VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Japan's SoftBank Corp and its U.S. mobile carrier Sprint Corp will offer a Sony smartphone for the first time, sources with knowledge of the matter said, as the two technology titans confront daunting challenges in the U.S. market.

Japan's Sony Corp is hammering out plans to rise from the ashes of nearly $10 billion lost in six years by building a future around its last consumer electronics blockbuster - the PlayStation.

Amazon and Best Buy have appeared to leak a PS4 and PS Vita bundle complete with pricing, ahead of its scheduled big announcement in the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 2014).

Apple Inc. refused to join Intellectual Ventures on a patent trolling operations, reported Gigaon.

New York, US-based brand advocacy startup Crowdtap picked up $5 million in a Series B funding round led by Foundry Group to continue inspiring its customers to create quality promotional content on blogs and social media sites.

Sony unveiled a prototype hardware for the virtual reality headset it is working on for the PlayStation 4 which it calls "Project Morpheus," TechCrunch reported.

In what seemed like an indication of the dominance of Sony's PlayStation 4 over Microsoft's XBox One, the video game console of the Japanese company sold 6 million units globally in less than four months, VentureBeat reported.

Citing a source, The Wall Street Journal blog Digits reported that embattled Japanese technology giant Sony has plans of selling its former headquarters in Tokyo, Japan.

Sony will shut down two-thirds of its retail outlets located across the US, with 11 out of the 31 stores near major markets to remain open, as part of its move to offload unprofitable units and reduce liabilities.

Tokyo, Japan-based electronics giant Sony surpassed its sales target for the PlayStation 4 by selling 5.3 million units worldwide just three months after the latest game console went on sale.

Gartner, a research group, predicted that over 1 billion smartphones and tablet computers installed with the Android operating system of Google will reach customers in 2014.

China's State Council has suspended the ban the government had put in place for 14 years which barred the selling of foreign video game consoles, potentially opening doors for technology firms to enter the Chinese video game market, Reuters reported.

Chicago-based media firm Tribune has entered an agreement to purchase Gracenote, the California-based music data unit of Japanese conglomerate Sony in a deal valued at $170 million, according to a statement by Tribune.

With the midnight release of the Xbox One, the console war has finally began. Sony's Playstation 4 was released last week and now consumers would be able to tell and decide which one system would rule their living rooms.

According to tech giant Sony, the company sold over 1 million PlayStation 4 game consoles, its first game system in seven years, just 24 hours it went on sale last Friday.