL, and that the logical choice was for the S-word to go to the PlaysForSure camp, which THEY DID (more self-congratulations are in order, baby). I also recall getting it full-on from the S-word fanbase here on CNET for saying so; I feel SO vindicated...

Now, the question will be whether the S-word will totally flub up the remaining Connect entity, the Reader Book Store (I [b]do[/b] have an interest in that enterprise, since I have one of those devices).