The problem is that nobody really knows what Sony is doing. Is the Sony Online Service software that you download? Is it a cloud service that you'll mostly access directly through devices? Both? Neither? From what I can see, the Sony Online Service is being hyped as an ambitious plan to turn the copmany ship towards profitability, but it's just a plan. I can't even stack it up against the things , because we don't know if the services will be at all alike.

Worse yet, the idea of a media store across several devices has no inherent advantage for the consumer. If I buy a video on my Playstation 3, it means nothing to me that the same video store also exists on Sony HDTVs. I'm already watching the video on my TV, so what do I care?

It's just a matter of branding. And when it comes to brands of online media stores, iTunes is a juggernaut. The cold truth is that if Sony really wants a competitive edge, it needs to excel in hardware first. The dedicated legions of media store customers follow.