The PS3 network is now officially called... nothing.

Next Gen has just posted an exclusive interview with Sony's Kaz Hirai, which reminded me of a rather confusing antic that (The artist formerly known as) Prince pulled back in the 90s. Between the mumblings of vague launch details and a short supply of units on hand, Mr. Hirai disclosed that he isn't interested in giving their downloadable game service a proper name. Bad daddy:

What we don’t do however is have a brand name for the network service, you know, like PlayStation Online or PlayStation Live, and this is because we don’t we don’t see a “PlayStation offline”. What I’m trying to say is that it doesn't matter if you are enjoying content from a Blu-ray disc or you are enjoying content you just downloaded from the network, at the end of the day it’s all PlayStation 3 so we don’t differentiate between content, and I think that makes a clear point between us and some of our competitors, who like to differentiate how the consumers get the content, that’s the difference in the strategy or the basic philosophy towards the online service.

And yet, he's wrong. It's not "all PS3" because the games don't exist out of the box on the hard drive. We have to go exploring and buy these things, and blog about them. Simply put, the industry needs a word for that service. You know, for that thing, there ... inside ... oh dammit, the PS3 network! Now, we can't fault them for not wanting to create a brand. That's smart. Clearly, that largely unknown Xbox Live strategy was a total failure for the other guy (cough cough). Who needs another word for a new medium of game distribution right? This could bring about a new era! Maybe we'll also stop referring to the web as "the Internet" and start telling people to look for us in their computers. "Destructoid? Oh yeah, it's in there. If you have that cable or phone connection thing just look inside your computer." Maybe I'm being too critical, and not truly appreciating where he's coming from. After all, when PS3 games automatically appear in your executive office, the need to discuss which games can be found "at the store" versus "on the PS3 network" becomes too much of a hassle. He just wants to help minimize the confusion. While we do appreciate the gesture, I'm pretty sure we'll just call it the PS3 network quietly amongst ourselves. Shhhhh. [Thanks Michael N]

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