Sony Charges Publishers For DLC Bandwidth Usage 127
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.
I support this (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
So what's wrong with this? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm in the hosting business, I can tell you that 0.16/GB is a very good price.
Most plans are over-subscribed. For example, I offer 80GB/mo transfer (no rollover) and I charge $100/year. However I charge $0.50/GB for overage. When a customer wants lots of bandwidth I usually try to steer them somewhere else.
One guy wanted to host his video on my server instead of putting it on youtube, I canceled his account and refunded his money.