Adult Films Push For Presence on Gaming Consoles

Brian Crecente —The head of the largest adult video production company in the world plans to start pushing for the inclusion of porn on the Playstation Network.
If Vivid Entertainment head Steve Hirsch succeeds, he will look into getting adult videos on the Xbox 360 and perhaps the Wii, the co-founder of Vivid told Kotaku.
"Our point is pretty simple," Hirsch told Kotaku. "As long as age verification is in place that (Sony) feels comfortable with we see no reason why adults shouldn't be allowed to access adult movies on the Playstation 3."
Hirsch said his company, that has an extensive catalog of films including Bad Wives, Seven Deadly Sins and Tristan Taramino's Expert Guide to Oral Sex 2, is in the process of drafting a formal request to send to Sony Computer Entertainment, but that they have not yet discussed the idea with the company.
Sony officials did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Hirsch says they've decided to broach the subject now with Sony because of the console maker's decision last month to allow Japan's DDM.TV to bring on-demand Blu-ray quality HD adult movies to the console. That service is only available in Japan.
"They had made it clear in the past they were not interested," Hirsch said. "Now that they have agreed to in some way allow adult films on the Japanese platform we are going to move forward and make a formal request."
Sony's reluctance to allow adult films on their platform is not a new issue, Hirsch said they confronted the same issues when Blu-ray first came out.
"We do support Blu-ray now, but Sony did not want adult Blu-ray for a long time," he said. "The way they stopped that from happened was that there was only a few places where you could get Blu-ray replicated and authored.
"For a long time it was only HD-DVD that would allow us to replicate in HD. Ultimately Sony came around."
And Hirsch hopes the same will happen with the Playstation Network.
The idea is that there would be an Adults Only section on the Playstation 3's online network, which already rents and sells more mainstream movies. There are a number of ways to verify that a person is 18 before they get access to that area, Hirsch said.
Hirsch understands it will be an uphill battle.
"It is certainly something that creates a lot of attention, when you talke about adult content being put on any new platform," he said. "It isn't that dissimilar to getting it on cell phones.
"Certainly we understand there is going to be some resistance on Sony's part when it comes to adult content on their console. We all understand there are kids who use the Playstation every day and we want to keep content away from them, but there are also adults who use it."
Vivid Entertainment is currently drafting a letter that they plan to send to Sony by the end of the week, he said. And if things go well, Hirsch will look into getting adult content on Microsoft's Xbox Live video service and other gaming platforms.
"It is something as an industry we would like to accomplish," he said. "If we move forward here we would look at other potential gaming platforms like the Xbox 360. The Wii seems to skew a little young."