FOSTER CITY, Calif., April 22 (UPI) -- Sony Corp. has signed a deal to bring Major League Baseball's live streaming service to PlayStation3 video game consoles, the companies said Thursday.
Effective immediately, PlayStation owners in North America can sign up with MLB.TV to watch out-of-market baseball games in high definition over the Internet.
Local team games and others broadcast on TV are blacked out.
A subscription costs $25 a month or $120 a year.
There is a revenue split associated with the deal, but Sony would not specify the terms.
Viewers can pause, fast-forward and rewind games, Sony said. They can also choose either home or away versions of broadcast feeds, scroll through a league-wide scoreboard and scroll through the entire game schedule in calendar format.
In a given game, they can also go directly to any half-inning to watch only that portion of the game.
The baseball deal signifies a repositioning of the PlayStation from a videogame console to a digital-entertainment hub, Sony Computer Entertainment America said.
"This is more than just a game console -- this is a device that is redefining how content is being delivered to the living room," PlayStation Senior Vice President Peter Dille told The New York Times.
Microsoft Corp. portrays its Xbox 360 console in a similar way.
Both compete with Nintendo Co.'s Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles.
The PlayStation deal is MLB's first with a videogame maker.
The MLB subscription video package is already accessible on some "smart" cellphones, Apple Inc.'s iPad tablet computer and on devices that deliver Web streams to TV sets.
