Rakuten Inc. has linked its online shopping mall to PlayStation game machines via cellular phone in a bid to boost sales, company sources said.

The aim is to transmit pictures of merchandise offered in the mall to TV sets through the game machines. Rakuten hopes if users can see the goods on their own TVs, which are more familiar and easier to operate than a personal computer, they will visit the mall more often, leading to an increase in sales.

The service, dubbed "Rakuten Ichiba for PlayStation," enables users to see about 8,000 items by hooking up either the original PlayStation or PlayStation 2 to a cell phone connected to the i-mode Internet access service of NTT DoCoMo Inc.