VGTribune Videogame News

In addition to announcing a new video service for PlayStation 3 in a business breifing this morning, Kaz Hirai also announced "Life with PlayStation." Life with Playstation allows users to check news and weather with a large spinning globe. "That's practically the same thing as the Weather and News channels on the Wii!" Wii hear your cries Nintendo fans. PC World is quick to point out that although it looks a lot like the Wii's features, "there are some differences. The graphics on the PlayStation 3 are higher resolution and the globe isn't a simple map of the world but a weather satellite image showing the cloud patterns above the planet. When a news headline was clicked in the demonstration it opened a link to an Internet page, which is different to Nintendo's service that brings up stories provided by content partners." Those differences may be cool, but there not mind blowing PC Wrold.

Sony and Hirai don't plan on stopping there, "In the future we plan to build a system that can visually present stored photos and movies according to their recorded time and place, allowing users with their friends and family to enjoy the visuals in chronological order." According to PC World, in-game advertising and premium content will also play a role in upcoming features of Life With PlayStation

Remember Nintendo, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. 

Early this morning during a business Briefing in Tokyo, Sony Computer Entertainment President, Kaz Hirai, announced plans for a PlayStation Network video download service.  Not only will users be able to download and rent movies and television shows for their PlayStation 3s, but they will also be able to download them to their PlayStation Portables. Sony also plans to bring this service to PCs, televisions and "mobile sets" by 2010. Not only can you download videos, but you can also choose to view them in streaming form. Although further details will be announced next month at E3, Kaz Hirai did say that North America will be the first territory to use the feature this summer with Europe and Japan following shortly after.

IGN was able to decipher this from the screen shots above:

"Categories of video content in the sample images included "New Arrivals," "Movies," "Television," "Anime," "HD Only," "Rentals," "Purchase", and "Top Downloads." The sample images also listed pricing for a couple of titles: a Ghost Rider rental in HD at $5.99 and a Ghost Rider purchase copy in SD at $12.99. These prices are presumably unofficial." 

[Source, Image: Source]

 

 

 

 

We've known about Sony's "trophies" for a while, but we've had no actual images of them. According to playstationlifestyle.net, they've snagged a pic of Sony's trophy system on the PlayStation Network and it looks a lot like Microsoft's gamertags. If you look closely at the picture you can notice some parts of the trophy tag that are "whited out." Presumably, these whited out areas are taking the place of information that could reveal the identity of the tipster (ie PlayStation Network ID). The team over at PlayStation Lifestyle believes these screens are genuine. We'll have to wait until E3 to find out if these are real, but they look legitimate to me.

 

UPDATE: More screens leaked. 3 more after the jump.