As We Predicted, Qriocity Is Sony's Big Apple-Beating Media Service

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Yesterday, it was reported by “media industry sources” to the Financial Times that Sony was set to unveil a super secret streaming media service that would attempt to eat Apple’s lunch and steal the thunder from their music-themed iPod event. As we predicted, it was related to the Qriocity VOD service that Sony showed off at CES this year.

Since the annoumcents were made at the IFA trade show in Germany, you’d expect them to have a European flavor to them and sure enough, Qriocity will now be available in Europe. The video-on-demand service will stream high-def movies to your home, granted you have any device with an XrossMediaBar (XMB), Sony’s awesome device UI that is included on the PS3, PSP and some Bravia TVs (and Cyber-shot digital cameras, but I really doubt we’ll see VOD on a digital camera… or will we?)

It’s believed that Sony leveraged their connections with their movie studio (Sony Pictures Entertainment) to make sweetheart streaming movie rental and purchasing deals with the other movie studios. Now, those rental solutions will be out in Europe as well. Those in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK can stream movies from a ton of studios, including most of the major ones.

Qriocity isn’t just going to stop at movies though. Sony announced that they’ll distribute other video (TV shows?), music, video games and even eBooks via the Qriocity platform. Coming this fall is “Music Unlimited”, a part of Qriocity that will be an “all-you-can-eat” package where a monthly fee allows you to stream all the music you want from their collection.

As Apple is expected to unveil some sort of media streaming service today during the press event, it seems like Sony wanted to beat Apple out of the gate with the announcement. How successful a Qriocity Music Unlimited service will be against a streaming iTunes service is, remains to be seen.