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Sony Pondering Downloadable Game Rental Service For the PSP
Joystiq has brought attention to a recent survey commissioned by Sony to gauge interest in a rental service for PSP games that would operate by downloading the games to the console. The plan, as Sony puts it, "will enable you to download a fixed number of games during your subscription period ... you will be able to change the games you have chosen for the download once your subscription term renews." The survey goes on to gather opinions on various details such as pricing, the number of available games, and how games are added to the catalogue.
Sounds awesome, but surely this is a risky sort of business move for game designers?
Video games first appeared as coin-operated machines, and the arcade model isn't too different from the rental model. Nor is the MMORPG monthly fee model much different from the rental model.
That's the crux of it. To me downloadable and rental are two words that shouldn't be used in the same sentence.
In classic video rental stores you'd rent for a fraction of the price of buying because it meant the video store could buy the film for £10 and rent it out 15 times at £1 a time to make £5 profit. It had to be rental because it was a physical object that they could only allow one person to access at a time.
Of course, that limitation is gone with downloadable content, it's a limitation that has to be created artificially and of course the vehicle for delivering that has to be DRM. Quite rightly as you say, every rental service I've seen so far that creates this artificial limitation ultimately results in a bad deal for the user in that if they want to keep playing it they'll end up paying more than they would've if they could've bought it through classic means in a shop. The same goes for the likes of XBox live's video marketplace in that you might as well just buy the DVD if you're planning to ever watch it more than once and of course watch it at your own pace rather than their artificially imposed time limitation.
As an aside though I'm not sure what you mean about XBox live marketplace content being slow to come down - I've always had it come down at 240k/s which is the fastest my connection can download at. If you're having issues downloading from there the bottleneck is almost certainly your connection so may be worth checking. The same goes for other download services like Steam, Direct2Drive etc. - download speeds have just never been an issue as far as they max out my connection. I just wish I had a faster connection!
I have not and will not ever use a software rental service. If I'm paying for software or media I wish to use I want to pay once for that digital and keep it. I don't want to be billed over and over for it. After all, it brings all the classic issues with this approach such as what if they close the store down and I only got half way through playing it and can't re-rent it to finish it off? What if I buy a game that takes two weeks to complete, get half way through it in the first week when my rental expires then they bump the cost up to twice as much if I want to finish it off in the second week?
Demos. Few companies will be willing to dig out and rewrite their old demos for MGS or whatever for download, whereas a one-day rental just requires the company approves the title for rental purchases with Sony. It's something that's more common in mobile phone gaming - the N-Gage service has mandatory demos, but they're usually very short, so £1-£2 for a 24-hour "pass" is a better taste of the title. And in the case of short, not-very-replayable games like MGS-Mobile, it saves you spending £8 on a title you'll clear in a lunch break.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I've had my PSP for 2 years now, daily companion of a 15/25 minute bus ride to work. I can recall a couple games that made me walk into my office still playing, none had me dedicate that time for fear of losing a save game or having to replay some area. Suspend works every time unless you turn the device off while it's writing to the memory stick. I can pick it up on the way back home, right where I was.
On topic, I rather have 1 good game at a time and play it to exhaustion (any good game, from Puzzle Quest to God of War) than having to play a bunch of them just so I feel like I'm leeching my monthly rental fee.
That last sentence was my first thought--how long would a rental period be? I also am uncomfortable with renting software in the first place--just too many ways it could go wrong.
Also, I'm just waiting for the DRM to be cracked (you know, about a day after it's released) and then the bitch-and-moan fest begins. They're just setting themselves up for it at this point.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10