Despite being easily dwarfed by E3 in the video game news arena, The Consumer Electronics Show is often the place where industry giants let loose some exciting details on upcoming products and services. This year is no exception.
During Sony’s press event this evening, Jack of all trades corporate executive, Kaz Hirai, brought to light the intended future of the PlayStation Network. In accordance with what we heard earlier, Sony hopes to centralize the PSN experience by integrating and expanding the video service across three major pillars of the Sony empire, specifically VAIO laptops (in addition to other Windows PCs), and the BRAVIA line of Blu-ray players and television sets. In addition, Sony plans to establish a single user ID system for both the PSN and other consumer electronics able to tap into the service. Sounds great, but most importantly, Sony hopes to deliver content to a larger portion of the 38 million registered PSN users by extending the video service to our friends across the pond who happen to live in either Spain, France, the U.K., Ireland, or Germany. Also mentioned was talk about “premium video content” which may be related to those premium subscriptions services we’ve been hearing about, and the newly minted Sony Network Entertainment Inc., who’s tasked with utilizing the PSN to create a “more centralized organizational structure”. As far as when this will all come to fruition? Expect to see the launch of these new services sometime around June.
