PS3 ready for business as well as pleasure

With the PS3 struggling to keep up with the Nintendo and Microsoft Joneses right now, Sony has revealed today that its console might be about to get a boost from the business world.

For apparently a new UK research group based at the University of Portsmouth is about to embark on an exploration of how the PS3 might be used as a cost-saving business tool.

The basis of the research is, of course, Sony's new virtual world concept, dubbed (ironically) 'Home'. And the idea is that companies will be able to host meetings in the virtual Home environment without having to pay for attendees to actually travel to the meetings in person.

Kind of like playing Call of Duty 4 online, then, only - hopefully - without any obscene language and American pre-teens calling you a 'biyatch'.

Intriguingly, the company that's commissioned the research project is workplace transition consultancy Advanced Workplace Associates - a firm which counts among its clients Ernst and Young, Merrill Lynch and, um, Microsoft. Oops...