AOL Plans Console Gaming Ladder, PS2 Hookup

Thanks to Reuters for their story discussing AOL's announcement of the forthcoming 'AOL Ladders' console ranking service for PlayStation 2 and GameCube, as a partnership with the Case's Ladder ranking site. However, the free-to-AOL-subscribers ladder system isn't automatic in any way: "After finding an opponent, players play and then report their statistics [on the website]", making it a relative non-event, and seemingly unrelated to AOL's announcement of a Nintendo partnership earlier this year. Elsewhere in the article, it's mentioned that "AOL... and Sony's video game unit, Sony Computer Entertainment of America, are working on a version of the AOL service designed to run on the PS2", and that it may debut after Sony "releases a hard drive for the PS2", although this partnership has already been in progress for over two and half years.