Sony used its presser at E3 Monday night to announce that it is launching PlayStation Vue, its over-the-top pay TV service, in two more markets: San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House paired that with word on new national a la carte offerings that won’t require a multichannel bundle, starting with Showtime (announced last week); a channel from Machinima (more than half of Machinima’s U.S. audience owns a PlayStation platform, according to a statement from Machinima CEO Chad Gutstein); and Fox Soccer Plus, a premium service that’s also offered today through MVPDs such as DirecTV, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, AT&T U-verse, Verizon FiOS, Frontier Communications and Cablevision Systems, among others.
House also announced that PlayStation Plus subscribers will also get access to discounts on programming packages, but did not elaborate.
The PS Vue launches in Los Angeles and San Francisco (more detail about the lineup of regional sports channels in those two markets was not immediately known) follow the service’s initial debut in March in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Update: Sony revealed pricing on its initial slate of a la carte options and provided more detail on its TV lineup in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Early on, Sony’s OTT-TV service features three tiers -- “Access” for $49.99 per month; “Core,” which includes local sports channels, for $59.99 per month; and “Elite,” an offering that includes everything in Access and Core plus more than two dozen additional channels. To prime the pump, Sony lets new, qualified users try PS Vue for free for seven days.
PlayStation Vue is currently supported on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 and via a recently launched app for the iPad.
Expect to hear more about PlayStation Vue this Thursday (June 18), when Dwayne Benefield, vice president and head of PlayStation Vue, speaks at the Multichannel News/Broadcasting & CableNext TV Summit & Expo at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel.
