Sony Trivia
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36 free Sony trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Sony trivia for gadget lovers, PlayStation players and anyone who once carried a Walkman on the bus. The quiz starts in a bombed-out Tokyo department store in 1946, where Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita founded Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo with eight employees, built Japan's first tape recorder, and eventually chose a four-letter brand name from a Latin word and an American slang term, over the objections of their bank. Then it follows the products that made the brand: the TR-55 and TR-63 transistor radios, Trinitron, U-matic and the Betamax defeat, the 1979 Walkman, the compact disc with Philips, the 3.5-inch floppy, MiniDisc, Memory Stick and Blu-ray. Later rounds cover the media empire built by Norio Ohga, from CBS Records and Columbia Pictures to Spider-Man and Jeopardy!, the Nintendo partnership that collapsed into the PlayStation, the record-selling PS2, the first foreign CEO, the 2005 rootkit scandal, the 2014 hack over The Interview, Aibo the robot dog and the Afeela electric car. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our PlayStation, Nintendo, Japan and technology quizzes.
30 of 36 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two men founded the company that became Sony in 1946?
Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita
Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita reconnected after the war when Morita saw a newspaper article about Ibuka's new radio business in Tokyo.
Q 02What did Sony's original Japanese company name mean in English?
Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation
Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation's first attempt at a home product was a crude electric rice cooker made of electrodes in a wooden tub.
Q 03Which product was the Type-G, made by the company that became Sony?
Japan's earliest tape recorder
Japan's earliest tape recorder, the Type-G, came only after the company worked out how to make its own magnetic recording tape.
Q 04Why did the founders reject the initials TTK as a brand name?
A railway firm used similar initials
A railway firm used similar initials, and Americans stumbled over the nickname 'Totsuko', so the founders set out to find a short, easy brand name.
Q 05With which company did Sony run a mobile-phone joint venture from 2001 until buying it out in 2012?
Ericsson
Ericsson and Sony's phone venture was the world's fourth-largest phone maker in 2007, but it lost ground as smartphones like Apple's iPhone took over.
Q 06The PlayStation controller's action buttons show a triangle, a circle, a cross and which other shape?
A square
A square, designer Teiyu Goto said, stands for a sheet of paper, meaning menus or documents, while the triangle stands for a viewpoint.
Q 07Which Marvel superhero's film rights has Sony Pictures long controlled, forcing Marvel to strike a deal to use him?
Spider-Man
Spider-Man's film rights stayed with Sony Pictures, yet a 2015 deal let Marvel Studios put him in Captain America: Civil War without paying Sony a fee.
Q 08Which Sony gadget, launched in 1979, was first sold in the United States as the Soundabout?
The Walkman
The Walkman was sold as the Soundabout in the US at first, but its Japanese-coined English name caught on worldwide by the early 1980s.
Q 09Sony's proprietary colour television technology, patented until 1996, was called what?
Trinitron
Triluminos followed in 2004 in the world's first LED-backlit LCD TVs.
Q 10Sony's U-matic was among the first of which kind of format?
Videocassette formats
U-matic was among the first videocassette formats, but it never became a household item and instead helped TV news switch from film to video.
Q 11Sony's Betamax lost the home-video format war to VHS, developed by which company?
JVC
JVC's VHS arrived a year after Betamax yet became the market leader, though Sony kept selling Betamax tapes until 2016.
Q 12Sony launched its Handycam camcorders in 1985 alongside which tape format?
Video8
Video8's small cassettes made Sony's Handycam far smaller than VHS camcorders.
Q 13The compact disc's 74-minute length is said to have been set so one disc could hold which symphony?
Beethoven's Ninth
Beethoven's Ninth is the symphony in the story, but Kees Immink, an engineer who helped develop the disc, suspects the tale is a myth.
Q 21Which Sony game series stars Kratos?
God of War
God of War's 2018 game moved Kratos from Greek myth to the Norse gods, recasting him as a father travelling with his young son.
Q 22As of 2026, which is Sony's best-selling console?
PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2 was still being made at the end of 2012, more than six years after its successor, the PlayStation 3, went on sale.
Q 23Which optical format did Sony create for the PlayStation Portable?
Universal Media Disc
Universal Media Disc carried games and films for the PSP, but UMD movies sold so poorly that studios soon cut back their releases.
Q 14Which recordable format did Sony launch in 1992 as a successor to the cassette?
MiniDisc
MiniDisc never managed to replace the cassette worldwide, then lost out to MP3 players, and Sony sold its last MiniDisc players in 2013.
Q 15Which flash card format did Sony create for its own cameras and devices?
Memory Stick
Memory Stick was Sony's own card format, but around 2010 Sony gave in and began adding SD card slots to its devices.
Q 16Blu-ray beat which rival disc format in a war that ended in 2008?
HD DVD
HD DVD's champion Toshiba gave up in February 2008, handing Blu-ray the high-definition format war.
Q 17Sony's contactless IC card technology, used for payments and transit, is called what?
FeliCa
FeliCa lets riders tap phones at Japan's ticket gates: Apple enabled it on iPhone 7 models sold in Japan, then on iPhones sold worldwide from the iPhone 8.
Q 18Which Nintendo console did Sony supply the sound chip for?
Super Famicom
Sony designed the Super Famicom's sound chips and was building a CD add-on for Nintendo, until Nintendo dropped the partnership at the last minute.
Q 19Which company did Nintendo choose over Sony for its CD-ROM add-on, a day after Sony's 1991 reveal?
Philips
Philips won the deal a day after Sony had proudly shown off its Play Station prototype, and the snub pushed Sony to build a console of its own.
Q 20Who is the Sony engineer credited with developing the PlayStation?
Ken Kutaragi
Ken Kutaragi, known as the father of the PlayStation, led Sony into consoles after Nintendo abandoned their joint CD project.
Q 24Sony's virtual reality headset for PS4 was originally revealed in 2014 under what code name?
Project Morpheus
Project Morpheus grew out of years of Sony prototypes that paired personal video viewers with PlayStation Move controllers.
Q 25Which music company did Sony take over for about $2 billion in the late 1980s?
CBS Records
CBS Records became the core of Sony Music Entertainment, part of a push into content that many at the time thought a mistake.
Q 26Which Hollywood studio did Sony buy in 1989 for $3.4 billion?
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures cost Sony $3.4 billion in 1989, a purchase criticised at the time as unwise and costly.
Q 27Which Sony president championed the compact disc and backed its move into video games?
Norio Ohga
Norio Ohga had hoped to become an opera singer, and Sony's founders recruited him for his knowledge of sound.
Q 28Who became the first foreigner to run a major Japanese electronics firm when he took over Sony in 2005?
Howard Stringer
He backed hits like Spider-Man, cut 9,000 jobs and complained of business 'silos'.
Q 29Kazuo Hirai's 2012 turnaround plan was known by what name?
One Sony
One Sony was Kazuo Hirai's drive to end years of losses, and he is credited with leading Sony's turnaround before retiring in 2019.
Q 30Which PC brand did Sony sell off in 2014?
Vaio
Vaio was sold off because its PCs were selling poorly, as Sony restructured to focus on mobile devices.