Someone spotted an odd press release:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Sony Corp. has revealed little about its upcoming PlayStation 3 online service to rival Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox Live, but an upcoming offering from the Japanese giant’s online game division may hint at its direction.

Sony Online Entertainment in July will debut a service, known by its working title “Station Launcher,” which provides users access to several of its online PC games.

Station Launcher, which ties together several programs already offered by Sony, will also consolidate lists of players’ friends from a variety of the company’s games, support chat and provide downloads of new game content and trinkets. Also, it will offer a single point where players can manage payments and link to other Sony-run sites carrying player rankings and information.

“It’s not going to stop at the PC,” said Nathan Pearce, a creative director at Sony Online Entertainment, which is a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Digital.

At the debut, Station Launcher will connect users to Sony’s “EverQuest,” “The Matrix Online,” “Star Wars Galaxies,” “PlanetSide” and “EverQuest II.” Unlimited play of all five games through a Sony Station Access subscription plan costs $24.99 a month.

Sony also will add “Vanguard: Saga of Heroes” to the Station Launcher lineup this winter, Pearce said.

Games on Station Launcher will constantly update to computers with live online connections so subscribers can go straight into play rather than waiting for new information to download every time they boot up. The service uses technology from Microsoft that transfers files using leftover bandwidth, ensuring uninterrupted computer use.

Beside what I underlined about Vanguard’s possible release and that noone believes, I just wonder what this whole press release is about.

I mean, what’s new?

Smed already anticipated both of the main points. The new patching technology:

Well, our front end stuff (including a completely new patching system we’re unveiling at E3) will likely be something we’ll work with the Sigil team on integrating.

And SOE’s involvement in the planning of networking functionalities for the PS3:

We’re also working with the PlayStation group to help them with backend implementation for the PS3 network, so you can expect to see titles from us that will take advantage of the online capabilities of the hardware

The patch system reminds closely what Nintendo announced for the Wii, the always on “WiiConnect24” mode used to download on the fly new content as it is available.

Newsflash: I already leave stuff to download on the PC when I go to sleep. Fancy technology, indeed. :)

Smed here talks about a “new patching system” but as far as I know this system is ALREADY present and integrated in the Station Launcher. I can already download in the background optional content for EQ2 while I play, for example. So what’s new? I hope the news isn’t that they are extending the service so that it starts on its own as you boot the PC and that you cannot turn off in any way. Sony has these sorts of bad habits and I definitely don’t want another kind of rootkit.

What the press release says about the PS3 is also odd. The Station Launcher already exists and doesn’t need to “debut”. It’s integration with the PS3 also probably involves just the backend since I don’t believe Sony has plans to port any of its current mmorpgs on the console. So I guess they are just unifying the technology to build a standard, reworking it to make it more like a community tool (but noone really needs another chat program on the PC). It’s also possible that the rumored “free mmorpg” could be a PS3 title, but I think in this case we’ll have to wait for a long time.

Smed, again, already hinted something:

I think it’s going to be game-by-game. Blizzard’s beta was great.. it helped them polish the game and it also helped them on the technical side (remember this was their first MMO). For us 9 months is probably too long.. I think the ideal # is closer to 3 months of closed beta and 3 months of open beta. We would likely go longer on a Playstation 3 MMO (if such a beast was in fact in development)

If it isn’t in development it is surely being seriously considered.

Overall I believe this press release just presents the same stuff under a different cover. A cover that reads “PlayOnline”. Ugh.