SONY PS2 BROWSER































OREGAN EMBEDDED MEDIA BROWSER SOLUTION
Case Study - April 2004


"Sony Computer Entertainment Europe selected Oregan's middleware and TV browser to facilitate delivery of Internet connectivity and access to its groundbreaking Central Station service on Sony PlayStation 2.

Sony's selection criteria was based on advanced feature support, the dynamic and flexible culture of the company, its ability to customise and its capability to deliver high quality performance.

Oregan's solution takes PlayStation gamers online and enables access to content and community features that enhance the PlayStation Network Entertainment experience."

Nainan Shah, VP Business Development SCEE
 


PROJECT BACKGROUND

Sony PlayStation 2 console has been leading the video gaming market since its launch in March 2000. Phenomenal success in its first two days on sale in Japan, when the machine sold a record-breaking 980,000 units, reverberated throughout PAL television standard territories with over 16m units sales, and in North America, where sales figures exceeded 21m by August 2003.

In 2001, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) adopted the strategy for taking the PlayStation 2 gaming console online and providing the end-consumer with network gaming experience. The market forces indicated a favourable combination of broadband adoption and growth of online interactive entertainment.

CREATING A CONNECTED GAME CONSOLE
In order to enable the new features, SCEE required TV-centric embedded browser technology that could be easily ported onto the Emotion Engine chipset and execute efficiently on the proprietary PlayStation 2 operating system.

As a part of an entertainment product, the browser is expected to render rich animated graphics and interactive features, without compromising the display quality and the speed of gaming experience, and in many ways outperforming existing PC web browsers.

The first release of Oregan's browser for PlayStation enables the console's broadband connectivity to the Sony Central Station portal - a walled garden entertainment and community forum for PlayStation gamers.
THE CHALLENGE OF BUILDING A TV BROWSER FOR A GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT BRAND
SCEE division manages the PlayStation 2 product within the PAL television standard territory, which includes Western and Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Australia and parts of Asia and South America. Consequently, the browser is required to provide global language support, including the more challenging languages such as Arabic, which requires bi-directional text display and input, for rendering HTML that is written from right-to-left.

In addition, it was prerequisite that the solution should be scalable for future enhancements of the platform as a TV-centric digital entertainment consumer appliance.

And finally, the project timescales determined the need for a solution that can be ported within several weeks.

In summary, the requirements included:

·  International language encoding
·  Advanced graphics support
·  Application Programming Interfaces for third party plug-ins
·  High quality display
·  Small footprint and fast execution
·  Scalability for future product enhancements
·  Game development libraries
·  Support for the Sony Dualshock 2 controller
·  Widescreen support
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