The 3 largest pro camera manufacturers surprised guests at this year's Computer Electronics Show with a new joint project.
Announced towards the end of Sony's presentation of their new 4K Twitter Table, the crowd was welcomed with music from Ace Of Base as executives from each company roller-bladed on to the stage.
Dressed in hipster attire, Sony's Kazuo Hirai took center stage Walkman in hand.
"We were in charge of mobile technology before it was cool." claimed Hirai as he opened the Walkman to reveal what looked like a silver cassette tape.
The device, code named RET90, or "REmember The 90's" supposedly makes consumers revert to their shopping mindset to what it used to be in the 1990's. Using the same signal once used by analog TV, the RET90 uses the waves from years past to make people still feel that technology is nowhere beyond 1995. A signal that has been up for sale since all TVs went to digital and apparently bought jointly by the three companies.
Within moments of the RET90's demonstration, attendees of CES suddenly wanted to actually visit brick and mortar stores for their technology needs, wondered to other booths for VHS tape recorders and thought their smarts phones where just pretty alarm clocks.
Best Buy called it "The Highlight of 2014". "With this device, consumers will actually visit our stores and completely forget what a Bar Code Scanner App is." boosted Best Buy's founder, Richard Schulze.
Immediately after the product's demonstration... Canon, Nikon and Sony directed attendees to their Point and Shoot Camera booths. Instead of saying "I have a smart phone, why would I need these?", attendees looked onto the marginally better P&S Cameras from last year in total wonder.
"With the RET90, we don't have to focus our R&D on costly new projects. We can make use of resources we've had available for years and the consumer won't know the difference." stated Nikon's Makoto Kimura.
For the past few years, all three companies created their Mirrorless Cameras lines to try to make consumers forget about the ever improving cameras on their smart phones. Sales of Point And Shoot Cameras dropped sharply since the iPhone 4's release but the Mirrorless line for both Canon & Nikon turned out as complete failures to sway the public. Sony, only gained marginally on their Mirrorless line and with the RET90, consumers will do what many executives of the tech giants would like...to ignore the internet and revert back to the 1990's when it comes to hand held devices.
"The 90's and earlier were our Golden Age. A person can come into our stores, pay 10% ABOVE SRP and be none the wiser." says NY Pro Camera Store owner, Shlomo Bergstein. "Now they come in with their smart phones, amazon listing print outs and we are forced to come clean about the pricing. With RET90, we can sell them at prices we want and something the consumer already has."
Adobe's CEO, Shantanu Narayen randomly stepped in during our interview and stated with his strong accent..."With RET90, I can continue to sell software for 3x the price in Australia as I do in the States. By the way, have you heard of the Creative Cloud?" He soon jumped over to each CES attendee at arms length asking, "Do you know about the Creative Cloud?" before security escorted him out.
Sony, Nikon and Canon are hoping this device will revive the currently dead point and shoot camera business as well as other products consumer have lost interest in since the 1990s.
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Due to Sony, Nikon and Canon's various, long and undecipherable SURE, MVP and MAP policies however...we weren't allowed to list the images and expected pricing of the RET90 in fear of deportation, execution...or just a "warning".
#CES2014
