Since today looks like a pretty slow news day, we might as well go back to one of last week's most interesting reports, coming from Kotaku. You may have come across some recent statements made by Sony bosses Harrison and Kutaragi, describing the PlayStation 3 not as a console, but more as a "computer" capable of sustaining hardware upgrades. And they've been quite insistent at trying to point that out.

Well, for those of you who kept an eye open during the European launch of the PlayStation 2, some five-six years ago, all this may seem like a like deja-vu. That's because, at that time, Sony was also trying to get the PS2 to be classified as a computer, instead of a console, just to avoid paying some extra taxes which are in place in Europe, for importing game consoles. And here is just how far they went with it:

"You might remember Sony trying this before, about six years ago. For the PS2's European launch, Sony made a concerted push to classify it as a computer, not a game console. The reason is because importing game consoles into the EU is a huge tax drain for companies, where as computers are not. Sony was so desperate to get out of paying those multi-million dollar tax bills that they actually released Linux for the PS2, in what has to be the most useless first party title ever except for the fact that it convinced the EU to finally consider the PS2 a computer. It's essentially a Sony tax shelter."

And if history were to repeat itself, they wouldn't even have to come up with a similar package - since Linux will already be pre-installed on the PS3 hard drive (or flash memory?) from head start. Conveniently making it look more like a computer...

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)