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Sony Plans Digital Distribution?
Along with Sony's plans to take on Xbox Live, they may be planning a move to counter the Revolution's classic gaming library. GamesIndustry.biz reports that Sony may offer digital downloads of classic PSOne and PS2 titles. From the article: "In Sony's case the challenges may be significantly more difficult, since PlayStation titles were customarily several hundred megabytes in size, and PS2 titles spanned multiple gigabytes - compared to just a few megabytes or less for NES, SNES and N64 titles in the Nintendo back-catalogue. However, as Internet connections speed up downloads of this size will be far more reasonable - already, several Xbox Live demos for the Xbox 360 are over 600Mb in size - and our sources indicated that Sony may also be investigating the possibility of remastering certain PS2 titles to allow them to stream later content over the network while the player is already playing early parts of the game."
Also, is there any word on how much the games would cost? They certainly aren't worth much any more.
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in Tokyo, where they will announce actual features in a preview.
... sounds good, but for how much? Do we have to have an account that has a monthly charge to do that, or can any PS3 owner do it? What if it takes a long time and dies part way thru?
Given that, I'm not that interested in all these rumors. And I'm not going to line up for 24 hours to get a DS Lite in Bright White either.
So, downloading PS or PS2 games over the Net
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It has worked well for Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest and EverQuest II franchies, so why not? Who wants to visit a brick and mortar store in today's age of high speed internet, anyway?
I say bring it on. Let's just hope they can price it right.
It sounds to me that Sony is considering this as more of a checklist item then a headline feature. They have not been pushing their online component very hard at all, compared to say, the power of the cell processor.
If this was meant to be a serious feature, it would have been mentioned and covered long before now. But since Microsoft has proven its self with Xbox Live, and Nintendo has been talking about the access to their back library for some time, it sounds like Sony is getting a bit worried.
First, a week or two ago, someone brings up a story about a possible Revolution like controller scheme. Now were hearing about downloadable games. It just reeks of damage control marketing to me.
It also does not help that Sony does not have all that much in teh way of classic, evergreen titles to draw on. Most of their monster hits have recent iterations available, and those iterations are often in the vein of Gran Turismo, where the new ones are just going to be better then the old ones. I am sure they have some titles that qualify, though. You cannot get into Sony's current position without having any enduring hits.
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The PS2 is still out there and you can get a ps1 with all the games you'd want for a couple of bucks second hand.
By the time the PS3 comes out the second hand ps2 games will go down in price as well, I wonder if it won't be cheaper to buy all the ps1 & 2 games you want second hand than through their online service.
Nintendo's catalog is much more interesting in that respect, the originals are often hard to find and expensive, heck even microsoft's offerings on marketplace are more interesting, where else can you get those classic arcade games, legally?
4.9GB games (a few PS2 games where even dual layer disks) pose another major problem - unlike the 1MB SNES games, where are you going to store them? The cost of the PS3 is already huge, do they really have the budget to include a 200GB harddrive? (and at that size they can't even use the cost cutting measure Microsoft used - to provide 10GB harddrives, they'd just bought already cheap 20GB units where one platter was uncertified, essentially B grade units that could be salvaged for the required storage space at a fraction of the cost)
Traditionally most of the content was (red book?) audio CD's. So that aspect of it at least could be lossy compressed to go over the wire and expanded back out to make a 'virtual' CD image. Hell, the quantity of power the PS3 will have it could be done on the fly. So basically you're looking at shipping some MP3's and maybe fifty megs of data?
Dave
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If the PS3 could burn the content to disc so that the person would have a physical copy, this could really amount to quite a big thing.
Sony would no doubt impliment some kind of DRM to make sure the burned copy is only played on the PS3 that downloaded it, though. Not that I would blame them entirely, but I wouldn't mind it so much if you could actually transfer it to another machine. (Suppose your PS3 goes tits up as Sony hardware tends to do...)
This has potential. As it stands now as great as net-delivered content is, I'm not real comfortable paying for something unless I get to keep a physical media copy as well. Nintendo's online content delivery service might be crippled if it's limited to storing inside the Revolution hardware, though if you can transfer it to a memory card it won't be so bad.
How many times have I jumped tracks here? I'll shut up now.
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I really can't see that working... Sony has been falling behind recently, with countless scandals (DRM-related), errors, stock losses (Merryl Lynch report) and format warring; given their back-record for format wars, I'm not backing Blu-Ray. (see: beta, minidisc, memory sticks and one other I think)
On the other hand, Apple has been doing really well with the exception of the stupid hype over the iPod leather case and boombox. Maybe backwards?
I can't really comment on the Cell, the idea is nice with them both using it, but Apple+Sony seems as likely as Google+Amazon. Maybe they'll share a few things here and there, like Google Search + A9, but I really, really doubt this.
Most PlayStation 1/2/3 games are sequels, sequels of sequels, or just not really that original.
I'm not too fussy about how original a game is, and I think that taking a good game and improving it slightly is fine. It does mean that I won't want the older version when there's a newer version, though. So when PS2 came out, most PlayStation games lost their appeal to me because they had better replacements. When PS3 comes out, the situation is likely to be much the same.
So this service isn't of much interest, except for a small handful games that haven't had superior sequels/clones yet.
This is technically a great idea, and the right way to go! However:
I may sound like a broken record here, but think about DRM. An online download could easily require authentication and even automated patching to play each time (especially on a closed hardware platform). Steam, anyone? This esentially means that whether you can play a game or not is entirely up to the mercy of whoever flips the switch somewhere out there.
This will never happen, you say. What about the following:
1. Can Sony find a reason why you shouldn't be allowed play the game? Forced obsoletion for instance? Yes.
2. Does Sony even need a reason to prevent you from playing? No.
3. Can Sony break the game with a patch that you'll be forced to install? Yes.
4. Can Sony be trusted to implement fair and reliable DRM? Hell, yeah! Right!
That's why this technology is dangerous as it is cool.
I was kinda counting on either audio cassette or LP record distribution
...early 1980s)
But seriously, since when does "Digital" mean "download"?.
All my CD-ROM games are already "Digital" and have been for ohhhh....ten or fifteen years?
Same with my game cartridges....all ones and zeros there also.
and, by the way in case you think I'm joking about the Analog distribution method...
I *am* old enough to remember programs & games distributed on audio cassette (I had a Radio Shack/Tandy MC-10 which used a cassette interface for storing programs
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I think Sony already said it would make PS3 backwards compatable... if so, pick up the actual disc at the used section. If not, pick up a PS2 and then pick up the disc... no different than if they never offered the service. Just another option if you prefer.
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If you were storing programs on tape, that was digital also. Remember, hard drives use magnetic storage as well, just on platters (and much more dense of course)
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...this could really screw me over at school, since the housing contracts only allow us 5GB of data (upstream and downstream combined) for any 7 consecutive days.
I dunno know about everyone else but I absolutely cringe at thinking of the poor souls who would decide to download Final Fantasy XII, let alone Final Fantasy VII. I'm pretty sure it a good couple of hours just for me to download each of the pre-loads for Half-Life 2, and then still had to download some more once the game came out.
Not to say this isn't a bad idea, but its borderline "too early" for this, at least in the states where DSL saturation is nowhere near what it is in Japan.
At least the revolution you're talking downloads of maybe 100 megs or so for N64, and that's assuming no compression. You can fit early SNES games on a floppy disk.
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I'm not sure this is going to work as well as Sony thinks. The problem is that Sony's old games don't have the nostalgia value of Nintendo's. When people see Sony's PS1 games, they are reminded that there are now newer and better versions available. When they see an old NES game, it's different. 9 out of 10 gamers, you put them in front of the original Super Mario Bros, and the minute that music starts to play, they'll crack a smile. Don't misunderstand me. Sony's games are good, and I think everyone enjoys them. But they don't have that timeless emotional appeal. When you see an old Sony game, it's a cheap older game. When you see an old Nintendo game, it's a classic.
Just because audio cassette was a magentic medium doesn't make them digital. The signal is still stored in an analog form (continuously varying signal). Hard Disks (and Digital Audio Tapes) store the data in a digital form, with discrete values. The point being that (sufficiently small amounts of) noise can be tolerated without any degredation, since the signal can be reconstructed exactly as there are only a small number of valid signals.
The "correct" signal on an analog tape can have any value, so any noise is indistinguishable from the desired signal.
You're right though about Nintendo and Microsoft. Nintendo has at least three generations to go through (NES, SNES, N64) not counting the Gameboy line and Microsoft has LEGAL classic arcade games plus a proven track record (at least for consoles) of handling online services.
Sony has been falling behind recently, with countless scandals (DRM-related), errors, stock losses (Merryl Lynch report) and format warring; given their back-record for format wars, I'm not backing Blu-Ray. (see: beta, minidisc, memory sticks and one other I think)
The other one you're forgetting is the CD. That one went nowhere! Or maybe the 3-1/2" floppy diskette. Nobody ever used those! Hi8, what a failure! S/PDIF...pfffft. That's really only the tip of the iceberg, since they've been involved in working groups that have produced inumerable other wildly successful failures.
Anyway, who cares about that. You're right! Sony sucks! They can't invent anything right!
you don't expect me to believe that you stored programs as analog... sure, every waveform transmitted is technicly analog, it just gets interpreted as digital. Same with tape backups. Perhaps my example of hard disks bad, since the computer doesn't determine if the stuff it read was above the "1" threshold, the HDD does that... but think data recovery, or bit rot or whatever... the magnetic values are analog... I'm having trouble making a good example, but basicly, everything is analog, but some can be interpreted as digital just fine. There are digital cameras that record on "digital tape" which is just tape that is read as digital instead of analog.
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It's important to note that the management of sony's computer entertainment division is very very different from that of their music division.
I really really doubt that Sony would intentionally break a game you've already downloaded unless it was free with a time limit. With this much cutthroat competition that would be like digging their own graves.
The drm in all their other hardware is due to the pushing of music/movie studios. I'm sure sony's hardware division wouldn't give a rats ass about drm in blu-ray if not for these studios (including their own).
Hmmm... Pie...
This sounds like an awesome idea! For PSX games, most of them are either out-of-print or very difficult (if not impossible) to find, and this also applies to some PS2 ones already (e.g. Disgaea). If they want, it could open the door to wider library of games than before; I personally would love to try out some games that never got out of Japan, some that are ruined by poor dubbing (I don't like dubbing in general). Another benefit might be the load time, since they'll probably be run off HDDs. Imagine your favorite RPG without the load times between each screen! Hope this flies.
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I don't think Nintendo has Sega's support, Sega seems to prefer the XBox even though their games sell the least on that platform. IIRC Sega even announced some cooperation to put games on XBLA.
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jobs actually considered the cell at one point. unfortunately it was a bit too early in the cell lifecycle for apple to place the future of their entire company behind, but it says alot when a company like apple is willing to weigh your chip next to juggernauts in the industry like intel or AMD.
as for formats, so what? for every failure, sony has a even larger success. cd, dvd, beta [yes, it was a success... just not in consumers homes], floppy disks...etc. blu-ray so far seems to be the better alternative. hd dvd and blu-ray have an equal amount of drm, so if i have to suffer equally, at least give me the benefit of more storage space. and a much wider selection of films.
apparently sony helped design the first powerbook. apple and sony have worked together before. ex-vaio designers worked with apple for the redesign of the x86 powerbook. its not as strange as you may think. apple obviously admires sonys style to a certain extent.
It'll be like in the good ol' C64 days. :)
Yes Sony is Sony but expect all divisions to act in the same manner and you'll be largely disappointed.
Hmmm... Pie...
Ah but there is a flaw in your logic as well. Digital, in the true sense of a word is just a method of storing 1s and 0s, tape can easily be as digital of a format as anything else. Now if you think digital even implies random access, you'd be wrong there as well. Many things are digital and sequential. You could store digital with a sequence of anything on any device. Hell, you could use morse code like dots and slashes to indicate digital information over a wire if you could build the interpreter. Digital is simply a concept, a method of storing info regardless of format. That's why modems are so popular =).
But your overall point is correct, PS1 and 2 games are already digital.
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Hey, I quoted a few examples. I didn't claim that "Sony sucks!" at any point, simply that, at this current moment in time and many times before, they have made greivous errors.
CD was co-made with Phillips, and Sony's 3-1/2" was, ironically, only a success due to leveraging Apple. ["Things changed dramatically in 1984 when Apple Computer selected the format for their new Macintosh computers, thereby forcing it to become the standard in the United States." - Wiki]
I don't know about Hi8, but S/PDIF is a system, not a medium like Beta or Blu-Ray.
All these points taken into consideration, I am not backing Blu-Ray. While your point is valid that they HAVE had successes, most notably the 3-1/2", did that have DRM on it? Did it prevent the user from copying another file, possibly copyrighted material, onto it?
I don't wish to argue. I'm just here to state a case against Sony. There's a difference.