Virgin Radio broadens horizons to Wii and PS3

Virgin Radio will soon be available on a games console near you...

Owners of PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles will now have access to Virgin Radio through their consoles. The rock station is to be available on a free, specially-built Virgin Radio Player alongside its contemporary rock sister Virgin Radio Extreme plus the other Classic Rock and Groove variants.

It will enable console gamers to watch music videos and make downloads as well - though none of this seems to be at the same time as you're playing a game. The Virgin player will also let console owners buy gig tickets and CDs through the Virgin Radio Ticket Store.

"People are treating the consoles as part of their home entertainment media centre, and now Virgin Radio will be part of that experience," James Cridland, the digital media director at Virgin Radio, told the Guardian.

However, the same is not destined for the Xbox 360. Microsoft is known to be fairly cagey about offering free content on its super-console. The reasons are rather unclear, but in all likelihood it's probably simply not sure how it can monetise it.

Virgin Radio is owned by Scottish Media Group, which bought the station from Chris Evans' Ginger Media group. It also signed a deal to make itself available on Freeview last June. It's little wonder the station wishes to make itself available on as many platforms as possible; much of its listenership still has to make do with 1215kHz Medium Wave broadcasts.

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Dan (Twitter, Google+) is TechRadar's Former Deputy Editor and is now in charge at our sister site T3.com. Covering all things computing, internet and mobile he's a seasoned regular at major tech shows such as CES, IFA and Mobile World Congress. Dan has also been a tech expert for many outlets including BBC Radio 4, 5Live and the World Service, The Sun and ITV News.