Sony: Touchscreens and PlayStation Network Coming to Vaio

Author	Hugo Jobling
Published	24th Jul 2009

Sony: Touchscreens and PlayStation Network Coming to Vaio

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It's a rare day that Sony reveals much information about its intentions. Nonetheless, in an interview with Laptop Mag, Mike Abary, Senior Vice President of Sony's Information Technology Products Division, seemed more than happy to talk about the direction that his domain within the Sony empire will be taking over the coming months.

The bluntest of Abary's revelations is that there will be touchscreen Vaio products launched once Windows 7 - with its native touch support - launches. You don't get much clearer than saying: "You will see touch capabilities introduced on Vaio products that take advantage of Windows 7."

Abary also mentioned that, thanks to a recent reshuffle within Sony the Playstation, Vaio, Walkman and Reader electronics groups are now part of the same chain of command, meaning collaboration between the four should continue to improve. The main likely positive outcome of this? The PlayStation Network being made available to a wider number of product lines, including Vaio PCs (and PCs in general) with a focus on the video-on-demand side of PSN, rather than the games library.

That Sony wishes to extend the PlayStation Network infrastructure to non-PlayStation devices is hardly news. Hearing it confirmed that the divisions within Sony (traditionally a very segregated company) are all teaming together to make this happen is definitely positive and some more details as to how PlayStation Network will look and work away from the PS3 and PSP are more than welcome.

Abary also hopes to see a better integration of Sony's Reader products with the rest of its range. A side effect of that may be the availability of Sony's eBook store away from its dedicated readers - although there's no confirmation of that.

In a nutshell: don't underestimate Sony's ability or intention to innovate just yet.

Link:
Laptop Mag.