Sony to do vending machines

Sony's planning to sell PlayStation Portable consoles and games through vending machines in American shopping centres and airports, the company's announced.

Already trialling at locations in California, Georgia and Colorado, the "robotic stores" will stock 50 different items including PSPs, digital cameras, CD players, games and DVDs according to a reports from Japan.

Sadly the machines won't be prompting amusing displays of people trying to shove 250 dollars' worth of notes into them though, as they'll only accept credit and debit cards. We can't imagine you'll be able to stick your hand up the spout and jiggle loose a portable DVD player either.

Although the trial's limited at the moment, Sony says it's confident of success and expects to add the machines to seven more US locations, including airports, and may extend the idea further - perhaps even over here - if it takes off.

Sony's not the first person to try this sort of thing, incidentally, as you'll know if you've ever typed "iPod vending machine" into Google or Flickr. In fact, there's an iPod vending machine on the second floor of the Sony Metreon Building in San Francisco, selling iPod Shuffles, iPod Videos and accessories in a similar manner.