Sony's CEO Stringer: PS3 Press Conference this Month

On January 7th this year, Sony's CEO Sir Howard Stringer told a meeting at CES that:



CNET's Michael Kanellos further reported Stringer's setting out "one of the first examples of this strategy", and that was "the expansion of the PlayStation Network".

Sony, reported Kanellos, "wants to turn it into a platform to deliver video, too". Crucially, according to the report. "Sony will hold a press conference in two months to discuss changes to the PlayStation 3."

We make that March - we make that now.

In other possibly PSN related news, earlier this month we reported Sony Electronics CEO Stan Glasgow's statement that Sony is "working on many other avenues to deliver downloaded content". Glasgow stated that the PlayStation Network "...will be "spread that over the next year or so to many other products of Sony."

Today it has been reported that Sony Pictures is close to closing a deal to buy Who Wants to be a Millionaire owner, the Dutch-based 2WayTraffic. The deal is valued at £114.3-million.

Commenting on the deal, Michael Lynton, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment said, "With the potential acquisition of 2waytraffic, we would have the opportunity to expand our access to new content and increase our interactive and distribution capabilities around the world."

"Interactive and distribution"? The plot thickens - and here's some context to help clarify it.

2waytraffic was formed in 2004 by former Endemol executives. Endemol is the company responsible for bringing us Big Brother (the TV show not the horrific, dictatorial mind controlling figurehead... oh...).

Anyway, 2way bought Celador International in 2006 - Celador produces, among other things, Who Wants to be a Millionaire. So far, so TV.

Searching through the offerings of 2way, however, brings up a late-night phone-for-cash show called Last One Standing which has been transformed into an online game format by subsidiary company, Hiptv.

Now, certainly, SPE could simply being investing in a company that specialises in interactive formats for television-only. That's highly likely. However, if Stringer has managed to get all areas of his company talking to each other - we could be seeing more than game and video downloads in PSN. We could also be seeing interactive games in a 3D social environment hosted by Sony. Altogether now... "There's no place like Home".