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Sony Charges Publishers For DLC Bandwidth Usage
tlhIngan writes "Since October 1, 2008, Sony has been billing game publishers for DLC bandwidth usage. The game companies are forced to pay 16 cents per gigabyte downloaded by users (the 'Playstation Network Fee') regardless of whether the content is free or paid. The good news is that free content will only be billed during the initial 60 days it's up, but paid content will require fees forever. (No word on whether free content will mysteriously disappear after 60 days, though.) Given that some popular game demos run over a gigabyte by themselves, it could easily start costing publishers serious money (16 cents each for a few million downloads adds up). So far, it hasn't cut down the content available (or few publishers have started pulling content), but it's too soon to tell. It should be noted that Microsoft isn't charging publishers any money for content on Xbox Live, though some may argue that the 'gold premium content' is the same thing."
Perhaps this is one of the reasons various publishers are pressuring Sony for a PS3 price cut.
$0.16/GB is what you'd pay to serve content at pretty huge volumes. If they published it on any other website, they'd probably pay more.
Hopefully this will keep publishers from shipping broken/empty games with plans of patching them up later (*cough* UT3 *cough*); and we could go back to actually getting a working game on the disk, not a game in need of a patch and more content.
at 16 cents per gigabyte, with most content, paid or otherwise, being a lot less in size than that - I see nothing wrong. If you're giving out a few gigs worth of content, chances are you're doing it for money or you're going to get the money back in some way.
All the free content that was up before is still up now.
Yes I own a PS3. Sometimes I play online a lot, sometimes i dont touch the system for months, sometimes its moderate usage. It's more than paid itself off when compared to a $50 a year live fee.
And yes, I would definitely argue that xbox live subscriber is the same thing...
I mean, how is it not? Very few users are going to download over $50 worth of bandwidth content a year at this measure =\, on any system.
A NOTE:
-this "content" is limited to the store only. Game updates are not done through sony in any way. They are still free. Online gaming on the ps3 has been and still is free of bandwidth charges - due to the fact that usually the games run on publishers' servers, not on sony's.
DLC and micro transactions are quickly becoming anoying. Now developers are beginning to simply give you less for more, and charge you later for the things they left out.
The worst is when the content is actually on the actual game disc, but it needs to be unlocked via online purchase.
Its only going to get worse.
Developers do not appreciate this at all. Live is more successful, both from a consumer and developer point of view. Not all consumers want to play online at all, so they don't need to pay for it. And shifting the burden to developers, to put them in a position where the more popular their game is the more money it costs them is not a good position at all.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
And shifting the burden to developers, to put them in a position where the more popular their game is the more money it costs them is not a good position at all.
But the more popular it is, the more copies they will sell as well. Where did that fit into your equation?
You seem to think a developer would be going "dammit, my game is too popular, and the demos that cost my $0.20 are hardly offset by the $60.00 sale price that millions are forking over. Pull the plug on my overly successful game!"
Shifting the burden to content providers is exactly where the rest of the world shifts the burden to in other areas of media, so why is this so alien for game developers too?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
it doesn't look anymore expensive than paying for hosting else where to serve your files, and it's a damn sight better than expecting us to pay for it. i sense this story is an attempt at the usual /. sony hate nonense
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Assuming this is true, I think it'll be the end for the PS3. The Xbox360 and Wii have far higher market penetration and are far easier to develop for. If you're now going to start charging software companies for DLC, which will included demos, then it's epic fail - it's not as if the PSN was any good to begin with from a user POV.
When times are tight, software developers will look to cut costs. If that means not developing on the one with the lowest market share which also happens to be the most difficult , and soon to be the most expensive content wise, they'll just dump it. If they do continue to release games on it, the PS3 version will always be the "lame duck" one as they'll just not bother releasing any new content for it. The PS3 could quite simply end up being a Japan only market.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Assuming this is true, I think it'll be the end for the PS3.
Without even reading beyond the summary, I see it's been true since October 2008. With nothing gone from the store.
Sony is still here, much as the haters would like them to go.
When times are tight, software developers will look to cut costs.
So will gamers, which is why it's nice to own a PS3 and not pay for any online service for the sporadic multiplayer I engage in.
I have nothing against the 360 mind you (well actually I don't want to pay for Live which I would only use irregularly), but Sony is just taking a different tactic here and I think it's just as good an idea.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What I find with PSN is that a lot of games, big titles too (Call of Duty 4 and 5 for example) have some horrendous bugs that ruin online play - such as the (now patched) CoD5 Castle level where you could get under the play area and kill but not be killed.
If Sony pays the bills with content providers and not from its customers subscriptions then there isn't the direct incentive to put pressure on developers to fix games quickly that there would be if the customer base withdrew funding.
They also seem to care less about there customers online experience - PSN really needs the ability to kick some players - I'm all for freedom of speech but I'm sure it doesn't include the right to whistle in your headset or sit right in front of the TV creating the feedback loop from hell. I'd pay for that.
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
If you did this on one of ATT's data plans, like Blackberry, I-Phone, PDA, etc, it costs $0.00048/KB. Sounds cheap till you multiply it out.
Guess I won't be using Netflicks over it, never mind games.
Wisdom.
I didn't think that needed an acronym.
Why would people use a locked down hardware withouth command line, a poor control system (pad) , horrible visualization device (a fucking TV), etc
Because they don't want to have to spend $2,400 to set up a four-seat LAN and then buy four copies of each game. A console + HDTV + three spare controllers, by comparison, runs about half that, and one copy of a $60 console game is cheaper than four copies of a $30 PC game.
man, is gameplay from 1994.
Yet PC users go to romnation.net and pirate games from 1988.
To me it sounds like they are using their status as a platform owner. It's like your landlord propping up the rent. Sure you can move out if you think it's unfair. But it will take time to pay off because of the high short-term cost of moving.
It seems like every week another "App Store" is opening. They are not selling service, they are selling visibility.
1 GB for a demo is huge. Sure, it probably represents a smaller percentage of the release game than it used to, but still.
$0.16 for 200 000 downloads works out to be $32000, so for a large publisher this is probably just a dip in the ocean when it comes to their marketing budget. For a smaller company the cost might hurt a bit more. Whether this means smaller demos or a change in approach by the publishers it is hard to tell.
Part of the reason Sony is doing this, is probably because this is what they are being charged and they are simply passing the fee on to the publishers.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
(No word on whether free content will mysteriously disappear after 60 days, though.)
I think it's pretty clear that the submitter doesn't have a PS3 (and is likely an xbox fanboy), otherwise he would've known that content stays up after 60 days. Old demos from when the PS3 launched (which was a little more than 60 days ago, IIRC), are still available for download.
A game (or any significant code) that's 99% bug-free is an absolute disaster, totally unusable. It's not like a spelling or grammar mistake, where the end-user can still figure out what was meant ...
Then there's the whole issue of code that's correct, but still doesn't work the way the end-user expects. While not a software bug, it's certainly not a "feature."
99.99% correct before shipping is more reasonable, and certainly achievable.
It bogles the mind why they don't use torrents. They could even set it up so your ps3 turns on at some time of the night. And downloads the "latest content" over torrents using something like an rss feed. eliminating the need to wait when using the store (for demos). Costs nothing in terms of bandwith. With the number of ps3s sold, and a rather small set of data to distribute (compared to all the data that torrents generate currently), this would be very fast. It just seems like a no brainer.
I support this http://library.bpeer.com/movie/
It seems that Sony's service is not so free after all. I mean someone is getting shafted for bandwith fees and in this case it's the publishers. So while we get the demos for free you can bet that it will find a way back to the consumer somehow. Maybe we'll start seeing games for $64.99 to cover the costs of development or they'll just scale back demos and other dlc. At the end of the day nothing is really "free".
This raises a question I've had for a long time: If the consumer has a gaming PC or game console, does it take less bandwidth to send them a CG movie in polygon form or in MPEG/H.264 form? GTA4 on Xbox 360 is an enormous game that fits into 7 GB. If you made a 720P 60FPS H.264 movie of a fairly thorough playthrough of GTA4 including cutscenes, how many GB would that be? If TV/movie studios want to send an entire TV series in HD to customers over the internet, they might save a lot of bandwidth fees if they could send it as polygons instead of MPEG. Of course, the TV series could only be created by artists at computer desks, not by actors on sets, so bandwidth capping would give game companies an advantage over Hollywood on the internet. I doubt even Pixar or Dreamworks would send their movies as game console-ready polygons because they're used to having nearly infinite memory and rendering time.
Ultimately, Hollywood will have to do some major lobbying and investing with the telecoms so that every home can affordably stream real HD video over the internet.
There speaks someone with absolutley no frakking clue about the retail chain. The developer sees maybe 25%-30% of that at best.
So what? It's still $20 vs. $0.20. It's still orders of magnitude off, and it's still valid to say the cost of the DOWNLOADS are not going to make or break the thing. Development costs don't enter into my point whatsoever. You are missing the very large tree we are discussing in order to preen yourself over your amazing knowledge of the forest.
Nice try, smarty pants.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You know, the more I hear about this kind of crap, the more I wonder if Sony is actually trying to ruin the PlayStation brand name. Every move they make seems to contradict common sense when it comes to business, almost as though they're afraid that following standard business tactics will make them seem weak to the consumer and their investors.
At the rate Sony is going, the PS3 will be the end of the line for the company as a console manufacturer, just like the Dreamcast did for Sega. Even though a console is technically great, it won't survive if the marketing strategies are poorly executed.
Just think, all of those great remaining PS3 exclusive franchises might become XBox 360 exclusives well before the predicted 10 year life span of the PS3 ends... complete with sony's own logo on the package!
8==8 Bones 8==8
So seems like complaint was about fees game-distributors might have to pay for user downloading a free-demo. If they have no other fees to pay, sounds like they are paying .80cents for a targetted demo 5GB demo 'advertisement'/person.
How does this compare to ad costs through other forms to targetted, on-request-by-potential-customer, ads?
Multiple pointers, multiple screens.
=Smidge
That doesn't give me a lot to go on. Most home PC users do not have the quad-head, dual-PCIe setup that would be required for four players, nor do most games designed for Windows support one player on each of several screens connected to one PC.
1GB for a demo? That's a ridiculous amount of data. I suspect that there's much unneeded info in most demo downloads. If charging the developer makes them put more effort into cutting out the crap, then I say it's money well charged.