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Sony Will Offer News, Weather, Video Through PlayStation

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on June 27, 2008
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In addition to keeping up with battles on alien planets, PlayStation 3 will soon be able to help you stay current with planet Earth. On Thursday, Sony Computer Entertainment President Kazuo Hirai announced both Life with PlayStation, a service that allows users to see current news and weather around the world through a spinning-globe menu, and a PS3 download service for movies, music and TV shows.

A Spinning Globe

Life with PlayStation will “bring unique content centering on two axes, place and time,” Hirai said.

The interface includes a globe that the user can spin, showing different parts of the planet. News headlines and weather conditions related to indicated cities can be accessed via the globe, and Sony reportedly has said the globe will also feature weather-satellite images of cloud patterns. No release date for Life with PlayStation was set.

Hirai also said Sony intends to add the capability for users to store their own photos and movies according to where and when they were recorded, and then also use the globe — plus some sort of selector for time — to find them.

But personal movies are not the only movies PS3 intends to offer. Hirai also confirmed that the long-expected movie-download service for PS3 will be launched this summer in the U.S., with later dates in Japan and Europe.

An official announcement is expected at the big E3 trade show in July. The service would compete with Video Marketplace on Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Apple’s iTunes Store movie service, and others. At the moment, no agreements have been announced with any major studios — other than an expected deal with the company’s own Sony Pictures.

‘Trojan Horse’

The download service is also expected to roll out to other consumer-electronics devices, including computers, Bravia LCD TVs, mobile phones, and portable video players. There are some reports indicating…

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Sony’s PS3 movie download service rolling out Stateside this summer

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on June 26, 2008
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Sony just released a rambling update to it corporate strategy through fiscal year 2010. An interesting read for fans and competitors alike as Sony lays bare initiatives intent on moving Sony from recovery to the “leading global provider of networked consumer electronics and entertainment.” Most notable in the near-term however, is word from Kazuo Hirai, chieftain of Sony Computer Entertainment, that Sony will make a movie download service available to US PlayStation 3 owners this summer, Japan and Europe at later dates — details coming “next month,” presumably at E3. Moreover, Sony expects its gaming business to achieve profitability by March 2009, the end of the current fiscal year. Of course, we already knew that Sony was prepped to deliver full-length TV shows and movies sometime in 2008 via its North American PLAYSTATION Network. But summer, eh? Judging by the increased molecular agitation of sidewalk effluence, we’d say that Sony’s season of movie downloads is already upon us.

Read — 2010 plan
Read — US summer launch

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PS3 Components Used To Build World’s Fastest Computer

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on June 9, 2008
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A supercomputer with components originally developed for Sony’s PlayStation video-game console has become the world’s fastest computer.

IBM said the computer, nicknamed Roadrunner, can process more than 1,000 trillion calculations per second, known as a petaflop. Built for the Energy Department’s Los Alamos lab with off-the-shelf components, Roadrunner is named for the state bird of New Mexico and will be used to monitor the U.S. nuclear-weapons stockpile.

Roadrunner cost $133 million and is twice as fast as IBM’s Blue Gene system, which had been considered the world’s most powerful. The Blue Gene is at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Along with almost 7,000 dual-core processors from Advanced Micro Devices, the Roadrunner also has almost 13,000 improved Cell microprocessors originally developed by IBM, Toshiba and Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3. The Cell combines the Power Architecture instruction set with coprocessors to accelerate computing.

Roadrunner will make it possible for the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration to certify the reliability of the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons without the need for underground nuclear tests. To accomplish this, it will be used to solve classified military problems.

“Roadrunner tells us about what will happen in the next decade,” said Horst Simon, associate laboratory director for computer science at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “Technology is coming from the consumer electronics market, and the innovation is happening first in terms of cell phones and embedded electronics.”

Since President George H.W. Bush ended underground nuclear tests in 1992, the United States has relied on research and development to extend the life of the stockpile of nuclear weapons, most of which were created 30 to 40 years ago.

To illustrate the power of Roadrunner, the Energy Department said it can perform a calculation in one day that would take 46 years if everyone on Earth used a hand…

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Sony Ready to Launch Qore Subscriptions for PS3 Players

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on June 4, 2008
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Sony has begun the countdown to Qore. An addition to the PlayStation Network (PSN), the subscription-based gaming program will debut Thursday.

Available only on the PlayStation Store on PSN, Qore is the first in a series of original content planned for the PlayStation community. Qore will feature exclusive multimedia news, developer interviews, in-depth game previews, and behind-the-scene looks at popular PlayStation games. Sony said subscribers will also have special access to game demos, betas, add-ons and other downloadable and game-related content.

“Qore is the first step in providing original content dedicated to the PlayStation community and evolving the network into a place where our customers can gather, share and discover new forms of entertainment,” said Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Monthly Episodes

Qore episodes will be available the first Thursday of every month to coordinate with weekly PlayStation Store updates. The first episode will feature SOCOM: US. Navy SEALs Confrontation, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Secret Agent Clank, Soul Calibur 4, and Afro Samurai, as well as the latest Blu-ray Disc trailers, an exclusive SOCOM: Confrontation theme with an invitation to the SOCOM: Confrontation beta, art galleries, and a few other surprises.

The high-definition, interactive Qore lets members customize their experience through the Sixaxis or DualShock 3 wireless controllers. Sony said gamers will “act as the director” of the content and can access and control how they want to view content, using multiple windows, picture-in-picture and other features. Qore also offers advertisers interactive advertising opportunities through rich-media executions, video trailers, active ad pages, and contextual branding.

Gamers can purchase episodes of Qore through the PlayStation Store for an introductory price of $2.99, or an annual subscription for $24.99. Sony is offering bonuses with annual subscriptions. For example, annual subscribers will receive 13 episodes of Qore. In addition,…

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PlayStation Home beta adding more users this Fall — in other words, delayed

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on April 22, 2008
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After hitting delays already, we can’t say that this was the PlayStation Home press release we’ve been expecting. Nevertheless, Sony just announced that it is expanding the closed PlayStation Home beta to more users in “Fall 2008.” Kazuo Hirai, prez and ringmaster of Sony Computer Entertainment, said, “We understand that we are asking PS3 and prospective PS3 users to wait a bit longer, but we have come to the conclusion that we need more time to refine the service.” Come on Mr Hirai, you can say it, PlayStation Home is delayed. See, that’s wasn’t so hard.

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