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.

Comments

Re:not all that bad

[dougisfunny]

I pay $10 a month for 2.5 terabytes of transfer. Thats about .4 cents per gigabyte.

Re:not all that bad

[dougisfunny]

Thats what I'm paying $10 a month for.

Goodbye PS3, it was nice knowing you.

[Computershack]

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.

Re:not all that bad

[dougisfunny]

Are you intentionally obtuse?

Sony isn't pushing files down onto the PS3s, the PS3s are requesting the files from a server and downloading them. What does the delivery method matter? Do you want UPS overnight or something? Its a file download, at its most complicated a secured session file download.

I'm just pointing out that as a comparison simple web hosting goes for about .4 cents per gigabyte, 40 times less than what Sony is charging.