New Applications are online!

You are right, there's nothing wrong with customisation to suit a customer's specific needs, in fact it is often to be welcomed - this happens in many areas: clothing, cars, sports equipment, musical instruments, furniture etc

What I am speaking about is something different...

Who owns the application that you 'buy' from Sony Playmemories?  Not you!  When you 'buy' it you are in reality only 'buying' the right to use it and that right is not transferable to somebody else - this has already been proven with MP3 and Ebook downloads!  So if you sell your camera with the Apps installed on them, as soon as the camera is reset for whatever reason the app will vanish and the new owner will not be allowed to use it - there may even need to be some kind of 'de-registering' process required for apps when you sell a camera if you want to load the app onto a new one...

When Playmemories was launched we were told the apps would be cheap or free.  $5 is not that expensive, however $10 for the latest one is already double the previous price and it starts being something to think about before you spend it.  It seems that Sony are already trying to push up the price of these apps afer only a few months.  What happens if/when they start selling 'sets' for hundreds of dollars?

Perhaps what Sony are really trying to do here is to create a situation where we 'lease' off of them the features that we want for a camera and then we simply transfer those features from camera to camera as new models are released...  much like with Apple you can 'lease' the library of music that you want to listen to on iTunes and then tranfer it through all the new incarnations of iPhone that you want to squander you money on...   but *just* like with Apple and iTunes (and Amazon and their Ebook library) if you 'lease' your apps from Sony (and you cannot resell to get part of your investment back) you are then locked-into Sony's ecosystem as the investment you have made is not transferable to another brand

With the Minolta xi card system you had the option to sell the camera and cards to somebody else who might want them and then move to another system if Minolta displeased you.  I worry that what might be being setup here would not present that option