News & Rumours: Playstation 4/ Orbis *spin*

^^^
The event starts at 18:00 EST/ 23:00 GMT.

 

Two points on the subject of brands.

First, there is a difference between brand strength and brand value.
Just because a brand is strong, doesn't mean that it can be effectively leveraged to drive sales (which would define brand value).
Example: "Walkman" is actually still a very strong brand in terms of recognition. But it has no value today since it can no longer be leveraged to drive sales. Sony tried, failed, and has basically given up on it.
"Playstation" could very well suffer the same fate - it can only be used in a narrow context, it failed to do much for their crossover phone, it has even failed to sell gaming consoles (Playstation Vita). If Sony can't sell the PS4, or whatever it will be called with "Playstation" in it, the playstation brand, regardless of recognition, simply isn't worth much. It will be a brand of the past.

Second, brand recognition is contextual.
Examples:"Walkman" has little recognition among todays youth, who weren't around in the age of portable compact cassette players.
Playstation is a much stronger brand here, a forum dedicated to 3D graphics and gaming, than, say, among photographers.
Furthermore, it is a brand with narrow recognition - you can't use it to sell posh leather bags, or male fragrancies (smell like a gamer!). Outside its context the playstation brand is weak.

 

Lol, I didn't say it was right, and I'm not sympathizing with them. When I try to think what Sony would do, I remember they are a business, their goal is profit, and they don't have feelings.

My personal belief isn't that Sony doesn't want to charge for online but that they didn't think their system was worth charging when PSN launched and trying to change that fact in the middle of a console's lifespan would lead to revolt.

However, new console, new rules.

Anyway, I save my anger for products I already own. Those that make stupid decisions, I just avoid their products. However, I at recognize that their are games I want to play that will only be on that system (for me, JRPGs), which is the source for all this tension, otherwise, no one would care. Notice how few topics there are about the price of Vita memory cards, because few people own the system at all!

 

Sony sold more than 70 million PlayStation home consoles in the last six years. Comparing the value of the PlayStation brand with the value of the Walkman brand is quite a stretch.

Again: The console market doesn't narrow down to the USA. XBox is number one in North America but PlayStation is number one in Europe and Japan. Don't worry about the value of the PlayStation brand.

 

It would be funny if they still allow free online play, but the number of hours you can play per month is the number of hours you logged in at Home. If you don't want to do your time in Home, you'll have to pay for online services.

Seriously though, I'm not expecting online play to remain totally free. My guess is something like the free-to-play games, where a small fraction of people willing to pump money in foot the bill for everyone. May be pay for features like party chat and game broadcasting. May be everyone have a quota of free hours and heavy users need to pay.

MS is using a fixed subscription fee model, Sony can transition to a "freemium" model.

 

But how will you justify charged online multiplayer if you're trying to increase the amount of interaction between your other gaming platforms that don't require a fee? What about Cross Buy? You buy the game and play it online with your Vita but if you wan't to continue on your PS4 you have to pay the fee first? That makes no sense at all. I'm 99,9% sure that Sony will not charge a fee for features that are free on PS3 and Vita, since that is the only way to create a complete PlayStation ecosystem. I expect PS+ and every new feature (esp. GAIKAI cloud computing) to be integrated into the new PlayStation World subscription, but everything else that is free of charge will remain free of charge with the new console.

 

May be everyone have, say 40 hours/month for free? I think most people don't really play that much, and so, most people will still play for free? If the 80-20 rule works here, vast majority of server load probably just comes from a small minority of people.

Bleed the heavy users dry to subsidize light users like me.

 

That sounds needlessly complicated, especially if a family or a living community shares the same device or even the same account: "Why can't I play Gran Turismo?" - "Sorry darling, I just couldn't stop playing Dark Souls last night..."

And will publishers like it? With all these talk about free2play we're possibly going to see a paradigm shift in terms of distribution. Every dollar that you spend on Sony or MS is a fee that Bobby Kotick and John Riccitiello can't charge anymore.

 

I think paid online could be catastrophic for console. Okay, I'm using myself as a case study and that might be really lousy, but I only played online this gen because it was free. I don't play online often at all, but I have dabbled in online games occasionally like MAG, Borderlands, Warhawk and Uncharted. It adds value to the system. Paid online will mean I never go online and never buy those games, and not that I'll buy a bit of online every now and again. But far worse, I also expect it means a reduction in local coop as there's more money to be made in online coop. If console gaming isn't something we share any more with real people, I'm out.

What we might be left with is a highly lucrative, shallow niche, with gaming becoming even more marginalised on those platforms. The intelligent approach is to get everyone on board. Make it open and socially attractive. Make multiplayer and coop commonplace and seamless, so people invite their friends who partake and invite their friends who partake and... That's how Facebook got anywhere, and all those viral success. Once you have users, you can monetise them, selling content and services, but a big barrier to entry is stupid. Sony have enough examples of paid MMOs that went F2P and did far better financially to know how that works.

£15 a year for party chat, I'll bite. But pay to play online, I'll switch to PC for the solo gamer experience.

 

I'd be perfectly happy to see online play remains free as well, but I'm keeping my expectation in check. After all, it's very tempting seeing MS make good money from online like that.

 

I don't have expectations - only responses to what is finally announced. Just making Sony aware they could lose customers if they aren't careful.

 

@oramay
MS makes good money with Gold Subscriptions but a the same time their restrictive policy has led led millions of players to choose PS3 & PC for their MP needs.
They lost millions of potential customers with that move, me included.

 

Oh yeah, I do expect that you will be able to logon with multiple accounts at once on your PS4 in every game, and earn trophies for every player etc. This was rumored already, but it's pretty important to me and fairly timely, as my son is starting to become of a more serious gaming age (nearing 5 ).

 

Does Steam require pay to play online?

Charging online and blocking used games could make a lot of people take a look at the Steam console.

 

It seems likely that the 'playstation world' subscription would be PS+ combined with online play (and any other features).

Basically:
- pay $N a year for "online content".
- pay $M a year for free games and "online content".

The first feels like a rip-off, the second seems less of a rip-off.

 

I wouldn't say it's likely, I'd say it's possible. We'll find out in a few hours.

 

Unfortunately, pay for online is the way things are heading. Microsoft successfully started it with Live, and I'm sure Sony will follow as this kind of profits are necessary to the overall business structure.

I really don't mind or care either way. We're paying for $499+ consoles here (at least outside the US) won't make a big difference, especially since the competition (Xbox) is not offering a better deal (both will cost to play).

From the point of view of Sony, I think it's a lot better to have everyone pay for online-play rather than have some "plus"-service no one really cares about. I'm one of those gamers unfortunately - enough cash to pay for online gaming but not a PSN-Plus customer. Why? Because I'm lazy, and I never cared much for it because I didn't need it. If online-gaming does become a service that I will have to pay for - I will.

The biggest indicator that I will stay on the PlayStation brand is not if this or that service is free, it's all about what my friends will be getting and what I need to get in order to play with them. As such, PlayStation as a brandname and getting as many as gamers on their boat is as important as any other factor in closing the loop and getting your userbase attached to your console and your eco-system/platform.

 

I don't know that it is. Only MS have tried that, and no-one's followed. Steam doesn't charge an online fee to play your Steam games online, nor anyone else. For a subscription fee, I'd expect it to work like movie streaming - you select from the library of games and play them. An online fee like MS is somewhat like asking you to buy a BRD and BRD player and then pay to be able to play the movie. shift all the optional fancy features to subscription if you must, but a fee just to access the internet (that's pretty much all you're doing in peer-to-peer gaming) is just rude, and there are other options (Ouya, Steambox, PC).