PlayStation has been watching the SVOD and streaming battles play out from the sidelines, but it believes it will have a more prominent role to play as more Australians become cord-cutters.
Michael Ephraim, Sony Australia managing director, told AdNews its push to be the “entertainment hub” in the loungeroom is all part of the same debate around streaming and subscription over the top services.
PlayStation is actively seeking to tie up IP rights which would be complement its core demographic of age 18-34 males, Ephraim said.
It already offers users access to Foxtel Play, Quickflix, SBS On Demand, PLUS7 and is looking at other third party services it can connect with.
Ephraim said PlayStation had been watching the fight over SVOD in Australia from the sidelines, but it would be in a position to swoop should consolidation in the sector take place.
“I think everybody's waiting to see how the dust settles on this stuff. You've got the 800-pound gorillas with Fairfax and Nine with StreamCo, Netflix coming, everybody in the industry feels that it's going to take a couple of years for this to play out,” he said.
“There's going to be a lot of fragmentation, a lot of offerings in the market and everyone feels there needs to be some kind of consolidation before the customer can access this stuff seamlessly and simply. We'd like to be part of that consolidation conversation.”
Speaking on Netflix, while he couldn't comment directly on an Australian launch, he said it would be more than likely PlayStation Australia would get the rights to stream the service, as it does in the US.
“If you look to our US brothers, the research shows 30% of Netflix traffic comes over PlayStation in the US. What I will say is that wherever Netflix has launched, PlayStation has been a strong launch partner of theirs”.” Ephraim said.
“If people can get services like Netflix, movies, if they can get pay-per-view for sports, do they want 150 channels [through Foxtel] or do they want to buy what they actually want? Cord cutting has definitely been a feature for quite a few years in the US and that's potentially where things are heading here as well to muddy the waters even more.”
Meanwhile, he pointed to an deal signed last week between Sony and CBS and an earlier arrangement tied up with Viacom as a taste of things to come.
The deals will allow Sony to carry the CBS broadcast network and Viacom channels such as MTV in a bundle, which will then be streamed to PlayStation consoles.
It's part of a broader move for Sony to create a cloud-based TV streaming service, which it announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Other services such as Fetch TV, which is pitching itself as the only alternative to subscribing to Foxtel, offer similar hub-style access to multiple over the top on demand video services through one platform.
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