PlayStationBB details
Sony introduces Broadband Navigator, a one-stop Internet application
More details of Sony's PlayStation 2 online gaming service have emerged, courtesy of an Adobe Acrobat presentation which appeared on a games industry site yesterday afternoon. The service is to be known as PlayStationBB. As we reported on Wednesday, hosting of the service and payment facilities will be hosted by partner ISPs from Fujitsu, NEC and NTT, with Sony's proprietary "DNAS (Dynamic Naming Authentication System)" helping to purvey a "secure and copyright protected environment". Connections to "the existing Internet and mobile phones" are all part of the service. In the absence of Internet Explorer and its partner technologies, which are obviously unavailable to SCEI, Sony's own "Broadband Navigator" will act as a unified delivery mechanism for broadband content, which includes games, music and movies, along with full web-browsing capability. The main aspects of PlayStationBB content will be downloadable games available through "e-Distribution", which are stored on the PS2 hard disk, email and instant messaging facilities (remember Sony's alliance with AOL, whose AIM and ICQ networks are extremely popular), and "PlayStation Jukebox", which will give users access to downloadable music (presumably at a price, given Sony's other business interests). Finally, RealPlayer will offer streaming video. Through the addition of "various network interfaces and firmware", Sony aims to extend Broadband Navigator's capabilities "to the networked AV, such as personal video recorder (PVR) with TV tuner, home server, extended DVD video player, and others." Related Feature - PS2 online for 70% of DSL users in Japan