PlayStation 3 "premium" pay subscription due 2010

[Yugl]

Sorry to bump this, but has anyone gotten any chain mail from friends on PSN, talking about pay-to-play? I figured I'd ask here since most of you are up to date. It was mentioned in this letter about Sony "officially" making online access be paid for, so I was very skeptical (of course I wasn't skeptical once I read I had to send it to 15 other people as a 'petition'). The latest news I could come up with was from Dec 20th about speculation of the service being titled "Qriosity".

I've received one, but didn't bother to look at it. It seemed serious after first, but then someone on my list got angry for forwarding it to them. Now that I look at this thread, it looks like a serious issue again.

[Shojin]

They're about as serious as the ones I get, telling me to forward the message to everyone on my friends list to receive a $20 PSN voucher from Sony.

I think the main reason for giving a pay service is that the X-box tends to get a lot more DLC then the PS3(think of GTA4 like 3 add ons for the X-box only) a pay service would give them money to pay game makers to add that to their system.

Honestly, I can't think of a game over the past 2 years that has done this other than GTA of course (But Microsoft paid $50mil for that) that has done this. And even before that it was usually down to developers troubles with PS3 coding architecture or other issues (like Oblivion). Some things are timed exclusive though, but that is usually not from being paid off.

[Qalbert]

Fallout 3 was I think. IDK for sure

[Shojin]

All the Fallout 3 expansions are on the PS3, granted they were late as fuck. Took their time porting them, but has nothing to do with what he said.

[Qalbert]

I meant that I thought they were paid timed exclusives

[Shojin]

Oh, possibly.

Personally I think exclusive DLC is bullshit and should be avoided by companies. If you're gonna be doing a bunch of exclusive stuff with one platform then keep the entire damn game exclusive. It sucks for those who own multiple platforms and then buy a game for a specific platform, only to find out 2 months later that a different platform is getting exclusive DLC.

[Qalbert]

Well exclusive DLC allows them to market it as "You should choose our system for this game". Getting an exclusive game is both unlikely and expensive due to how much exclusivity can cut into the overall profit. If I were a developer I would want to make my product as widely available as possible, and having it not be available for a system is not worth it unless I am being hugely compensated. Adding exclusive DLC gets me paid by the console with exclusivity, while still maximizing potential purchases. Don't know why I made that first person. Lol.

[Shojin]

I don't know. If I were a developer I'd rather have it available to as many people as possible than risk alienating a section of customers limited to one platform. From a business standpoint it may be worthwhile, if the amount you are being paid for exclusivity is a decent amount, and if the potential customers on the other platforms aren't too big. But I still think it is a bullshit tactic that this new generation has ushered in, although thankfully in not many titles yet.

[*Shinzon*]

I don't know. If I were a developer I'd rather have it available to as many people as possible than risk alienating a section of customers limited to one platform. From a business standpoint it may be worthwhile, if the amount you are being paid for exclusivity is a decent amount, and if the potential customers on the other platforms aren't too big. But I still think it is a bullshit tactic that this new generation has ushered in, although thankfully in not many titles yet.

I think it's more being exclusive without being exclusive. Devs have started to cater differently to the kind of audience they have across platforms I suppose and that's why you see this kind of DLC console specific stuff. I can say that with some of the features offered I would definitely consider a pay service now.

[dejet]

Honestly, I can't think of a game over the past 2 years that has done this other than GTA of course (But Microsoft paid $50mil for that) that has done this. And even before that it was usually down to developers troubles with PS3 coding architecture or other issues (like Oblivion). Some things are timed exclusive though, but that is usually not from being paid off.

Even so, sony has less money to screw around when their players play for free.
MS got the exta money to throw at them how? People pay they yearly fee.

[Shojin]

I never said I was against this, in fact I approve of it with the stuff they are offering. But to buy exclusive DLC? No thanks, spend it on more useful things.

[Valkrish]

I'm not sure what kind of awesome extra content they can already offer- unless they're making another pay-to-play Instant messaging system... with lots of OH WAIT

Home

I still won't pay Premium price, i'll be happy with just the regular content.

[fussel]

So, sony is indeed considering the premium pay service, however, if they offer free access to PS1 classics, holy fucking shit....win.

I recently thought about how nice it would be if all those PSN download games would be accessible under some kind of subscription instead of paying 5 bucks here and 10 bucks there.

So you'd have the choice to buy a single game for unlimited access or buying a subscription to have access to everything, but only for as long as your subscription is active.

Dunno how they'd stop people abusing it though, mostly the PS1/mini's, could someone just pay for a month, download as much as possible, then cancel the next month? I'm sure there would be a catch to it, maybe having to pay for the full year to get access to those specific ones?

Require online connection for playing? Or require online connection after the internal clock of the console has been modified?