Sony’s hoping to hit up the wallets of social networkers and video bloggers everywhere with its unveiling today of a Web-focused, portable camcorder. The new Sony Net-sharing Cam is priced at around $200 and should be available in September.

The Sony Net-sharing Cam, which shoots video in the MPEG-4 recording format, can record about five hours of video onto a 2GB Memory Stick Pro Duo when default settings on the camcorder are enabled. It also can snap five-megapixel digital camera images and measures 1-3/16″ by 4-1/8″ by 2-1/4″.

Sony Pictures announced today that it is relaunching the Grouper online video sharing site that it bought last year, branding it as Crackle. The intention of the new video site will be to spotlight newer, up-and-coming talent and not to be another user-generated content (UGC) site like YouTube, which is already a very saturated market. Prior to its acquisition by Sony Grouper was one of the original popular online video sharing sites.

“We decided that the UGC space was not really a business,” said Josh Felser, co-president of Crackle. “The content is the same on every site and it’s really hard to monetize,” said Felser. “Advertisers don’t buy space alongside videos of people vomiting.”

Through being owned by Sony Pictures, Crackle will be able to take advantage of the connections that Sony has and pass that on to the new …

Sony has officially come out to say that they are going to replace the original version of the PSP with the newer, slimmer PSP when it launches in September.

“The newly designed PSP will replace the original PSP design starting in September with the $169.99 PSP Core Pack and the $199.99 Daxter PSP Entertainment Pack.”, said Senior Public Relations Manager for Sony Computer Entertainment America, Patrick Seybold in an interview with IGN.

This really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone since the newer one is basically the same product. It’s a little bit lighter and thinner, has a couple new cool features such as the video out port and it will go for the same price. Of course if you like your things a little on the bulkier side then this will come as bad news, but I’m going to …

There’s been a lot of talk and speculation lately in the current generation game console market, with Nintendo taking a significant lead in console sales over Microsoft and Sony. Many analysts have predicted that both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 would see some price cuts to make themselves more competitive with the Wii, and Sony recently knocked $100 off of their 60GB PS3 game console.

Most thought this was indeed to make the PS3 more competitive price-wise with the Wii, but we’ve learned now from David Reeves, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, that the $100 price reduction is only to push more of the 60GB models out the door since Sony is doing away with them to transition to the 80BG model. Reeves thinks that all …

It’s only been a few days since Sony announced a $100 price cut to their PS3 game console, bringing the 60GB model down to $500. But, even with the price reduction this is still more than twice as much as the Nintendo Wii and $20 more than the priciest version of the Microsoft Xbox.

Due to competitive pricing and the idea that more PS2 owners will soon be upgrading to the PS3, Capcom Chief Financial Officer Kazuhiko Abe feels that it is likely that the Playstation 3 will see another price cut before the end of this year in an effort to increase the consoles user base.

“But, the price has been cut once and it is likely to be cut again towards the end of the year. I expect the (PS3’s) installed base to grow gradually”, said …

Today Sony confirmed rumors of a new PSP Lite and announced the release of a slimmer, lighter version of the PSP handheld game console. The changes to the PSP are not drastic by any means, but it will come out 33% lighter and 19% thinner.

In additional to it’s new svelte profile the new PSP will include a video out port which is something many had hoped for. Now movies, pictures and games can be seen on a screen larger than the 4.3 inch LCD on the console (yep, this stayed the same size). Sony also added the ability to charge the PSP through a USB cable from your computer, and added some internal memory to help speed up the load times for games.

The thinner PSP will start shipping in September in colors including the familiar piano black along with newly …

After reports of select Target stores dropping the price of their PlayStation 3s by $100 last weekend, Sony formally announced today that it will drop the price of its 60 GB version of the gaming console immediately. That means a 60 GB PS3 will now cost you $499 if you want to get one right away. However, if you can wait until August then you can get your mitts on a 80 GB PS3 for $599 and it will come with a free copy of “MotorStorm”, Sony’s ultra-pretty racing sim that shows off the capabilities of its Cell processor.

Sony is third in the next gen console war and desperately needed to do something to reverse its course. A price drop is a good start but what the PS3 also needs are some killer titles to get gamers lined up to buy the console. That …

Sony President Ryoji Chubachi said in an interview with Reuters on Friday that the company has no current plans for a price cut of the Playstation 3 game console. The PS3 has been trailing the Nintendo Wii and the Microsoft Xbox 360 in game console sales for months, and in May the PS3’s sold were less than a 3rd of the number of Nintendo Wii’s.

Due to lower sales, a price that’s more than double that of the Wii and a limited number of popular gaming titles, many analysts have speculated that Sony will be coming out with a price drop in order to make the PS3 with its Blu-ray disk player more attractive to customers. Analysts polled by Reuters expected to see price cuts from $100 to $150 on the game console. This would bring the price of …

The Sony Playstation 3 has its processing power and the Xbox has its Microsoft but as far as sales go there is really no denying that Nintendo is the closest to the “magic formula” for selling game consoles with the Wii. May marks the fifth month in a row that Nintendo outsold rivals in console sales with 338,300 units sold compared to 81,600 Playstation 3’s from Sony and 154,900 Xbox 360 consoles sold from Microsoft.

Nintendo also has notable sales in with its handheld DS by selling 423,150 units in May, and Sony’s Playstation 2 outsold its successor again by more than twice as many with 187,800 consoles. Overall the market has seen a 50% increase in sales of video game hardware and software from last year according to Reuters, mostly attributed to the Nintendo Wii …

Sony has some new VAIO notebooks added to their lineup, this time in some new glossy colors including sangria, cosmopolitan, dove, indigo and black. Adding to the personalized colors that dress up the new VAIO CR series notebooks, they also have an optional matching bag and mouse, a custom keyboard configuration and font, and a unique matching wallpaper.

The CR’s are 14.1 inch notebooks weighing decent 5.5 pounds so it won’t require any super-human strength to carry it the length of the airport terminal. The notebook is powered by Intel’s Core 2 Duo CPU (1.8GHz) along with 2GB of RAM. It also has a built-in web-cam, optical drive, the latest 802.11n wireless LAN, an S-video port and media slots for SD cards, Memory Sticks and ExpressCards.

Pricing for the Sony VAIO CR notebooks start at $1,350 and won’t ship until …

Microsoft isn’t the only one looking to make some changes in order to keep up with rival Nintendo in the game console wars. Sony said last week it plans to cut some jobs in its gaming unit in the U.S. as well as Europe and Japan as it works to keep up sales of its Playstation 2 and Playstation 3 with the Nintendo Wii. The Wii has been the leader in the latest generation of game console sales for the previous four months in a row, and even beat out the previous generation Playstation 2 in April. Sony had enjoyed a decade of being the top in game console sales with the Playstation and Playstation 2 until the launch of the Nintendo Wii in November, 2006.

Kotaku reported last Wednesday that …

For a few weeks there has been a fair amount of talk about a new PSP design coming from Sony. Now Kotaku is reporting from inside sources what they believe to be the final specs for what they are calling the “PSP Slim”, although an actual name hasn’t been released.

The new PSP2, or whatever it will be called, isn’t a total redesign and will be using the same hardware from the existing PSP, but it will sport a “much slimmer design”. The battery life is expected to quadruple partly due to a more power efficient LCD screen, and they’ve also found a way to make the UMD games load a little faster.

The new PSP design will have some built-in internal memory with it instead of having to rely on an external Memory Stick. In fact it will house …

Sony’s latest HDD camcorder features a whopping 100GB internal hard drive along with some real convenient features, but for a price.

Camcorders that store their media on hard drives work very nice to allow quick access to recorded content on the camera since each time you stop and start it creates a separate file, and in Sony’s case has an icon showing the first frame to identify the clip. Transferring the data to your computer is as simple as connecting any external drive and as quick as the USB interface will allow. This model also comes with a one-toch disc burn feature with supported software to burn DVD’s through your computer.

Along with that 100GB’s of storage the Sony HDR-SR5C camcorder features a wide 2.7 inch touch panel with menus on the screen to navigate settings along with viewing and managing recorded …

Sony now has five slimmer Bravia HDTVs to sell to its consumers. The quintet of televisions range from 20% slimmer than last year’s Bravia models (50-inch KDS-50A3000, the 55-inch KDS-55A3000 and the 60-inch KDS-60A3000 all fall within that spectrum) to 40% (the jumbo-sized 60-inch KDS-Z60XBR5 and 70-inch KDS-Z70XBR5 are here.)

Updates to the technology include a greater color display range of 1.8 times the previous models capabilities and four modes of Motionflow 120Hz high frame rate technology that you can change to fit the picture that you’re watching. Theater Mode will adjust the set to deliver an experience more like the one you get going to the cinema while PhotoTV HD mode tweaks the color, sharpness and gradient so that your viewing of digital photos will be crystal clear and ultra-sharp. All five of the screens can support 1080p …

With the increase in HD radio stations around the country and lower costs in making HD radios, Sony has jumped on board and will be offering their version of an HD radio in July of this year.

Sony’s XDR-S3HD will retail for around $200 as a tabletop AM/FM/HD receiver. There are over 1,300 HD radio stations currently nationwide and the number is expected to grow. The HD radio offers free, clear digital sound and has the ability to send along the name of the song and artist to the device while playing. Options such as satellite radio offers comparable clarity in their radio signal but requires subscription fees to pick up the signal.

Sony has offered products in the past for satellite radio but this is their first run at the HD radio market with the XDR-S3HD and the XT-100HD Mobile HD radio tuner offering HD …