Sony making another stupid move

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PSN Bandwidth Fee Proving Unpopular With Publishers
Sixteen cent per gigabyte downloaded fee making publishers reconsider how they view online distribution.
By Kat Bailey, 03/20/2009


You may not have to pay a dime for the PlayStation Network, but publishers do. Thanks to a recently instituted bandwidth fee, publishers now have to pay Sony a 16 cent fee for every gigabyte downloaded, and they're not happy.
According to MTV Multiplayer, the fee was announced in a letter sent to publishers last fall. While free content like demos only carry a charge for the first sixty days, paid content accrues fees indefinitely. And as MTV Multiplayer points out, those fees add up. A one gigabyte demo downloaded one million times adds up to an additional $160,000.
Said one publishing source who spoke on condition of anonymity, "It definitely makes us think about how we view the distribution of content related to our games when it is free for us to do it on the web, on Xbox Live, or any other way - including broadcast - than on Sony's platform," one publishing source said. "It's a new thing we have to budget. It's not cool. It sucks."
Meanwhile, Sony Entertainment of America spokesman Patrick Seybold declined to comment on the fee, but attempted to assuage gamers worried about a lack of online content with, "Of course we work closely with them to bring their amazing content to our growing audience, and we are focused on ensuring we, and our publishing partners, have a viable platform for digital distribution. We foresee no change in the high quality or quantity of demos and games available on PSN."
Hard to say whether it will in fact the overall content of the PlayStation Store in the long run. We'll just have to wait and see.
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this is ridiculous and will only hurt the console more.
 
The more pain consoles feel the better. Great move imo.
 
Why don't they just set up a yearly fee like xbox live? Sounds pretty stupid,...anyways glad I don't own a ps3! I wonder how much this will affect the indie scene (flower..etc)....
 
So this is how they make up for the free online service.
 
That's just plain stupid. I mean why not just charge per sale like Steam. Sony would get a cut of the sales to cover the bandwidth. Charging publishers for each gig downloaded is not fair. I mean this is harming Sony as well. Publishers won't want to pay to have the demo on the PS network meaning less advertising, and less sales all round. I honestly can't believe how arrogant Sony has become.
 
Personally I think the Playstation Store has a seriously crap layout. Why cant it just have submenus for things like demos and videos, instead of going into the A-Z list to find NEWLY RELEASED CONTENT!?

Idiots.

But I guess nothing is ever free. Free comes with a **ck up your ass.
 
I'd rather pay $50 a year and have an upgraded online service, thankfully I can still go to my 360 for proper online.
 
Lol, publishers can't afford stuff.

/me goes back to N64 games.
 
mchammer75040 said:
Why don't they just set up a yearly fee like xbox live? Sounds pretty stupid,...anyways glad I don't own a ps3! I wonder how much this will affect the indie scene (flower..etc)....
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Because they're trying to reduce the cost the customers pay? Your sentiments are a bit funny since basically it's like a customer going to a store and saying "Hey you know what, I want to pay more than the MSRP!"
 
Good point, because we all know that is what everyone who uses xbox live does.:dozey:
 
Poor publishers. Maybe we can arrange for a charity donation, since we all know they don't have a dime.
 
I would laugh if the publishers took evasive action by suing Sony to take their games off the PS Store, or ask the gamers to boycott them. That way, they'd get the money back from Sony, or totally screw them over.
 
If you really hate a certain game company, just keep downloading, deleting, and re-downloading their demo, and watch their expenses SKYROCKET.
 
Does Sony not already take a cut from purchases on their store? What exactly is that money for then?
 
Am I the only person who thinks that this will make publishers reconsider uploading "crap" as opposed to actual "quality" downloads?
 
If they upload this "crap", as you say, won't that stop people from wanting to buy their downloads, stopping them from having to pay this tax? Isn't that exactly what they want?
 
Nomad said:
If they upload this "crap", as you say, won't that stop people from wanting to buy their downloads, stopping them from having to pay this tax? Isn't that exactly what they want?
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No. It wont. People will still download crap.
 
Combine Hybrid said:
If you really hate a certain game company, just keep downloading, deleting, and re-downloading their demo, and watch their expenses SKYROCKET.
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Yea! I mean since it'll take a little time to dl one gig of shit, then delete it, then redownload...hell after a couple of days with a decent connection you could set em back a good 15 bucks or so!
:dozey:
 
ah but 15 bucks per person on downloads is quite alot to a company
 
So? I doubt anyone but combine hybrid would give two squirts of liquid shit to waste time dling something over and over again... Not enough to make any impact. Hey there you go CH, find you some psn users and start a club where you can waste your electricity, bandwidth and time to cost a company a hundred bucks a month. Whoopty ****in doo.
 
This isn't great news, but it's only really bad if it has a large impact on whether or not companies upload demos and other content. It's far, far superior to the alternative.

I laugh at the people who compare this to XB Live in a derogatory way, "**** Yeah! Shift the burden to customers!!! Woo-hoo!!!"

Seriously, there are people on here arguing that they'd rather pay a $50 yearly fee than have publishers incur an advertising charge (honestly this whole time I assumed there was a charge for putting demos up on PSN or Live, they're advertising through another company's service). No wonder gamers are such a lucrative demographic, they practically beg for punishment.
 
mchammer75040 said:
So? I doubt anyone but combine hybrid would give two squirts of liquid shit to waste time dling something over and over again... Not enough to make any impact. Hey there you go CH, find you some psn users and start a club where you can waste your electricity, bandwidth and time to cost a company a hundred bucks a month. Whoopty ****in doo.
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What's with this idiot's fagg0try? I don't even know this punk.

It was just a joke, don't have to be a complete asshole about it, dimwit. And no, I wouldn't even bother trying it because I don't even bother turn on my useless ps3. And yes, there are certainly idiots out there who would do something like this.

Now, get off my cock, boy.
 
Okay. Come over here and give it to me, I will pull down my halo visor and you can shoot your load right in. You shouldnt take me so seriously.
 
Publishers make a living out of ****ing over devs anyway, so I fail to see how anyone can get too upset by this. Before this was "news," no one cared. I fail to see why we should care now.
 
I like this approach. Someone has to pay for the bandwidth. Better them than us. I wish Microsoft would do this with XBox Live.
 
mchammer75040 said:
So? I doubt anyone but combine hybrid would give two squirts of liquid shit to waste time dling something over and over again... Not enough to make any impact. Hey there you go CH, find you some psn users and start a club where you can waste your electricity, bandwidth and time to cost a company a hundred bucks a month. Whoopty ****in doo.
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You vastly underestimate the power of the internet and the organization it affords countless anonymous people who like to pull shit like this just for lulz.

I'm not saying such a scenario is a certainty, but it's not unfathomable either.

ADDED: Vip said it.
 
You guys realise you can download demos and other content from Xbox Live without a paid account, right? Besides some stuff being gold exclusive for a short while.
 
Wait, so this news is just going to rekindle the "HATE SONY/PS3" bandwagon for them charging devs...?

Are you guys that hard up to push the wagon further?
 
People have to realise that 16cents is bloody cheap compared to some alternatives. It should also be noted Sony have been charging this fee since October 1st 2008.

Anyway the article is a stupid gripe about a nonexistent problem. Microsoft doesn't charge the publisher bandwidth fees because they choose to charge the customer. Furthermore anyone who thinks they can do it for "free" on their own website is under some serious delusions. A publisher unable to budget for this correctly is a bad publisher. I think perhaps they are just pissed because they can't provide the service and charge for the bandwidth themselves - I bet they would charge a lot more than 16c/GB.

Sony picked a price and terms that are reasonable and cost competitive in the market. There are some ways around it too - game downloads from PSN could contain only skeleton executable files which would download the rest of the data on first start from a publisher's own content servers. The fact that we're not seeing any of this is probably because it's just not that big of a deal. $200K in bandwidth fees to expose a million people or more to your game demo is money well spent. It comes out of the advertising budget and will give a better return than $200K spent on billboards, that's for sure.
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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.
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http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/21/021244
 
Thanks Kyorisu. People are just using this as another reason to bash Sony for their "poor" business practices *IE not being popular on the interbutts*
 
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