MTV is reporting that third party publishers are seriously unhappy with Sony over its "bandwidth fee," a policy instituted on October 1, 2008, that demands money for every piece of DLC released on the PlayStation Network. Since fall of last year, Sony has claimed 16 cents for every Gigabyte of content downloaded from the PSN, either for the first sixty days in the case of free content like demos, or forever in the case of paid downloads.
Behind a mask of anonymity, three publishers have registered their anger with MTV, biting back at Sony's charge, which comes on top of the usual third party development fees.
"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," says one of the sources. "It’s a new thing we have to budget. It’s not cool. It sucks."
Of course, this is something consumers ask themselves in reverse. It is free to game on the web, or via PSN, but they pay to do it on Xbox Live. It's a very "swings and roundabouts" situation.
Sony itself has brushed off this thorny issue, claiming to foresee no change to the quality or quantity of its online content. So far, it would seem that this fee isn't driving away publishers, but as purse strings continue to tighten, could we see a full-scale backlash? After all, it's been pointed out that the Resident Evil 5 demo -- a free piece of content -- was downloaded over four million times across the Xbox 360 and PS3. A huge and popular demo effectively causes a publisher to piss money down the drain.
Another source called the fee "an unwanted burden," and is worried that the subtle nature of the charge could take publishers by surprise when it's time to pay Sony, "Like leaving your phone off the hook for a long distance call. The meter is still running."
This looks rather insidious on the part of Sony, and could really start to have a negative impact on the company if this economic climate gets worse. While consumers will appreciate Sony transferring the costs of running PSN to the publishers instead of themselves, those same consumers are now at risk of having a free service with much less on it.
We'll have to see how it goes. Right now, it would seem that at least the bigger publishers find the PSN's download fees to be a worthwhile investment. It'll be interesting to see if they continue to think that way in the future.
Contest:
8:30 PM on 03.20.2009
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Furthermore, the PSN has a lot of full-size games re-released out there, from PS1 classics to Burnout Paradise and Warhawk, two games I bought AGAIN on the PSN for the convenience of being able to call them up on a whim.
What about the video content as well?
You're right, somebody does have to pay, and in the short term, it's obvious that we as consumers would prefer others to foot the bill. However, we could lose out if publishers decided they're sick of paying out and pull content from the PSN.
Ultimately, the consumers are the ones destined to lose out either way.
This definitely must be some tiny devs complaining since 5 million 1gig downloads will work out to $800,000. Can't be good for the indie developers either.
Where this really seems unfair is with game demos. Most game demos clock in around a gig and many get hundreds of thousands of downloads and this would cost publishers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Maybe Sony could institute some sort of exception for game demos because demos for games people want should only HELP sell more of the games and sell more systems in the long run.
Who really gets screwed here is the little developers who are releasing quirky fun games on the PSN and physically NEED a demo out there to get the word out that their game is fun.
What needs to be considered is how much Sony is taking from each sale on the Playstation store, along with the charge to the devs for each download. Perhaps it's comparable to what Microsoft is already charging.
I think this may have something to do with the music industry being mad that people buy their songs, yet they don't get any money for it once it's sold off to MTV (or whoever publishes the game).
Corporate Big Wig wants YOU to pay for the bandwidth, rather than taking a small percentage of their profits and making games better, they're going to flush all of YOU gamers down the toilet, and try to make YOU pay for the gallon of water it takes to ease you down the sewer pipe. Like MTV can't pay $160,000 to Sony. They don't have any money, Right? F$%&ING Bull$%&T. They have enough money to foot the bill. And they're telling you this on their OWN news source.. Free publicity once again. They're all about getting free shit from their own network, but once the fans get a taste of something free, they want to cry about it, and make YOU float the bill.
seriously, people when you buy Guitar Hero and Rock band games this just encourages them to rip you off even more. I hate games like this.
What would MTV gain buy running such a story?
Damn, I hate them.. Ever since they took something unique from my generation and turned it into a steaming pile of shit.
Most people remember when Epic complained that they couldn't release the Gears map packs for free. The reason for that is because Epic and MS signed an exclusivity contract that required Epic to charge for the maps. The funds MS made from that DLC helped fun the exclusivity of the game.
I absolutely love the Rock Band DLC. ...or would you rather keep buying new $60 games every year and only get a handful of songs you actually want out of the disc?
16 cents per GB isn't exactly that much money considering normal marketing budgets. Of course everybody would love to get everything for free, but that's not how it works in this world.
Demos are a marketing cost - development, QA, and distribution. It would be foolish not to charge for that bandwidth as well, when a popular game releases a demo it can cripple the bandwidth for the entire network if Sony hasn't invested in the infrastructure to support it.
I read the MTV article finally, and someone's playing dirty. They aren't revealing exactly who's complaining about it.. But I can't help but wonder if it's the guys associated with MTV Multiplayer (it IS their site, right?).
I like the free network. demos are pretty much market research to see how a game could potentially sell. It's an advertisement, in other words. Why should you and I (the customer) pay for their advertisements like they make you do with the 360?
I started getting mad at Sony before reading this line:
"“Appreciate the opportunity to jump in here, but we respect the confidentiality of our business agreements with our publishing partners,” Sony Computer Entertainment of America spokesman Patrick Seybold said in an e-mailed statement to MTV"
maybe I'm just paranoid... But it seems that Sony is looking out for the gamers by not making us pay for other people shoving advertisements on my screen every time I boot the device. I REALLY appreciate how clean the PS3's OS looks when compared to the 360's (in terms of the only advert I get is a little scrolling bar in the upper right).
The only question is if the sales of expansions can make up for the bandwidth cost. Especially for somethign like Burnout that's been handing out content like candy.
You can even get rid of the scrolling bar if you like. Just turn it off the "Information Board."
Titan pack was luckily exclusive to PS3 in the console realm, so it might have saved its bandwidth cost. But we may have to forget free DLC and we may see slightly increased game prices, along with less demos. I'd rather Sony has gone with unobtrusive advertisement and sponsored downloads instead of charging for downloads.
I'd rather have publishers foot the bill for their own advertising costs, instead of passing it on directly to the consumer.
This pretty much seems like non-news.
Now developers might think twice before releasing demos or free content... which wont let people try out the game to see if they like it or not, which could hurt.
I think the holiday season will show the impact this year.
As it stands, that's pretty stupid.
"That sounds pretty redonkulous. Like a store charging products for being placed on the shelf."
Supermarkets do that all the time; it's a core part of their business model. Shelf space is real-estate, and sold as such.
The reporter of the story, Stephen Totilo, is one of the few actual journalists in the gaming industry. The guy is on the straight and narrow, and I have confidence in him and his abilities. Thus, I HIGHLY doubt that he would shill for another entity within the broader company that employs him.
Anonymity is common in reporting when the person "blowing the whistle" could be fired, sued, etc. for revealing that type of information.
Effin Lame! Why are they putting up with such extortionate fees! 15c maybe, but 16?!! F**k that!
Bloody whiners. They put stuff on a third party server, and what? want it to be free?
If they don't pay it, do we have to start paying for it? This is like the music industry pulling all their music videos from youtube because they couldn't agree on a suitably greedy compromise.