Sony NSC-GC1 Net-Sharing CAM - Good Idea, Bad Execution

I'm sure that not many days go by that you don't find yourself watching some crazy video on YouTube. People just love to post the strangest crap on there, and millions of people watch it. So naturally when you have something as big as YouTube, there will always be some large company trying to make a quick buck off of it. Yes Sony, I'm talking to you.

Sony isn't the only one guilty of trying to make a little dough off of the YouTube craze, but I think they're doing it all wrong. They have released a new pocket camcorder dubbed the NSC-GC1 Net-sharing CAM. Betcha can't guess what it does. It shoots video at a low resolution so that you can easily upload it to YouTube. The video capture ranges from 15fps at 320x240 to 30fps at 640x480. The videos store on a Memory Stick DUO card, so they can be easily transferred.

While that may sound like a pretty good idea, they failed miserably for one simple reason. The retail price is $200. You can buy plenty of camcorders for that much and get a lot more features. You don't even get an optical zoom. So what's the big idea Sony? You want to charge us extra because you let it only capture in formats that are acceptable for YouTube. Sounds brilliant.

If you don't mind paying too much for too little it will go on sale sometime in September. Preorders, however, will be taken on July 19.

Sony announces new pocket camcorder, claims it isn't 'full of stars' [via crave]