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Streaming movie rentals and download only movie purchases are slowing making their way into the main stream. There are now several products on the market that are capable of streaming movies and TV shows from the Netflix on demand library. This week Netflix and Sony announced that the streaming service was coming to the PS3.
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Sony Ericsson's Aino smartphone arrived in the UK earlier this month, but would-be buyers looking on enviously from the US are now able to sate their touchscreen desires. The 8.1-megapixel handset has gone on sale online and at Sony Style stores in the US today, priced at $599.99 unlocked, offering a 3-inch 432 x 240 touchscreen, WiFi, 3G (UMTS 850/1900/2100) and Bluetooth.
Yesterday we mentioned that Netflix had revealed its streaming service was coming to the PS3. At the time Netflix made that announcement I immediately though about those claims Microsoft made a while back about being the exclusive streaming partner for Netflix on a game console.
Remember all the furore back in August, when Microsoft announced they’d locked up Netflix movie streaming for the Xbox 360 and basically told us it was an “exclusive” partnership? Well, that exclusivity seems to have been short-lived; Sony have announced that from November Netflix subscribers will be able to stream content on their PS3.
I’d love to have been a fly on the wall at Sony Australia when they came up with this one. ”Guys, it’s a worldwide recession, we need a promotion to keep people buying the PS3 and BRAVIA HDTVs. I know some of you want to run a competition and give the darned things away, but I think we’d be far better off firing one against the other and sticking it up on YouTube.” Hence how we end up with a video of a PS3 being launched at 22 meters per second toward a poor, defenceless flat-panel TV.
Ask a handful of PC gamers why they don’t like to play shooters on console systems like the Xbox and the PS3, and several of them will tell you they want a mouse and keyboard for shooters. Controller maker SplitFish unveiled its slick Dual SFX Frag Pro that adds a mouse to the PS3, but we have not known when the device would ship until now.
It’s not just the Japanese getting some 250GB PlayStation3 love; Sony US have announced that there’s a 250GB version of the PS3 Slim incoming for their gamers too. The 250GB PS3 Slim will land on November 3rd, and be functionally identical to its existing 120GB sibling; unlike in Japan, there’ll be no bundled games or unusual color editions.
Sony have come clean with some more details regarding its upcoming Motion Controller, while Joystiq managed to snap a shot of the movement-tracking peripheral at the company’s Tokyo Game Show keynote. According to Sony, the controller – which may well be renamed before launch next year – should meet the “stringent” demands of hardcore gamers, thanks to its combination of two motion sensors, three axes gyroscope and three axes accelerometer.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has confirmed that the company does not see its movie streaming service as remaining exclusively locked to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console, and that one day they envisage access from every games console, Blu-ray player and internet-connected TV. Speaking to Reuters this week, Hastings also suggested that an iPhone Netflix service was “likely to come over time”, though the company’s focus is not yet on mobile.
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Nintendo regularly quash Wii HD rumors, but they keep on coming back. Latest to reignite the speculation is none other than Square Enix chief Yoichi Wada, who has stuck his neck out and suggested 2011 as the launch window for the reworked console. Wada tips the new Wii HD as having many of the features as the Xbox 360 and PS3, to which we're assuming he's referring to media-centric functionality.
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