Sony and AOL Discuss Online Plans

Sony and Online giant American Online enter initial talks about possible PS2/online partnership.

December 12, 2000

U.S. Internet company America Online has entered into top-level discussions with Sony Computer Entertainment and Toyota to gain an online edge in the videogame and automobile market, the Wall Street Journal reported today.
While the talks are on the preliminary stages right now, AOL wants to partner to gain a larger share of the world\'s Internet market both at home and abroad, specifically in Japan, where Toyato\'s online site Gazoo.com has performed so well. The talks included topics such as the development of joint electronic commerce services, and joint marketing campaigns.

What\'s most interesting, or perhaps frightening, is that AOL sought out Sony Computer Entertainment, the PlayStation branch of Sony, with the aim of hooking up PlayStation 2 gamers with AOL\'s Internet service.

"The company has a variety of talks with many companies to provide broadband contents through PlayStation 2," a spokesman at Sony Computer Entertainment told Reuters.

Sony and AOL are theorizing the many ways in which AOL software could be bundled with PlayStation 2, which plays games, DVD movies, and will eventually connect to the Internet. Initial ideas include selling PlayStation 2 preinstalled with AOL software or shipping AOL software on a CD-ROM with each console.

The Journal suggested that one of the major stumbling blocks to such a deal is that Sony has major plans to expand online, which may cause head-on competition with AOL. Currently, Sony already owns one of Japan\'s largest Internet service providers, which competes with AOL Japan.

This cant be happeneing, not AOL, arrrrrrrrrgh.
AOL are the worst piece of crap isp there everwas, they prey on the stupid.

So i guess when theres a web brower developed at last it\'l made my aol and support abolutly bugger all.

Nooooo!!  Please tell me its not true...  Why would they ever...ever want to do that...  Prolly so they can compete with MSN...  

Yeah thats what they should do, bundle it with MSN...jk.

But aO-hell...  Great now this is never gonna work.
Well so much for that.

peace

Keep in mind that this is AOL TIME WARNER. Time warner makes some of the best movies and stuff ever. Remember that AOL quality will go up, and be time warnerized. It\'s not just ****ty AOL 4.0 since last year... Beats MS winning this war.

ms winning the war?, i think they already have, ie supports more than any of the netscpaes or AOL, netscape 6 has a few new things but not much. The most important thing is that IE WORKS. i would be nice to see internet explorer X developed for PS2 but thinking about it this would never happen as is competing with MS with the Xbox

AOL is really popular right now, I think the only thing that could be beating it(just in my area), is comcast@home.  But AOL is way better than the MSN internet service, that\'s like as low quality as it gets.

Originally posted by SyxxKorn
AOL is really popular right now, I think the only thing that could be beating it(just in my area), is comcast@home.  But AOL is way better than the MSN internet service, that\'s like as low quality as it gets.

Personally I like earthlink all the way!!

but how about how i m gonna get it if it starts to get shipped with PS2.  What about all of us with a PS2 already??
i think it is $hit if it wont work for us because is was not installed.