Sony's mystery addition to the PlayStation 3's streaming video service lineup is a mystery no more: it's Amazon Instant Video, the online retailer's collection of an estimated 120,000 movies and shows, as well as Prime Instant Video, the roughly 17,000 streaming items included free with a $79 Amazon Prime subscription. That includes recent infusions of content from Discovery, Viacom, ABC-Disney, and Fox. Both services are now accessible from a native PS3 app, downloadable from your console's XMB menu, and run similarly to Netflix or Hulu Plus in that regard. You won't be able to purchase content from Amazon using your PlayStation Store digital wallet, though: you'll need to pair your console to Amazon's service via the web. One benefit of that is cloud sync, however. You can start a movie on your PS3 and resume on a Kindle Fire, or vice versa, for instance.

The announcement may not be as exciting as a live TV service, but it's a major video service that the Xbox 360 doesn't have... unless you count the grueling process of downloading shows in advance on a Windows computer and streaming to your Xbox using Windows Media Center.



