Sony Computer Entertainment Incorporated is planning to launch a movie download service for the PlayStation 3 owners, effectively making the console an entertainment machine. "I think PlayStation 3 needs to stand for gaming and digital entertainment in the living room pushing the envelope of high definition, pushing the envelope of broadband, and of course that includes more than just games. We don"t have the announcements that you"re probably looking for today, but it is digital data. We have a hard drive, we have a commerce engine, it doesn"t take a rocket scientist to figure out we will have that on the network very shortly," said Phil Harrison the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, in an interview with 1UP web-site.
Currently there are no details concerning movie downloads via the PlayStation Network, but Sony is going up some solid competition: Microsoft"s Xbox Marketplace and Apple"s iTunes store. "The ten year plan of allowing people to download all kinds of digital content to their PlayStation 3 – not just games but movies, music, HD, standard definition TV, you name it. And that was a significant investment, but it was absolutely the right thing to do," said Mr. Harrison. Hopefully Sony will remember that there are non-Sony devices that PS3 users may want to use with the downloaded content.