Sony Psx

[Guest]

Sony Corp said on Tuesday it would begin selling the "PSX," an all-in-one game console and entertainment system, in Japan by the year-end, in a bid to boost the company's sagging electronics sales. Sony, the world's largest consumer electronics maker, said the PSX would feature a satellite TV tuner, DVD recorder, hard disk drive (HDD) recorder and PlayStation 2 (PS2) game player.

A version with a 160-gigabyte HDD will sell for 79,800 yen ($719) and be able to record up to 204 hours of television, the company said. It will also sell a 250-gigabyte version for 99,800 yen.

Chief Executive Nobuyuki Idei said in May that one of the growth strategies for Sony's electronics business would be to integrate it with the company's profit-making games division.

Shares of Sony were down 1.73 percent at 3,980 yen by midday, while the Nikkei 225 average was unchanged.

Sony plans to market the PSX as a consumer electronics product and aims to pitch the box as a do-everything entertainment console for games, music and movies.

The company's games division has developed cutting-edge semiconductors for the PS2 and the original PlayStation, but it is the upcoming PlayStation machine that has people buzzing about the integration of electronics and games.

Sony plans to invest 500 billion yen over the next three years in semiconductors, including research and development for a high-powered microprocessor codenamed "cell" that is being developed with Toshiba Corp and IBM.

The chip is expected to power Sony's next-generation game console, but the company aims to make "cell" the global standard for consumer electronics in the high-speed Internet era.

source: Reuters