One day, a new executive joined the company from the parent organization. I learned that he was a talented engineer who had been in charge of the Betamax project.
When he discovered I was reasonably fluent in Japanese, he called me in his office one day to confess why he had been transferred. It was sort of a demotion but he was making the best of it.
He told me that the main reason the Betamax failed (even though it was a smaller media and superior technology) and we had lost out on the VHS format to our arch rivals Toshiba was because Sony had refused to make prerecorded videos of porn since we were a family oriented company. Toshiba, on the other hand, correctly predicted that exchange of such videos would put their VHS format out in front.
Keep in mind that this was the early 1990s just after the Columbia Pictures acquisition. It was about 15 years later when working for another Sony subsidiary that we finally got our sweet revenge when Blu-Ray won out over the HD Video format of Toshiba.
That was fascinating. I actually sold hi-fi back in the 70’s and early 80’s. I loved Beta and hated VHS. I had one of those first BIG beta machines and also a nice sleek black beta hi-fi machine. I literally considered it the replacement to open reel and used it as such. All the VHS machines would sometimes “chatter” in hi-fi mode, but the beta was rock solid.