Google’s standoff with China over censorship in search in 2010 was a lowpoint in the search engine’s ambitions to expand to the East, but a new scuffle over email hacking could do that +1.

This cloud doesn’t have much of a silver lining right now: Sony (NYSE: SNE) has closed down two of its media services, its PlayStation Network for gaming and its Qriocity entertainment service, after a malicious intrusion resulted in a “compromise of personal information” on the two cloud-based networks. The news…

With a Super Bowl commercial grafting human “gaming” thumbs onto a now-familiar green Android, *Sony* Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) is finally going big with its long-anticipated, and much-leaked, “PlayStation” phone, formally called the Xperia Play. (Full video after the jump.)

Sony (NYSE: SNE) is not yet announcing a “PlayStation Phone”—that, supposedly, is being saved for the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona in February—but today it announced two products it hopes will help it hold on to mindshare and market share in the lucrative but highly competitive world of gaming,…

*Sony* keeps flip-flopping over adding music downloads to the PlayStation Network (PSN). After scrapping plans to add a music store to the gaming network—complete with the ability for gamers to port tracks to the handheld PSP—comes news that the company will indeed expand the PSN into a full digital download…

Functionality aside, one of the biggest differences between Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE gamer network, and Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) has been the cost: If you want to play against other gamers on Xbox LIVE, you need to pay around $50 annually for Gold service (though various retailers offer discount cards); multi-player…

*Microsoft* rolled out a slew of new social features for the Xbox 360 today, making its already popular Xbox LIVE network a much more comprehensive source of entertainment. The upgrade lets people post status updates to Twitter and Facebook, view and share photos, and even stream music from Last.fm. The…

More TV shows, movies and online series coming to the PlayStation Network, as talks between Nintendo and Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) reportedly heat up ... *Sony* Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) has inked deals with six new content providers—including Lucasfilm Ltd.—that will add to its growing lineup of video content accessible through…

About that “exclusive” agreement with *Netflix* for streaming movies on the Xbox 360 that *Microsoft* was boasting about ...  It’s not so exclusive anymore. Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and *Sony* Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) have announced that Netflix’s streaming video service is coming to the PS3 next month. Users that want…

Back-to-back $100 price drops from *Sony* and *Microsoft* for the PS3 and Xbox, respectively, pumped up sales of both consoles in just over a week. Sony (NYSE: SNE) sold just over 75,900 PS3s—more than double the number of units it sold the previous week—and up 16 percent vs. the same…

Hoping to boost console sales this holiday season, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has dropped the price of its Elite Xbox 360 to $299. The $100 price cut comes just about a week after *Sony* (finally) slashed the price of the PS3, also to $299. But to hear Xbox 360 Product Manager…

It took a few weeks, but *Sony* CEO Sir Howard Stringer has responded to *Activision* CEO Bobby Kotick’s very public threat to stop making games for the PS3 if Sony (NYSE: SNE) didn’t slash the console’s price to boost sales: “He likes to make a lot of noise,” Stringer told…

It’s one thing when indie developers, bloggers and a couple of analysts plead with Sony (NYSE: SNE) to come down on the price of the PS3. It’s another thing when the CEO of *Activision*—currently the biggest gaming company in the world—says that it might stop making games for the PS3…

—Flip’s new video channels: After shaking up the video camera market with the Flip, Pure Digital is moving into video-sharing with the launch of Flip Channels. The new feature lets Flip owners publish, host and share their videos with a free, personalized channel at FlipShare.com; the company will also release…

Plenty of details about Sony’s new PSP Go had been leaked in recent weeks—but the company saved the biggest news about its next-gen portable gaming device for E3 attendees—the $249 price tag. That’s about $80 more than the PSP-3000 (its predecessor), or the Nintendo DSi, a factor that has some…

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata says the company isn’t worried about competition from likes of *Sony* and *Apple*, but judging from some of the latest press, there’s a growing sentiment that Nintendo’s choke-hold on video game hardware and software sales might be coming to an end. The NYT digs into why…

Two hot, critically-acclaimed games helped push sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 past the Nintendo Wii for the first time in well over a year in Japan, according to Reuters. It’s a significant milestone, given the fact that the Wii has been outselling the PS3 worldwide since they both launched in…

—PS2 price cut aimed at the Wii: *Sony* dropped the price of the PS2 to $99, much to the dismay of consumers hoping that a price cut was coming for the PS3, but SCEA director of hardware marketing John Koller told Kotaku that the company wasn’t aiming at them. It…

*Sony* has issued its strongest statement yet to the growing chorus of gamers, publishers and analysts calling for a price cut on the PS3: “We do not have plans for a PS3 price drop, and any rumors to that effect are false and are the result of speculation.” That’s the…