“A source” has said that Logitech is working on a UMD drive add-on for the Go, which is a bit like a gas-powered engine add-on for an electric car. Logitech UK denied knowing anything about it, but Logitech USA and Sony have yet to comment.

I think it’s pretty funny, but somehow I don’t think Sony is laughing.

[via Kotaku]

This may be the first holiday season in a long time that Sony is looking forward to. Some 440,000 PS3s were sold last week (compared to 550,000 Nintendo Wiis), and Sony says demand for the system was at “an all-time high.” Good thing for that price cut and re-design, right?

Sony told Gamasutra, which I’m putting here for your convenience:

In today’s economy, consumers are drawn to items that offer the most value for their money, making the PS3 an ideal choice for those who want a comprehensive gaming and entertainment system all in one package.

That’s a fair point. Three-hundred dollars gets you a Blu-ray-playing, online game-ing, Netflix-streaming… you know the deal. The PS3 at $300 is so much more attractive than, what, the $500 Sony wanted for so many years?

Besides, for $500, or a little more, you can build a reasonable gaming PC. It won’t blow you away, no, but a proper PC is so much more versatile than a static consoles.

So now we wait for Microsoft’s numbers.

Did any of y’all take advantage of any Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Awesome Tuesday deals? I saw a few PS3 bundles here and there, but I spent a few dollars on Steam buying Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, and Mirror’s Edge. Steam makes it too easy to spend money!

What a coup for Sony’s marketing men. The Royal Navy will be handing out PSPs to its sailors so that they can brush up on their maths and whatnot. The PSP was selected because it’ll work wonders in the closed, confined spaces of Navy quarters.

The PSPs will be pre-loaded with specialized coursework (slides and the like… it’s shocking how much of college consists of reading PowerPoint slides projected onto a white wall), so that, instead of knocking about while not actually inside a classroom, sailors can stick to their work.

The program is being trialed (is that a verb? It is now.) with engineering students first, being that they’re a bit rubbish, failing classes and whatnot.

And here’s some silly joke about the men spending their time playing, I don’t know, Tekken 6 on the PSP instead of reading up on functions and Nelson.

via Kotaku

TransferJet is a close-proximity wireless transfer technology that was introduced by Sony in 2008. Toshiba announced during IFA in Berlin this year they are planning to use the technology in their products soon. The idea is to let two electronic devices quickly exchange data, theoretically at up to 560 Mbps, just by bringing them close together (touch is possible, too).

And today, Sony announced in Tokyo [press release in English] that the first LSIs supporting the standard will be shipped to manufacturers before December starts. The “CXD3267AGG” (pictured on the left) and  the “CXD3268AGW” will cost $17.45 each. Sony says they managed to optimize the technology so that TransferJet can now be integrated into smaller electronic devices, too. The LSIs can be used by makers of cell phones, digital cameras, computers and HDDs.

Toshiba and Sony are just two of the 19 companies of the so-called TransferJet Consortium Promoters. Other members include powerhouses such as Panasonic, Sharp or Samsung so it’s possible we’ll get to see a slew of new TransferJet-compatible electronic devices next year.

Sony just recently said they want to get serious with 3D displays this fiscal year, and they seem to stick to their plan. Following the professional 3D camera that shoots video at 240fps and a futuristic 3D stereoscopic display the company introduced last month, we now get to see a 3D display sized at no less than 280 inches.

The so-called “3D LED Wall” consists of 70 LED screens (28 inches each) and is sized at an impressive 6.4m in width and 3.4m in height. It lets users switch back and forth between 2D and 3D images. Unfortunately, you’ll still need to wear special glasses to be able to view the latter.

Sony is currently showcasing the technology at the International Broadcast Equipment Exhibition (Inter BEE) in Chiba, Japan.

Via Tech On

So this is reasonably exciting. Some super secret source told PlayStation Insider that Sony has talked to Mozilla about porting Firefox to the PS3. Note the wording of that sentence: talks about porting Firefox. Needless to say, if this is even true, then we’re at a very early stage of development.

It’s no secret that the PS3 Web browser isn’t the best one out there, and porting Firefox would give Sony another bullet point to put on a press release: “Runs Firefox (Does your Xbox 360? Thought not.)” I’m not sure how often people use their PS3 Web browser, so I don’t know if this will end up being a huge deal from a users’ standpoint, but yeah, I just see it as something Sony can have over its competitors.

I seem to recall the Xbox “scene” trying to port over Mozilla and/or Firefox to the Xbox1 back in the day, but the people were like, “The code base is a giant mess, it’d take many, many hours to get it to run on the Xbox.”

Of course, people have had the ability to run Firefox on the PS3 for some time—provided you install Linux on the system, which you can’t do anymore.

I’m in charge of writing the e-book gift guide, but it’s sorta hard to recommend items that haven’t been released yet. That IREX reader, the nook, and the Sony Daily Edition Reader are all missing in action. Thanks, guys. Today we take a minute to ask, “Where’s the Sony Daily?”

It goes on sale (well, for pre-order) today on Sony’s Web site, but Sony says it won’t actually be shipping till sometime between December 18 and January. It won’t actually be in stores till January.

So it’s safe to say that Sony is cutting it pretty close if it wants it to be a big Christmas seller.

Things that should eventually help Sony: it’s partnered with Best Buy and Wal-Mart to sell the device there when(ever) it comes out. My elitist New York quick-take: is Wal-Mart really the place to sell a $399 e-book reader? I understand Wal-Mart is a fantastic retail partner, but I don’t really associate the Wal-Mart crowd with reading (more like affordable clothes and groceries), and with reading new-fangled e-books at that.

So, in summary, don’t be surprised if you can’t get your hands on a Sony Daily in time for Santa Claus this year. I understand waiting a few more weeks doesn’t really make a difference to you and I, but it’s the world for Sony.

Globally speaking, there is one clear leader in the LCD TV business: Samsung. The company commands a 23.2% share in this segment, with Sony (13.7%) and Sharp (7%) almost hopelessly behind (according to DisplaySearch). So in June this year already, Sony and Sharp inked a joint venture deal to produce LCD TVs together. And today, the Nikkei (Japan’s biggest business publication), reports that the two former arch rivals decided to further expand their alliance.

The newspaper says Sharp plans to deliver LED backlights to Sony for their LCD TVs as early as next month. Sharp has said it will start producing more LED-based products earlier this year, but the Sony deal is the first time another company is supplied with LED backlights. Backlights account for nearly 20% of overall costs in manufacturing an LCD TV. DisplaySearch projects that by 2013, roughly 40% of all LCD TVs on the market will have LED backlights.

Sharp and Sony will also join forces in R&D for next-generation backlights, the Nikkei learned. The goals are to cut costs and develop TVs with better picture quality and efficient power consumption. Both companies already started operating a Sharp LCD panel production plant in Osaka last month and suffer from losses in their LCD TV divisions.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Remember when the first VAIO P came out and everyone was like, “I can’t believe it has Vista! That angers me! I am currently outraged!” – something along those lines? Well now it has Windows 7 and comes in four different models ranging in price from $850 to $1900.

The base model features a 1.33GHz Atom CPU, Windows 7 Home Premium, 2GB of RAM, and an 80GB 4200RPM hard drive for $850. Then there’s a model for $1000 that features a 1.6GHz CPU and 64GB SSD, followed by a $1500 model with a 1.86GHz CPU and 128GB SSD. The top of the line offering features Windows 7 Professional, a 2GHz CPU, and 256GB SSD for $1900.

VAIO P Series Lifestyle Notebooks [Sony via Electronista]

Cumulative Year To Date Sales Worldwide

Total Worldwide sales to date for the Wii are sitting just under 55 million consoles sold, while the Xbox 360 and PS3 are at 32.7M and 25.7M, respectively. The year-to-date worldwide sales are a bit different, with the Wii outselling both its competitors at 11M, and the PS3 and 360 at 6.6M and 5.9M. Where the sales figures get interesting are when we compare the number of pre-price-cut console sales, with that of sales post-price-cut.

Before Sony cut the price of the PS3, the Xbox 360 sold 4.53M units worldwide YTD, compared to Sony’s 4.12M YTD. Since then, the PS3 has outsold the 360 by 1.1M units (thanks to the PS3 Slim, most likely). What’s even more interesting, as you can see in the graph below, is that Sony’s biggest surge in sales happened two full weeks after Sony’s price reduction – right after the price reduction in the Xbox 360. The Wii also benefited from their small decrease in price as their sales went from hovering around 175K a week to over 350K the week after the price drop, to now what is nearly 400k a week. So why the marked difference in effectiveness between the three, and why did sales increase for the PS3 only after Xbox’s announcement?

Weekly Sales Worldwide (Sep-Oct)

The answer to the first part of the question is quite simple. The Nintendo Wii has outsold the other two consoles since its debut. It appeals to a broader user base, and the recent price break made it that much more accessible to those who don’t have a console. More importantly, its broad user base is different than that of the 360 and PS3’s. Although the Nintendo Wii is not as advanced as the other two consoles, (on a specs basis) its motion sensor technology coupled with the success of titles such as Wii Fit brand the Wii as not only a video game console, but a fitness and lifestyle enhancer. This difference, along with the decrease in price, is why the Wii is again outselling both of its competitors.

The difference in the effectiveness of price-cuts for the PS3 and the 360 is a bit more complicated. These devices, for the most part, appeal to the same demographic: those who buy a console primarily as a gaming platform. However, the biggest difference between the two consoles is that the PS3 features a Blu-Ray player. It seems that the PS3’s price cut, making it the same price as the 360 Elite, caused consumers to flock to the system which will let them play their precious Blu-ray discs.

The surge in sales for the PS3 didn’t happen until after the Xbox’s price announcement for a simple reason: Microsoft had been saying that a price drop was imminent and consumers were waiting to compare the two deals. Unfortunately for Microsoft, by gradually phasing out the traditional Xbox Pro model and only leaving their bare-bones Arcade model (it doesn’t have a built-in harddrive) and their higher priced Elite, the PS3 became a more enticing deal for many consumers. Had Microsoft cut the price of their Elite to below that of the PS3, or better yet, priced the Xbox 360 Pro at $199 (the price of the Arcade SKU) instead of phasing it out, then they might have seen the same growth in sales that the PS3 has, and could possibly have taken some sales away from the Nintendo Wii.

While all three makers have seen a higher demand for consoles since the price drops, the PS3 is the clear-cut winner thus far. They have surpassed the 360 in worldwide YTD sales, and if they have a strong end of the year, could possibly take the number two spot in YTD sales in the US, where they have historically struggled.

Sales numbers and graphs were collected from VGChartz. For more information on how they gathered their sales figures, click here.

This is still a rumor at this point, but Phone Arena is reporting that Verizon may soon be offering Sony’s 8-inch “not-a-netbook” VAIO P for $300 with a two-year data contract.

The model in question would apparently feature an 8-inch 1600×768 screen, Windows 7 Home Premium, 160GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and a mobile data chipset capable of working all over the world. There’s no release date yet, and I wasn’t personally able to load up the product info on the Verizon page that Phone Arena links to but the site points out that Verizon may have more info this Thursday at a planned holiday line-up event in New York.

There’s also loose talk of a $100 mail-in rebate but it’s not clear whether that’d make the price $300 or if it’d be $300 out the door plus a $100 mail-in rebate. Given the VAIO P’s relatively high price tag, though, I’d plan on $300 and hope to be pleasantly surprised.

This is still a rumor, though. More info as we get it.

Sony VAIO P Series Netbook coming to Verizon [Phone Arena]

Initially, watching movies instantly streamed from Netflix via the PS3 system will be enabled by a free, instant streaming Blu-ray disc that is being made available to all Netflix members. The free instant streaming disc leverages Blu-ray’s BD-Live™ technology to access the Internet and activate the Netflix user interface on the PS3 system, which must be online via Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

I don’t even want to speculate, it’s too weird. The content is hosted online, streamed over the internet, and the application and interface can’t take up more than a few megabytes. Yet they feel the need to next-day-air you a freaking Blu-ray disc that’s apparently the only way to access it. That’s a bit like having somebody climb the stairs in order to get to an escalator, isn’t it?

Maybe this is just a temporary thing, but maybe it really is as dumb as it sounds. We’ll know next month. At any rate, it’s a pretty awesome score for Sony. Maybe Microsoft only signed up for a two-month-long exclusive?

According to DigiTimes:

“The B series, including 32- and 40-inch models, will be priced lower than its current S series entry-level models in order to help the vendor regain its position in the global LCD TV market, the sources noted, adding that the price of a 32-inch B series Sony LCD TV is estimated at about NT$15,000 (US$462.96) or even lower.”

That “or even lower” part is important to note. I’d venture a guess that U.S. pricing would start at far lower than $462.96 seeing as though, for instance, Best Buy currently sells a 32-inch Sony LCD TV for $500 while off-brands of 32-inch LCD TVs are hovering around $350 or less. I’d think that $400 would be more realistic, assuming that Sony’s serious about competing in the lower end.

Of course, that number could fall even lower by early next year depending upon demand and panel prices. Whatever the case, it looks like Sony needs to move some TVs as the company “has trimmed its 2009 LCD TV shipment goal three times so far,” according to DigiTimes.

It’s not every day that a strange, hirsute man rewrites a Sony jingle and then dances, poorly, on his deck.

This man is my friend Rick from grade school and he created this in an homage to some stupid tapes we did as kids in my basement. While it is clear that Rick has grown physically, I worry constantly about his mental capacity.

Regardless, it is catchy. Click through to see the original commercial.

That is all. We out!

But why now? Why touch?

This push for touch points to two things. First, we have the Windows 7 launch with some touch capability built-in. Like a proud parent, Microsoft wants to show off what its little baby can do and, as a result, rumor has it that it has forced OEMs to add touch to almost everything in their line. By pushing touch into the pipeline, Microsoft essentially ensures that it won’t face a repeat of the 2001 tablet PC debacle.

This push also comes from fear. If the Apple Tablet hits the streets this year, Windows 7 wants to be in the forefront of touch technology. By adding touch now, they can say they did it first and all of those laptop hunters can add one more bullet point to their arbitrary laptop wishlist (”I want good graphics, ummm, a keyboard, and ummm… lots of room for photos and a touchscreen.”)

Microsoft lost the mobile touchscreen war. They don’t want to lose the coming “desktop” war. While I have my own opinions on that, I will hand it to HP and Sony: their interfaces are gorgeous. The HP interface I saw last week has a number of simple tools – a recipe box, for example, that can take recipes from the web and import them into a private database – as well as the standard stretch’n'drag photo and note-taking applications that make touch actually compelling. Will you ever double-tap on “My Documents” with your finger? Probably not, but perhaps it’s nice to know you have that ability.

In the end, multi-touch will probably rule the day. Future-proofing is fine and more power to Microsoft for being pre-emptive this time. However, the fanboy in me says that Apple will redefine the space shortly and leave these experiments in the dust.

This probably won’t come as a surprise to any of you, but September was a Very Big month in the life of the PS3. For the first time ever, since its launch in fall, 2006, the PS3 was the best-selling video game system. See what amazing things happen when you price a product at an affordable level?

Sony sold some 400,000 PS3s last month, compared to 375,000 Wiis and 370,000 Xbox 360s.

Software is another matter entirely, with only one PS3 game cracking the top 10: Batman: Arkham Asylum.

While it’s all well and good to be the top seller for one month out of the past 36, what I’m most looking forward to is seeing how Christmas will turn out. By then the big games (Modern Warfae 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, New Super Mario Brothers Wii etc.) will be out, and consumers will have some Serious Decisions to make.

Flickr

The X-series ultra-thin laptops are something we’ve been hearing about for a while. At 1.6lb and half an inch in thickness, they’re some of the sveltest out there, although the new Adamo has them beat by a bit. Unfortunately, they are rocking Atom processors, though they’re at least the new ones. Plus SSD, GPS, and a 3G connection from Verizon come standard. We’d have to see how that Atom performs, but $1300 is really not a bad asking price for such a sexy and capable little machine.

The L-series is meant as a media hub, and optionally will have a TV card, HDMI-in, and DVR capabilities. It’s got a 24-inch 1920×1080 screen and the design looks chunky and solid. The configurations start at $1300, but the specs are a joke if you want to do HD media on it. A Core2 Duo E5400? Come on. You’ll have to upgrade to the $1800 model if you want HDMI and a quad-core processor.

The less said about the CW series, the better. The specs are nothing to write home about, although the inclusion of Blu-ray (in the most expensive model only) is nice. The best thing about them is the price: $800 to start, $920 at maximum. Decent all-purpose machines, but they’re not particularly sleek or portable, nor will they excel at HD or gaming. Still, the price is right.

Sony is showing a good deal of value in these offerings; Vaio has traditionally been a rather expensive brand, but bringing it down essentially to ultrathin territory with this Atom-based X-series is probably a good move. People buying Vaio aren’t buying for the bits, but for the whole package. We’ll see how this touchscreen PC works out; that picture doesn’t really make it look comfortable and I think people will find desktop PCs aren’t the best thing to mix with touchscreens. Tablets, I tells ya! You can be sure that Sony will have a Vaio tablet by this time next year. In the mean time, these aren’t bad buys.

Read the full press releases here if you’re into that kind of thing.