Do you think it is possible for Sony to reach profitabilty with the PS3?

[patsu]

What I would love for the next generation of consoles would be a "sort of" subscription model.
You pay a certain amount monthly - say 20-30 USD - and, for a month, you get access to play any number of games you want that month, new or old, for as long as you want.

The money/profit will be split between the platform owner and the developers, proportionally with the number of hours you spent playing each game. Games with good value/content/replayability/multiplayer will be rewarded more, half-assed games will get much less.

Games could be downloaded through a torrent-like system, no need for huge severs, or could be distributed freely through game outlets, magazines etc - but they wil not work unless you have a valid account.

PS3 has proven that you can produce a pirate-free console, so this should work nicely.

This also take care of second-hand market.

Yes, I don't mind more business models -- even subscription -- for PS3 content.

 

[Xalion]

Don't know how important it is. The 360 has 20m live accounts so people have some form of internet connected to 2/3rds the 360s

One of the major problems in infrastructure is hidden by numbers like those though. Think of the Verizon "maps" vs. the AT&T "maps" commercials. I think the comparison valid for two reasons for digital content distribution.

First, AT&T has been beat up this year because of their service quality. Simply put, they did not have the network capacity on a fresh network to handle the enthusiasm of the iPhone crowd. I would expect the same thing if a major change to digital distribution of say movies and games happened soon. We sometimes forget that the main reason companies can sell us 20Mb speed is that 95% of their customers will never use it. Even now most major providers suffer from complaints during peak hours when speeds drop dramatically because of heavy usage. That would need to be fixed if we switched models.

The second reason I think it is an interesting comparison is that while ~90% of the area of the US isn't covered by AT&T, around 80% of the population is (source). That highlights the problems with improving infrastructure. Simply put, it is not profitable to run high speed internet to everyone in the US, so will not happen without fairly large government interference. While you get claims like "95% of the population covered" and such, the current reality is much harsher. The infrastructure just outside of most major cities is a mess (I worked for an internet backbone provider for a while, so this is a personal observation).

Tieing this back into the PS3 topic, I think disk distribution methods are not going away for a long time. I just don't see the game companies giving up ~20% of their possible install base and I don't see the infrastructure being resolved any time soon. I think games are going to continue to increase in size at about the same rate they have been (last I checked, it almost follows Moore's law sadly). So as games get bigger, you need more storage. Interestingly enough, I think ALL next gen consoles will run on Bluray. It provides the storage and will be a well tested technology. Which means that while this generation might not be fully profitable, next generation Sony will be able to profit from every game sold again, even if it is only licensing fees for the disks themselves.

Whether or not that is enough to make up for the investment I don't know. As I've told others though, all 3 game companies probably see this generation as a financial win regardless of their earnings column at this point. It will be interesting to see what the next generation brings.

 

[eastmen]

People who will buy an xbox next or 3 or whatever at $400 or more in 2011/2012 will have broad band connections. People who don't have broad band will purchase the console much later in life and by that point they may very well have broad band. We are talking 2015 at that point.

Sprint is already expanding their 4 g network and for $50 a month you can get 20mb/s down adn 5mb/s up with unlimited data . I know some who are using this already . Service will ramp up quickly and it will be the same for at&t and verizon who go to lte verisons of 4g instead of wimax.

Looking at 3g and what it can do is silly , it was created for dumb phones and few smart phones who's main task was busniess not fun and games.

Things are changing already.

 

[JPT]

People who will buy an xbox next or 3 or whatever at $400 or more in 2011/2012 will have broad band connections. People who don't have broad band will purchase the console much later in life and by that point they may very well have broad band. We are talking 2015 at that point.

Sprint is already expanding their 4 g network and for $50 a month you can get 20mb/s down adn 5mb/s up with unlimited data . I know some who are using this already . Service will ramp up quickly and it will be the same for at&t and verizon who go to lte verisons of 4g instead of wimax.

Looking at 3g and what it can do is silly , it was created for dumb phones and few smart phones who's main task was busniess not fun and games.

Things are changing already.

Look up Akamai's state of the internet yearly reports and you will see that the avg broadband connection per country and its not as high as people think.

As for wireless phat pipes, any g, well its nice if your the only one connected to the AP and live like 2 feet from the AP. But if you move further away and more people access the same AP you will see no where close to your 20/5 numbers.

 

[DJ12]

PS3 has proven that you can produce a pirate-free console, so this should work nicely.

Although the one area that has been breached once or twice is PSN downloaded games.

I am not sure if the loopholes still work as I never bothered with them but I would suggest the PS3 does not prove that your idea will be pirate free should they do it.

Physical media, yes, downloaded content, no.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What DLC hacks are there on PS3? I seem to have missed those!

 

[ShadowRunner]

At one point it was possible to redirect PS3 network traffic through a local proxy, where you could get it to install PSN games from a local "faked" PSN server. It only ever worked for a few games at the start from what im aware and Sony soon put a stop to it. I think the only thing using a proxy allows you to do nowdays is to go online on PSN without having the latest firmware...

 

[specwarGP2]

What's a Local faked PSN server? Is that something other than a PS3? If that's the case, what good does that do to install PSN games there? You cant play them.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I presume it's a PC that sits between the PS3 and PSN server, acting as a proxy. In theory it could pass the same content to multiple attached PS3s. However, as the DLC is locked to a system key now, that's no good.

Because every PS3 has its own ID, you can do that. As long as the keys can't be stripped and reprogrammed, you can't duplicate DRM'd data.

 

[Xalion]

Sprint is already expanding their 4 g network and for $50 a month you can get 20mb/s down adn 5mb/s up with unlimited data . I know some who are using this already . Service will ramp up quickly and it will be the same for at&t and verizon who go to lte verisons of 4g instead of wimax.

Looking at 3g and what it can do is silly , it was created for dumb phones and few smart phones who's main task was busniess not fun and games.

I should have been far more specific.

My purpose with the 3G coverage was not to imply people would use 3G coverage with a download service. Instead, it was to point out how the roll out of a "new" technology in interent distribution tends to go.

My point is simple. Providers like Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T with their "new" networks target the major markets first. That is because those markets cover around 80% of the population of the US. Those markets also only cover ~10% of the physical country. So it is fairly inexpensive to do these type of upgrades.

On the other hand, there are 2 problems with this. First, these areas are densly packed so tend to run into bottlenecks very quickly because it is very difficult to install capacity able to meet demand while still keeping costs reasonable. Remember, most of the current networks are wasted except at peak usage times. Then they are bottleknecked. If you build up enough that you get no bottleknecks at peak usage times, then you have a lot of capacity that is just not used for the majority of your time. Good for the consumer, bad for the company installing it.

Second, the areas away from these major markets are very slow to get new technologies. Often when they do get it, they get an inferior version. I live just 10 miles from one of those major markets. My DSL did not break 640k until one year ago, and it still averages only 1.5Mb. While you may consider that anecdotal evidence, I worked for a backbone provider and can tell you that it is actually fairly standard. Installing high speed internet lines requires either laying fiber optic cable which is quite costly or replacing almost the entire phone system to get rid of things like analog switches. I cannot put it more simply than there is no profit for large telecom companies to install lines in places other than their main markets.

So that leaves government grants and installation programs to make up the difference. Ever wondered what the required speed is to call yourself broadband? The new program going into affect is only 768 kb (source).

If you want an example of all of that, you can look at the AT&T and Verizon situation I described earlier. It is a very public example which is why I used it.

 

[ShadowRunner]

What's a Local faked PSN server? Is that something other than a PS3? If that's the case, what good does that do to install PSN games there? You cant play them.

Just a PC. The proxy would redirect network traffic from the PS3 and so trick the PS3 to install something other than what it was expecting. Essentially it was possible to go into the store as normal and go to download a demo, if you know the address the store would normally go to to download that content (you would find this by snooping the network packets) you could then redirect the request to a PC on your local network that contained the same file structure as the PSN server. The PC could contain an entirely different package to the demo(a full game) at the expected position in the file structure and the PS3 would download and intall this game as if it was the demo from the link you clicked on. You would end up with the full game installed on the PS3 as you would if you had purchased it even though your psn account would show that you just downloaded a demo of everybodys golf or something.

 

[Carl B]

Just saw this thread, but one word in short: no.

On the side... this topic comes up like two, three times every year right?

I guess the thread might as well remain open for a time, though it seems as much about cell phone coverage as PS3 at this point.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

On the side... this topic comes up like two, three times every year right?

I've noticed there has been lot's of spamm lately after the forum upgrade, because the registering got fixed. I wonder if this is also. One post and gone...

 

[baten]

Just a PC. The proxy would redirect network traffic from the PS3 and so trick the PS3 to install something other than what it was expecting. Essentially it was possible to go into the store as normal and go to download a demo, if you know the address the store would normally go to to download that content (you would find this by snooping the network packets) you could then redirect the request to a PC on your local network that contained the same file structure as the PSN server. The PC could contain an entirely different package to the demo(a full game) at the expected position in the file structure and the PS3 would download and intall this game as if it was the demo from the link you clicked on. You would end up with the full game installed on the PS3 as you would if you had purchased it even though your psn account would show that you just downloaded a demo of everybodys golf or something.

That's awfull complicated for the milions of dumb pirates in the world.
I was talking about pirating with chips and mods - the way you can pirate the Wii and the 360, and the PS2 for that matter. So that you can easily play any game/iso you want from a DVD-R or from the hard-disk.
The key for profit for PS3 is in the fact that it is pirate free. With equal installed bases, as a developer you are probably inclined to develop more for the PS3, not to loose sales due to piracy.
In fact, we already see the trend - in 2009 there were more good exclusives for PS3 than for the 360.

 

[ShadowRunner]

That's awfull complicated for the milions of dumb pirates in the world.
I was talking about pirating with chips and mods - the way you can pirate the Wii and the 360, and the PS2 for that matter. So that you can easily play any game/iso you want from a DVD-R or from the hard-disk.

Its tolally irelevant anyhow as the exploit was closed by Sony pretty much instantly. This was back in the days of 1.5 fw.

 

[Carl B]

In fact, we already see the trend - in 2009 there were more good exclusives for PS3 than for the 360.

False correlation to piracy considerations though as those exclusives were not third party but internal projects. PS3's security is no doubt a plus, but it's not a plus that's going to yield Sony billions.

 

[Carl B]

Well, without piracy (on the 360) I don't think it would change much either - the financial decision on the developers side to support a console remains the same. As you yourself pointed out, it's simply about accessing a larger total user base.

 

[Crossbar]

Not to mention that practically every PS3 exclusive has failed to reach sales expectations, except maybe for MGS4. Lair, Heavenly Sword, Killzone 2, Uncharted 2, Resistance 2, and InFamous have all been disappointments both absolutely and relative to the size of the user base.
Oh, and Little Big Planet has also failed to become the phenomenon that some people have suggested it to be.

Oh, and as a developer you're still more inclined to primarily aim for the platform that's both bigger and has higher attach rates, not to mention ease of development. The X360 is the more desired console, despite the piracy; imagine how it'd be without it.

Sony must count themself lucky there is a market outside NA.

 

[RobertR1]

Sony must count themself lucky there is a market outside NA.

None of the titles he mentioned took off anywhere. We get chart listings for EU countries and Japan often. Unless you want to praise LBP's heavy discount sales all throughout europe last season (hell I even picked up a copy when I was there at the time).