The PlayStation Network - Going the Direction of the Xbox LIVE Marketplace?

I was organizing some notes, and ran across this news from mid-April regarding Sony's plans to launch a premium video service through its PlayStation Network service (very much like the Xbox LIVE service for Xbox 360 users). Peter Dille, Senior Vice President for Marketing & PlayStation Network, writes in an April 15 blog entry on the PlayStation Blog where he confirmed that Sony would offer a video service through the Network. While short on specifics, Dille writes that "[u]ltimately the goal of the PlayStation Network service will be to break through the overwhelming clutter of digital media to give you the TV, movies and gaming content you want."

My thought on this is what has taken Sony so long to implement this? The Xbox LIVE Marketplace appears to be doing pretty well, and we're about to confirm the role of video within the Marketplace when we receive some data back from our survey Electronic Gaming in the Digital Home II. In their January 24 earnings call, Microsoft officials noted that Xbox LIVE customers were at ten million. The Xbox LIVE Marketplace includes 3,500 hours of premium entertainment content from more than 35 studios and networks, and our preliminary data from the Electronic Gaming in the Digital Home II study indicates that use of the Marketplace for video streams and downloads is significant.

One data point from the Electronic Gaming in the Digital Home II survey that is awfully interesting is the extremely high percentage of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles that are connected to the Internet. Our survey found that 69% and 61% of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners, respectively, have their consoles connected to the Internet.