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

$0.16/GB is a pretty good price

[Anonymous Coward]

$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.

Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price

[Doctor_Jest]

Quite true... and since there's not a "gold subscriber" subsidy like there is on Live, I think it's reasonable. It's not unheard of, considering the installed base, to charge for this, but I'm sure since Sony's been taking it on the chin P.R. wise, this will be magnified more than it really needs to be.

To each his own. :) I wonder if anyone knows the going rates for Live content? I know the absurdly small file size probably nullifies that, as far as live arcade stuff goes, but what about demos? Does MS charge EA for demo space or is it simply rolled into the cost of your yearly gold membership? It's late... I'll google that tomorrow. :)

Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price

[kyrre]

Amazon S3 is likely one of the cheaper providers of storage. They charge from 17 cents pr gigabyte of download. In addition they will costs 10 cents pr gigabyte. They also charge pr request.

I support this

[electrosoccertux]

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.

Re:I support this

[Dutch Gun]

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.

Think about the math a bit. It's not exactly a deal-breaker to patch a game at $.16 per GB. That's only 16 cents out of their bottom line per game if they had to send a massive 1GB patch down to each user. Still, it's hard to say if this means we'll be less likely to see large, free demos to download on the PS3 in the future. It's probably more likely that publishers will still do this, but just factor this cost into their advertising budgets.

Still, it just doesn't strike me as the wisest of decisions to alienate publishers when your console isn't exactly leading the pack. Publishers might be just slightly less inclined to publish on their platform in the first place, and Sony can't really afford to lose too much ground at the moment.

Re:I support this

[c1t1z3nk41n3]

Maybe I'm too cynical but I find it more likely at this point that they'll just take the money and run. They already have your money after all, why pay for patches?

So what's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Untenable

[Anenome]

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.

not all that bad

[timmarhy]

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

Re:not all that bad

[Kalriath]

Sounds like Dreamhost or some other equally terrifying overseller.

You do realise that your host hasn't actually got capacity to deliver you 2.5 terabytes right? If you actually managed to transfer that, they'd mysteriously find some way to terminate your account, because they count on you buying "2.5 terabytes" and using 250 megabytes. If everyone actually used 2.5 terabytes, the host would be bankrupted by the end of month invoice from their upstream provider.