Playstation network

[Shifty Geezer]

It's the former. It's a little cumbersome to do over the net, though, because the person sharing has to log on to your system and 'activate it' for their content. So if you're sharing with someone you just know online, you have to (temporarily, at least) give them your account login details. But after that, they can play the game with their own account.

Wow.

JT: It's short term vs. long term. We're interested in a 10-year product lifecycle and establishing it as the must-have machine for the next decade. It's not about generating profits at each and every turn, at each and every interaction with the consumer. I think that's why we went with a free service and why we have an open platform. I think that really offsets the argument that, "Wow, that's really a pricey system."

Um...I appreciate they're 'generosity' but i think this move is one that's back to front. 3 quid here or there isn't much. If your friend has a £3 download title, and you want it to, you're not going to worry about paying that amount. So sharing the cost between friends won't have any obvious impact. Instead they should have used the revenue from download sales to offset the console price.

eg. If a PS3 owner downloads 20 £3 titles over the years, that'll be £60 to Sony. If they can share games, they'll save at most £60 over the life of their PS3, but in small quantities they won't notice. It'd be better to sell the Ps3 for £60 less and get more momentum, and recoup the £60 from download titles. Cost of running the PS3 is a minor issue. Sony are offering games cheaper, and game sharing, and free online, yet who calculates that when buying a console? Everyone, surely, looks at the retail pricetag, and says 200 bucks more for PS3 than XB360. No-one says 'though of course, at £40 a year online gaming, and no ability to share games, and an extra £5 on some titles, XB360 will cost me an extra £200 before even considering Wifi and an HD DVD drive.' Sony should push for the lowest shelf-price, and be damned the running the costs!

 

[slider]

eg. If a PS3 owner downloads 20 £3 titles over the years, that'll be £60 to Sony. If they can share games, they'll save at most £60 over the life of their PS3, but in small quantities they won't notice. It'd be better to sell the Ps3 for £60 less and get more momentum, and recoup the £60 from download titles. Cost of running the PS3 is a minor issue. Sony are offering games cheaper, and game sharing, and free online, yet who calculates that when buying a console? Everyone, surely, looks at the retail pricetag, and says 200 bucks more for PS3 than XB360. No-one says 'though of course, at £40 a year online gaming, and no ability to share games, and an extra £5 on some titles, XB360 will cost me an extra £200 before even considering Wifi and an HD DVD drive.' Sony should push for the lowest shelf-price, and be damned the running the costs!

I've thought about this too (as I'm sure many people have). Talk about gambles. I guess if you were Sony, as a minimum, you'd have to be looking at PSN uptake close to 50% of total sales. No idea what the uptake is at the moment; (I still haven't connected mine to PSN ).

That 50% figure is plucked out of thin air. It ain't my job to do business models!

 

[Titanio]

Wow.
Um...I appreciate they're 'generosity' but i think this move is one that's back to front. 3 quid here or there isn't much. If your friend has a £3 download title, and you want it to, you're not going to worry about paying that amount. So sharing the cost between friends won't have any obvious impact. Instead they should have used the revenue from download sales to offset the console price.

eg. If a PS3 owner downloads 20 £3 titles over the years, that'll be £60 to Sony. If they can share games, they'll save at most £60 over the life of their PS3, but in small quantities they won't notice. It'd be better to sell the Ps3 for £60 less and get more momentum, and recoup the £60 from download titles. Cost of running the PS3 is a minor issue. Sony are offering games cheaper, and game sharing, and free online, yet who calculates that when buying a console? Everyone, surely, looks at the retail pricetag, and says 200 bucks more for PS3 than XB360. No-one says 'though of course, at £40 a year online gaming, and no ability to share games, and an extra £5 on some titles, XB360 will cost me an extra £200 before even considering Wifi and an HD DVD drive.' Sony should push for the lowest shelf-price, and be damned the running the costs!

It's a valid view that is easy to agree with. But I think Sony knows most people won't take advantage of this, so it plays more as a generator of goodwill more than anything else. I think also they need a system that let people transfer 'play rights' from one system to a new system in the event that their old system stops working, which this mechanism also allows (they just got generous and expanded it to 5 systems). At least I think this is how you would handle that, in the event of a broken system. I guess they also see it, where people do take advantage of it, as a means to promote DLC. Perhaps someone who hasn't bought anything themselves might come to access a game or games via a friend, and become 'hooked' to the idea, and start exploring the store for themselves to see what else is there that their friend hasn't got. Once you start getting into DLC, in my own experience at least, it's a very compelling way to get new games (I personally almost wish all games were downloadable now!).

 

[Mendel]

So basically we didn't get Phantom... but a similar service is actually there in every new generation console, and it's successful