A couple of months ago we reported that Sony CEO Howard Stringer had said “We will be expanding the PlayStation Network to hardware other than the PS3”. Later this year Sony are releasing the VAIO W, their first foray in to the Netbook market, offering a small sized and lower specced laptop for the budget price of $499.

During an interview Sony’s Information Technology Products Division Senior Vice President (phew) Mike Arbary, was asked:

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So given what Howard Stringer has been saying about breaking down internal silos across Sony, wouldn’t this be a great opportunity for you to offer some sort of integration with the PlayStation movie and TV service?

We are absolutely talking about that internally. The PlayStation network is growing. We believe that network will have an option with VAIO PCs or any PCs for that matter. What we are trying to do is collaborate with our peers at PlayStation in that regard. Would the PlayStation Network on VAIOs include games as well?

That is a possibility but we are concentrated more on movies and TV content. We find casual gaming to be interesting for PCs and we are driving right now to establish our role in that area. We believe this segment of end user of causal gaming is growing we can address that marketplace in a way that is unique on VAIOs.

Even if you have no intention of purchasing a VAIO it will still have positive reverberations in the world of the PlayStation, as at the very least it will mean more eyeballs for PlayStation content which will in turn lead to more content for the whole network.

He does also say “VAIO or any PC for that matter” which may leave the door open for some sort of PSN interface being made available to any PC user, although I’d have thought they’d be better off just giving the PSN a much needed web interface similar to Xbox Live Marketplace. It all still sounds very much a work in progress, so whether the PSN will be appearing on the VAIO W when it’s launched in October is not yet confirmed.

Source: LaptopMag.