Sony Details Its Own Media Streaming Services On PS4

Earlier this month, Sony announced that the PS4 would launch with a number of entertainment apps, like Netflix and Hulu Plus. Those are all well and good, but Sony would really like it if you used its own entertainment apps on the PS4 as well.

Sony announced today that its Video Unlimited and Music Unlimited services will be on the PS4 at launch. That’s not all, however, as the apps will have received some beefy updates from their PS3 predecessors. The biggest updates seem to be coming to the Video Unlimited, but Music Unlimited fans are getting plenty of new features as well.

So, what’s new in Video Unlimited on the PS4? Here’s all you can look forward to:

Faster start times and quicker navigation

Access to over 200,000 movies and TV episodes

Instant streaming of new purchases that accounts for bandwidth to minimize buffering

Cloud storage of all new purchases, eliminating hard drive clutter

Past purchases will soon be available through cloud storage

Social features that show what your friends have watched and rated

As for Music Unlimited, here are the new features in the PS4 app:

Completely redesigned user interface

Enhanced discoverability to help you navigate our vast library of 22 million tracks

High quality audio streaming for every song

System-level integration that lets you play songs from your playlists while playing games, accessible through the mini-player that appears after pressing the PS Button

As you may have heard, the PS4 won’t support MP3s or DLNA at launch. This basically forces users to use Sony’s Music Unlimited for music on the system, and that’s left a number of people pretty unhappy. In a recent interview with Giant Bomb, Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida said the decision to remove MP3 support wasn’t due to some nefarious scheme to make you use Music Unlimited. Instead, he says the focus at launch “has been always on game features” and that multimedia support fell by the wayside as a consequence. With that being said, Yoshida says the engineering teams are already discussing how to implement MP3 and DLNA support.

[Image: Sony Entertainment/YouTube]