Sony Charges Third-Parties for Selling DLC

[Jumplion]

Upon initially reading your post I thought you might be a fanboy. But really you're worse than that. You're an apologist. I will never understand this silly sycophantic behavior you people have towards these companies (be it Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, or whatever). They've never cared about you, just your money. Why do they deserve such devotion?

I'll save Omni the time;

He owns a PS3, a Wii, a DS, and a decent gaming computer!! He also plays Xbox 360 and PSP via proxy!!! He may come off as a Sony devotee, but he's just defending them because they're the one's who needs the most defending!!

Did I do it right Omni?

 

[Arbre]

OK... why don't they just take a bigger share of any transaction, while maintaining prices at the same level, so players don't see a difference, but publishers don't have to pay the equivalent of an entry fee that could stifle production of demos and DLC??

 

[Arbre]

And finally, given the current state of the world economy, this is just not a smart move.

The worst move would surely be increasing the price on the customer side.

Now, are Microsoft charging publishers more than Sony, right now?
I'm not in PSN right now. Is content cheaper than on Live?

 

[mooncalf]

The emerging image here I think is of a Sony strapped for cash doing anything it can to maintain or increase revenues. By bracing themselves this way however, I worry that they have hamstrung their good products from doing any of the work for pulling them out of dire straits. I wonder what they're waiting for? Are they betting on the PSP GO to subsidize price cuts in the PS3?

 

[Jumplion]

The emerging image here I think is of a Sony strapped for cash doing anything it can to maintain or increase revenues. By bracing themselves this way however, I worry that they have hamstrung their good products from doing any of the work for pulling them out of dire straits. I wonder what they're waiting for? Are they betting on the PSP GO to subsidize price cuts in the PS3?

Old news is old news, I don't think this really has much of an effect on the PSP Go! thing.

 

[Firia]

Is this the reason I don't have my Fallout 3 DLC on my PS3?

No, Microsoft used their bags of money to strike an exlusive DLC deal. Unfortunately (I have PS3 version too).

The Fallout DLC is coming. Bethesda delayed it.

 

[Bulletinmybrain]

You know, this just seems bizarre.
Sony is a business, out to make money. No doubt. But is this really good business practice? And that's a legitimate question! Does Microsoft charge like this?
With no price drop on the PS3, this charging of developers, and that harder-to-use-then-the-norm development tool-set, you wonder what the heck Sony is doing? I'm not a fanboy. The PS3 is a fine system. But this just seems like a slow, but sure, alienation of customers and developers.

PSN is free to the users. Microsoft makes the users pay.

It seems painfully obvious.. No?

Microsoft already has the money to cover networking costs by making the consumer pay instead.

 

[Baby Tea]

Microsoft already has the money to cover networking costs by making the consumer pay instead.

My point was that this cost to developers for putting out their demo or DLC is a very good reason to not put out the DLC or demo. Which is a shot against both the consumer, and the developer. Couple that with the higher initial cost for the consumer, and the on purpose harder to program for development kit, and you've got what seems like bizarre business practices.

Sony isn't stupid, but if anyone besides them put out a console and did the same things, they'd fail horribly.
I'm not against Sony succeeding, and I'm not against the console. I'd own one if I could.
I just think that these practices are detrimental to Sony's continuation as a real powerhouse in the gaming industry, which they earned and worked hard for with the PSX and PS2. Competition in the gaming market is only a good thing for consumers, so the more the better.

 

[Zer_]

You know, this just seems bizarre.
Sony is a business, out to make money. No doubt. But is this really good business practice? And that's a legitimate question! Does Microsoft charge like this?
With no price drop on the PS3, this charging of developers, and that harder-to-use-then-the-norm development tool-set, you wonder what the heck Sony is doing? I'm not a fanboy. The PS3 is a fine system. But this just seems like a slow, but sure, alienation of customers and developers.

PSN is free to the users. Microsoft makes the users pay.

It seems painfully obvious.. No?

Microsoft already has the money to cover networking costs by making the consumer pay instead.

And does it work? No. Baby Tea already explained it, and honestly I couldn't make it any clearer without drawing a picture.

 

[XJ-0461]

NOW I can see why people call Sony a bunch of jerks.

 

[AceDiamond]

Microsoft already has the money to cover networking costs by making the consumer pay instead.

My point was that this cost to developers for putting out their demo or DLC is a very good reason to not put out the DLC or demo. Which is a shot against both the consumer, and the developer. Couple that with the higher initial cost for the consumer, and the on purpose harder to program for development kit, and you've got what seems like bizarre business practices.

Sony isn't stupid, but if anyone besides them put out a console and did the same things, they'd fail horribly.
I'm not against Sony succeeding, and I'm not against the console. I'd own one if I could.
I just think that these practices are detrimental to Sony's continuation as a real powerhouse in the gaming industry, which they earned and worked hard for with the PSX and PS2. Competition in the gaming market is only a good thing for consumers, so the more the better.

Also when you boil down to it, the cost of using XBox Live, money-wise, is basically $3 to $4 a month. That's basically nothing in the grand scheme of things. And this is coming from someone who's living paycheck-to-paycheck. So if the price for that is getting a lot more DLC than I would if I wasn't paying anything for my online experience? I'll pay it gladly.

 

[Daedalus_UK]

MS charges the customer instead

Yeah, less then 5 bucks a month. Man, that's so much money.
I'd rather pay the paltry $4.62 (approx) a month and have developers release demos without penalty (So demos are actually released more often), then play for free and have less content.

While I will admit (Before Dingo jumps in) that this isn't happening right now (Content that is, it's pretty even), this can easily become a deterrent for developers whose budgets aren't what they used to be.

wow $4.62, you canadians are getting a pretty sweet deal, we pay about double that in the UK due to a fictional conversion rate which means £1=$1.

 

[Scrythe]

Well, that would explain why it's so damn hard to find a demo on PSN. A ton of new games come out, and out of all of them, I get a thirty second inFAMOUS demo that looks like an early production demo compared to actual gameplay vids I've seen on YouTube.

C'mon, Sony! Shame on you!

 

[llamastorm.games]

Under xbox it costs you about £3-5 a month but you get lots and lots of content but sure it costs you money.
Yh Playstation costs nothing to use online but if 1000 people download a 1gb file it costs the developer $160
Some demo's get 1million downloads, imagine putting a demo on PSN and it costs you $160,000 to do so. Why on earth would you ever do it.
Basically Playstation are basically annoying developers even more and discouraging them from developing stuff for online.

I already knew Sony levied a charge of developers for using PSN, all that will happen is the developer increases the price of content.

For every 10 people with xbox live and any said game that releases live content, 1 buys it.
So if new game #1 has 1 million live users and so releases a DLC pack 100,000 will buy it.
The ratio is worse on PSN and they have lots less DLC.
Sony are just being really stupid, i cant see why, i know they're at the moment "losing" you'd think they'd be doing things a little better.

 

[teutonicman]

Though I don't know if this is the primary reason for Bethesda not releasing the dlc for f3 at the same time as the pc and 360, I can definitely see this being one of the reasons. Glad I went with the 360.

 

[Gindil]

Is it just me, or is Sony beginning to turn into the old Nintendo in the SNES days?

 

[Rusty Bucket]

Is it just me, or is Sony beginning to turn into the old Nintendo in the SNES days?

This is a year old.