LOS ANGELES--AT&T said today it is launching a new broadband gaming practice focused on hosting the growing number of multi-player gaming matches and communities online. To kick off the new division, AT&T announced at the E3 gaming expo its first and certainly crowning customer, Sony Online Entertainment.

The deal the two companies detailed only applies to Sony’s own in house software portfolio, specializing in massively multiplayer games like Everquest and PlanetSide. Though the two titles are sizable in their own right, supporting hundreds of thousands of users--a large proportion of which are online simultaneously--they are still a fraction of the total online gaming market. The deal’s real significance may not be apparent until next year when Sony launches its much-coveted PlayStation 3 and associated broadband gaming portal. The third installment of the PlayStation console will be the first to contain on-board Wi-Fi and Ethernet support.

Microsoft has an enormous lead in the broadband gaming space, thanks mainly to its native broadband support in the first Xbox off the assembly lines. It launched Xbox Live in 2002 and has since racked up millions of subscribers to its gaming portal, all paying to participate in multiplayer sessions of its popular titles. Meanwhile Sony’s contemporary PlayStation 2 was isolated from the Internet and except for a trial in Japan using Ethernet adapters, the company pursued no broadband gaming strategy on the PlayStation platform.

Sony plans to launch the PlayStation 3 and the gaming portal in the fourth quarter, but excitement surrounding the device was already palpable at E3 where Sony unveiled the console and a handful of extremely lush graphics-intensive games. Microsoft also had its Xbox 360 on hand, and Nintendo gave the first public demonstration of its Wii (pronounced ‘Wee’), both of which have similar broadband capabilities.

AT&T and Sony did not discuss any specific plans to bring the new PlayStation network to AT&T Enterprise hosting, but the deal to host the massive multi-player titles may give it a key edge in competing for the lucrative contract.