A vision of what may be the PS3 online network.

[gamevet]

http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/...ive-Killer/p1/

Last month, an article on PlayStation Magazine (PSM) propelled a fierce discussion across gaming forums after it revealed some of the supposed plans Sony has for the yet-unnamed PlayStation 3 online gaming service.

A developer who wanted to remain anonymous told the magazine that Sony is “committed to match the current Xbox Live feature by feature and then some.” That “some” would imply a “one big PlayStation network” that will go beyond gaming and include other forms of digital entertainment, with the PSP and other Sony technologies playing a key role in that assault.

Until we see everything up and running, it’s easy to deflect the comments as yet another hyped-up claim by Sony, but what if it happens to be true?


Sony is an 800-pound gorilla to reckon with and only an Xbox fan boy could underestimate the power of this international conglomerate.

So, what if Sony is really developing a big entertainment network that matches every Xbox Live feature and adds new capabilities that only Sony, with its big infrastructure, can develop?

We decided to sit down for a moment, put aside our love for the Xbox, and think about the real possibilities Sony has in developing an Xbox Live Killer.

Please, don’t get it wrong - this is not a battle for online gaming, at least not for Microsoft and Sony.
This is a battle for the living room and ultimately, digital entertainment. Gaming is just one of the many things that are at stake.

The Xbox platform, its hardware, software and services, were Microsoft’s first foray into the living room, a battlefield in which Sony has been sovereign for a long time, and now the war promises to extend to new battlefields; inside and outside the home.

The approach each company is taking revolves around their strengths and world domination philosophies. On one side you have Microsoft, a software company that knows little about hardware and consumer electronics. Their greatest hit outside the PC industry is not the Xbox, but rather its online gaming service. Still the impact of Xbox Live shouldn’t be overestimated. As an example, World of Warcraft, a single PC game, has more paid subscribers than Xbox Live.

On the other side you have Sony, another corporation who knows little about software, but it is a consummated hardware manufacturer who knows a lot about entertainment and has lost only a few battles. The most recent loss was fought with Apple and its iTunes online music store and iPod digital music player; a battle that Microsoft lost too.

Every company will base its strategies in its own strengths, and if they lose the war, it’d be because of their weaknesses. In the case of Sony: software. In the case of Microsoft: everything else but software…

Now, let’s talk about a few facts to understand what the weapons of Sony’s arsenal so we can understand what is that they could do to develop an Xbox Live killer:


Blu-ray Disc

This is the first cornerstone in which Sony will base its strategy and involves more than gaming. We could say that the PlayStation 3 would be used as a mere tool to impose a format that is betting on a win-or-lose-everything war with HD-DVD.

The whole world knows that the PlayStation 2 helped the DVD format gain its popularity in a time when a PlayStation 2 sold for less than a home DVD player. Sony expects to repeat the story with Blu-ray by hoping that the PlayStation 3 will help the format have a bigger install base than HD-DVD. With Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD players costing as much as $1,000, a game console that plays Blu-ray Disc movies and costs half a home player would look like a total bargain, even if you’re not interested in games.





Is Sony alone in the Blu-ray Disc camp? No. Some of the backers of the Sony format include Apple (who will always be on the other side Microsoft), Disney, FOX, Warner Bros., DELL, Hewlett Packard, Pioneer, Panasonic…you get the idea.

Plus one interesting detail no one has mentioned before - Blu-ray Disc movies will come in 1080p while initial HD-DVD releases will only support 1080i, even if HDMI supports 1080p. Rest assured that the “only 1080p is true high definition” motto will be advertised, and not just for the PlayStation 3.


PlayStation Portable

Based on the success of the PlayStation platform as a home console, Sony decided it had enough to tackle into Nintendo’s territory; the handheld console market. Although Nintendo is still the king of the portable gaming, the PSP has been doing good considering it is the first competitor to try to dethrone Nintendo’s dominance.

Sony has intended to promote the PSP and the UMD format as the new handheld entertainment platform and we still have to see if they succeed. But the fact is that they have a handheld video game system with built-in Wi-Fi that can play games, music, pictures, and soon e-books, maps. Did we mention planned GPS capabilities?

Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t yet developed a handheld console and only develops software for use in mobile products manufactured by other companies.


Sony Pictures Entertainment + MGM

Here is where things start to get worse for Microsoft as the software giant has no investment in the motion picture industry. Sony Pictures Entertainment operations encompass motion picture and television production and film distribution in more than 60 countries, along with television programming in over 30 countries.




Among other, SPE owns motion pictures studios such as Columbia TriStar, Screen Gems, and with the acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Sony also owns United Artists, Orion Pictures, and several other small film studios. Then you have all the home video distribution companies, such as Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and their respective television divisions, like as Sony Pictures Television Group - the studio behind popular series as Seinfeld or King of Queens.


Sony Connect + BMG Music Entertainment

Sony also owns fifty percent of BMG Music Entertainment, one of the largest record music companies in the world. Also, in order to compete with Apple, Sony developed the Connect.com music store. Microsoft has yet to unveil its digital music offering, which is being developed by Robbie Bach.


Sony Ericsson

Sony also manufactures cell phones and in its latest financial results, Sony Ericsson reported a record profit due to the success of its camera and Walkman cell phones, which are gaining market share at a faster rate over Motorola and Nokia.


Having explained what the Sony arsenal is made of, we can finally talk about the real possibilities Sony has in developing an Xbox Live Killer.

Sony Computer Entertainment will be responsible for developing this online gaming service that promises to match Xbox Live features and add digital entertainment capabilities to the offering. We believe that this could be a legitimate threat to Microsoft’s online gaming service.

Everyone loves Xbox Live Marketplace because for the first time we can download console game demos, watch movie trailers, and get other goodies, like Xbox Live Arcade games, dashboard wallpapers, and game avatars. But unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t yet unleashed the full potential of digital delivery and that’s why you only need one hand to count the number of movie trailers available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. I’m still going to Apple.com to see movie trailers, both in standard and high-definition, and you are probably doing the same.


The other big problem we found out in Microsoft’s strategy is the decision to make the Xbox 360 a Windows Media Center Extender, instead of making it a Windows Media Center in itself. The current setup not only requires two devices to enjoy Windows Media Center capabilities, it also creates lot of issues to get the content. You only need to download and view the new MCE Network Video available on the Xbox Live Marketplace to see all the intricacies associated to have the Xbox 360 acting as a WMC Extender. They recommend wired over wireless network in a time where everyone wants to get rid of cables, and if you still decide to use wireless, Microsoft recommends 802.11a over the standard 802.11b/g. All these needs because of performance related issues so the Xbox 360 can receive the info from the Windows Media Center PC. Wouldn’t it have been easier if the Xbox 360 was the central digital entertainment hub instead of an extender?

Sony knows the answer and that is why the PlayStation 3 will be a media center in itself. They already performed a few Frankenstein-like experiments with the PlayStation 2, turning it into the PSX (a console that was only sold in Japan), so they know how to make their next-generation console a TiVo-like DVR.


So, what could Sony develop for the PlayStation 3 and its online service? Let’s see:


WWW: Just like the PSP has been enabled to surf the Internet, we expect Sony to allow web surfing on the PlayStation 3. In the current generation, surfing the Internet on a standard definition TV is horrid, but with a large screen HDTV, surfing the ‘Net in 1080p could turn out to be a great experience. Plus this “Broadband Engine” philosophy would not make sense if you can’t browse the Internet as you do on your computer.



Movies: Here is where Sony could give the Xbox Live Marketplace a run for its money. Owning all those movie studios would allow Sony to have time exclusive debuts of new movie trailers. Imagine PlayStation 3 users watching Sony Pictures’ Spider-Man 3 or MGM’s 007 Casino Royale trailers first.

There’s even more. Sony could also deliver TV programs, just like Apple is selling TV series for the iPod, directly to the PlayStation 3, for live viewing or to store on a hard drive and then play it back on a HDTV or a PSP.

The potential Sony has here is huge and could overshadow Microsoft’s attempt to the point where people could see Sony and the PlayStation 3 as the inventor of the “PlayStation Marketplace”





Music: Once again, Sony could use its big infrastructure to make a digital music store that allows you to purchase content using the PlayStation 3 to play on any device, including your PSP, a digital music player, or a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone.





Pictures: We take for granted that you’ll be able to view pictures on your PlayStation 3 in 1080p either by connecting a digital camera through a USB port or inserting a Memory Stick.

Sony could take things to the next level and allow connectivity to their ImageStation (www.imagestation.com) digital imaging store to allow PlayStation 3 users to share and print photos online.

There’s nothing like that on Xbox 360 and Sony already has the infrastructure to make it happen. We believe it won’t be available at launch, but it’ll be a matter of time before they come up with this idea.



Location Free: You don’t know what that logo is? It has been recently added to the PSP menu with the latest firmware and it’s the logo for Sony’s LocationFree - a new product from Sony that allows you to view, anywhere in the country, television, video, Internet browsing/streaming video, e-mail, and digital photos either through a 12.1-inch wireless touch screen LCD monitor/computer or your PSP.



Rumor has it that the PlayStation 3 will be a LocationFree base station in itself and the idea is to fully explore the broadband engine concept so you can connect anywhere in the world to the base station (PS3) and receive content from it to your PSP. TV programs, movies, mails, newspapers, ebooks, etc.

If this happens to be true, this could be the Xbox Live killing application and something that will take a long time for Microsoft to develop. So far, Sony already has the LocationFree system developed and adapting it to the PlayStation 3 should be easy for them.



UMD: Sony can’t yet impose this format for portable video viewing, possibly because it was expecting too much from a proprietary format. That’s how it lost the war with Apple by not adopting an open format like MP3, but everyone thinks Sony learned its lesson.

This week, Sony announced a DVD-UMD deal for those who buy certain movies from Sony Pictures. What Sony is selling with this bundle, is your right to a certain movie. Once you buy the DVD, you also get the same movie on UMD for a few cents more. Analysts expect the same deal to move the Blu-ray Disc once the format debuts.

High-definition movies will be too large to deliver digitally, but delivering UMD movies is viable to current broadband connections. So in the future you’ll buy a Blu-ray Disc movie and the proof of purchase carton will allow you to download that movie in UMD format for your PSP.

This could help Sony in popularizing the UMD format while adding another killer application to the PlayStation 3.



Gaming: You might has asked yourself how we can talk about an Xbox Live killer and we haven’t touched on gaming yet! Well, that is on purpose because what we want you to realize, as we mentioned earlier, is that this war is not about online gaming.

You can bet that Sony will copy every gaming feature seen on Xbox Live; leaderboards, matchmaking, clans, gametags, gamer pictures, game mottos, etc.

But for a user that has to pay for a subscription service, if both services offer the same online gaming features, it will be the additional features that determines which service succeeds.





As you can see, the threat is real. The possibilities are there and it’ll be up to Sony’s willpower to make all these features a reality. If Sony Computer Entertainment does online gaming right, the PlayStation Network could eclipse Xbox Live with these additional features.

Blu-ray Disc, the PSP, Sony Pictures, LocationFree, Sony Ericsson, Memory Stick, ImageStation are real. Perhaps you care about online gaming the most, but for a service to reach a broader audience it will be up to the entire feature set. That’s why we think Sony has a real chance to build an Xbox Live killer.

If this happens to be true, Xbox Live could be remembered as Microsoft’s one big punch to a karate master from a student who is still not a black belt.

The wait for the PS3, may be worth it in the long haul.