14 DAY TRIAL // Sony has a very diverse and large portofolio of assets to manage. Sony Pictures Entertainment is the Sony owned old Columbia Pictures, with more than 4,000 movies in its library. Sony also has a significant stake in MGM and can cooperate to generate content with other major brands. Sony BMG is one of the Big Four music companies, with signed artist like Bruce Springsteen, Oasis, Franz Ferdinand or Justin Timberlake. That in itself is a multimedia empire, which generates record amounts of revenue for Sony.
But the empire might seem to be crumbling by those with an eye for the future. Music sales are down year on year and much of the growth in the music sector is in the downloadable music section, where Apple dominates the market. Sony tried to grab a piece of this growing market with Sony Connect, but the service was so unsuccessful that it closed down earlier in March.
Movie tickets are also selling less and less each year, with more and more people opting to rent movies through the Internet or stream video content instead of going to the cinema. That's where the PlayStation 3 comes in.
The PlayStation is primarily a videogame console, but Sony is quick to point out its other capabilities. It's connected to the Internet, can support a high speed connection and it also connects with your television. Which means that it can stream video and audio from the net and bring them to your living room for your viewing pleasure.
It seems that recently Sony has been talking with various content providers, both movie studios and other producers of video content, to strike deals for bringing programming to the PlayStation Network and from there to the PS3.
Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., wrote on a company blog that "Many of you have been hearing rumblings about a video service that will allow you to download full-length TV shows and movies via PlayStation Network for North America. While I don't have any new announcements . . . it's already been confirmed that we'll be offering a video service for PS3 in a way that separates the service from others you've seen or used".
What Dille is referring to is the Xbox Live service from Microsoft, which turns the Xbox 360 into a vehicle for video delivery, with 350 movies and more than 5,000 episodes of TV shows like "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" on offer.
Details are scarce at the moment but Sony has promised that more will be revealed soon, as the PlayStation 3 is preparing to go from gaming console to multimedia device.