For years, Mr. Idei has struggled to persuade Sony engineers to focus more on software when designing hardware.

Already, Sony engineers have developed components to make it lighter and more compact.

"The main point," he said, is to allow Sony engineers to get "the intellectual property they need for their research and development so Sony can once again be first in the world."

Sony engineers in San Jose, Calif., in Silicon Valley, are developing a user interface that will make the machines easy to use.

Sony engineers were unable to make a version of Chromatron that could be reliably mass produced.

The challenge to Sony engineers: pack a 4.1-megapixel, 3X- optical zoom camera into a hip little package a fraction the size of a candy bar.

According to Mr. Teplansky, about a decade ago some Sony engineers decided that they wanted to invent the world's smallest cassette.

The PSP, he said, would "revitalize Sony engineers and revitalize us over all."

Sony engineers knew that the technology available to manufacture video heads wasn't up to the task yet, but halving the tape speed and track width was a possibility.

Unfortunately, the picture quality would be degraded severely, and at that time Sony engineers felt the compromise was not worthwhile.