PSN not profitable yet

[patsu]

I was told the restriction was added on developer request (Prevent cheating in certain types of games ?).

An experience like Demon's Souls will be broken with voice chat.

 

[Toaddio]

I was told the restriction was added on developer request (also prevent cheating in certain types of games ?).

An experience like Demon's Souls will be broken with voice chat.

No, Shifty Geezer says it has to be a feature of all games.

And what idiot says PSN is equal to Live? Only a bigger idiot could read this discussion as such.

 

[patsu]

Well.... knowing Shifty, I think his points are:

* The online experience is broken for him (Shifty, diagnose with the ISP and Sony customer support !).

* Voice chat needs to be consistent and "in" where it makes sense. "All" means "Where it makes sense".

Right now, PS3 online experience is pretty much dictated by the developers and their tight schedule. They are getting better, but shit happens. ^_^

Occasionally, we'd get brilliant ideas by the developers. As long as the online gaming platform doesn't get in the way (and basic services remain free !), I'm fine.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I have no idea where Shifty lives, but there could be other network issues that have nothing to do with his ISP or his local connection. If you have developers implementing their own systems for matchmaking and voice chat, there could be all kinds of problems based on location and network hops.

 

[patsu]

A lot of people put their Xboxes and PS3s in the DMZ for performance and port issues.

 

[Nesh]

T

I suppose the argument is you can always choose not to pay. I don't partcularly agree with that, but it's true on paper anyhow. Regards PSN's profitability though, if Sony wanted to charge for it, they'd need to imrpove it, which I think is the major argument. At the moment I wouldn't pay for PSN access because it doesn't work well enough to be worth any amount of money! If Sony want a subscription off me, they'd need faultless network gaming services. So looking at Sony monetising PSN as per this report, I think that's where some people's attention is. Personally I think the content services are what Sony ahve an eye on. After all that's what PSN+ is.

That argument avoids to take into account that if someone doesnt pay he wont be able to play online which is an integral feature in gaming.
Yeah Sony would definitely have to improve it. But by how much? Since people are already enjoying it for free, even if they do improve it, there will some major complains from the consumers. Unless that improvement is at extraordinary levels to negate the change from free to payable. Charging and having a perfect service is something they should have done from the get go to avoid any form of backfire.

The best choice available is to concentrate on additional features and content services just as you said. Since they want to expand PSN on other non gaming platforms and with additional services that are related to multiple forms of entertainment and media, I think PSN+ has some good potential if done right. Its simply a different business model than that of XBL

 

[BRiT]

Not disable, but prevent players from entering certain MP playlists should they be in party chat. (Modern Warfare 2) The work-arounds make it a moot point as you can set it so that you only hear voice chat from people on your friends list via the dashboard or manually mute every other player while in-game (when playing with friends). Obviously, it's not as convenient, but it kind of shows it's pointless to have such a restriction.

Indeed that is the case. It was a game-within-a-game for Xarth, LagBot, Castaway, Meatdog, Pantalones, and myself to see who could mute everyone else first when running MW2.

Why people can't see obvious shortcomings or improvements is beyond me. There should be no reason for having to degrade something else to feel good about your own decisions. It's even more puzzling because the entire area is about having fun and enjoyment.

On the XBL side I want as diverse of a content system as PSN with all the add-ons has even if I hardly ever watch content from there. I want options. I do not want to be confined. At least I hear Hulu and Hulu Plus will be coming to XBL soon-ish.

On the PSN side I want basic things like system-wide party voicechat and cross game voicechat, real-time friends list status updates, and easy game invites.

 

[mrcorbo]

Somewhat more on topic....

I spent some time in the PS Store for the first time last night. This seems awfully unfriendly to someone who doesn't know exactly what they want and wants to just browse around to see what's available. Allowing for multiple layers of filtering would go a long way towards making it a more user-friendly experience. As it was I was able to look for PS3 content OR I was able to look for a specific genre OR I was able to look for PSN exclusive content. This needs to be additive. At one point I was going through an alphabetical list and was going through the A's, then I backed out one level so I could select the B's and browse those, repeat ad nauseum. This all needs a major overhaul.

Then once I selected a couple of game demos to download I thought, "I'll watch a BluRay while my demos d/l in the background." Apparently, though, they stop downloading when you play a BluRay. Why?

Once the demos finished d/l'ing (while I did chores around the house), I went to play the game...only to find that the demo had to be installed first. Sigh, found more stuff to do while that got done. Played Uncharted demo. This is pretty good. You guys should try it .

Next I tried to play Wipeout HD demo. I was expecting the install this time. What I wasn't expecting was that after the demo installed I then had to sit through a patch download/install. Really? Played this demo. This was also good.

From these experiences, I would tend to say that the content isn't the problem. It's the user experience of finding/acquiring the content that needs a lot of work.

 

[corduroygt]

You can make the demos automatically install after downloading on PSN, but it has to also turn off the PS3 afterwards. I wonder what they were smoking with that decision, because having it turn off the PS3 is surely additional programming work that they could have chosen not to add. It's like they deliberately worked against user friendliness.

 

[AlNom]

Somewhat more on topic....

I spent some time in the PS Store for the first time last night. This seems awfully unfriendly to someone who doesn't know exactly what they want and wants to just browse around to see what's available.

...

From these experiences, I would tend to say that the content isn't the problem. It's the user experience of finding/acquiring the content that needs a lot of work.

Yeah... actually, when the ME2 demo came out, I couldn't find the ME2 page at all. It wasn't in the games list, the PS3 demos list, the games demo list or even the new releases list. I had to use the search function and type it in before I found it - it's like there's no automatic indexing when they add new content. Even so, I've had similar issues trying to find DLC for Batman despite using the in-game option to take me to the store...

They really do need an overhaul in the UI and categorization, not to mention the thumbnail system makes it difficult to identify a fair number of items at first glance. A lot of times I don't recognize the game art, and I really shouldn't have to squint to see the title in the thumbnail instead of going through every single thumbnail.

If they can streamline the usability, it wouldn't be so intimidating to go in there and look around.

 

[joker454]

I have extensively played UC2, and the only thing that could be organized better was to get a party going. Once that party was set, we played for hours on end, with superb quality party chat.

Here are two problems with what you are saying above. First, "the only thing that could be organized better was to get a party going", I mean that's kind of key and fundamental to online playing no?? More importantly though is that you do what everyone else here does, in that you pick one of your favorite games to use as an example of how psn is ok. Now, what if I don't like U2 and never bought it? Or R2 lets say as well? Experiences on one game are irrelevant because they potentially mean nothing to millions of people out there whose games that they play are still stuck in the cretaceous period with regards to online play and support. On Xblive it's a non issue, every game works the same and they all have the same great feature set, and you can demo them to see if you like them. While it may be thrilling that someone has fun in their game of choice and that the only "minor" issue is getting a party going, but all that does is point out how far behind psn really is in this now 5 year old generation.

I mean honestly just sit back and think about it for a second. You picked the game of your choice to make an example, and even on that game doing something critical like setting up a party wasn't as straightforward as Live. What does that say for the hundreds of other games out there on psn when the poster child game doesn't even do it right? Wouldn't it be cool to just not have to worry about it, knowing full well that whatever game you bought would work just like all the rest? I always wonder this when I see ps3 folk posting. How bizarre it must be to worry if your game will work right and play right. Time and time again they huddle around the forums wondering if online will be descent. Does that seem normal and acceptable to people here in 2010, when the other $199 box box has been doing it right for years now? I don't buy the cost argument at all. People spent $600 on their ps3's. another $150 to replace the hdd, $100+ on steering controls, thousands on tv's, hundreds on games, etc, the hobby costs a lot of money. To complain about $40/yr to get a clean and consistent service that lets you demo everything? The existence of demo's alone will make Live pay for itself in money saved not buying bad games, let alone everything else it provides such as peace of mind in not having to pray to the bit gods that the next game you want to buy will actually have useable online.

Yup, another long winded tirade, but for Sony to have left psn in this state is quite frankly embarrassing.

For me, it's far more important to save a few hundred dollars over the lifetime of a console generation, and make sure companies don't think they can get away with charging for p2p connections, than those extra features.

They are not charging for p2p connections, they are charging for a complete and consistent online service. Personally I'm thrilled that I have the option to pay for something that works so well. Imagine if we were all stuck with just psn? Yikes, no thank you!

From these experiences, I would tend to say that the content isn't the problem. It's the user experience of finding/acquiring the content that needs a lot of work.

Content is subjective I suppose, to me psn is really far behind. But finding stuff is also a chore. Correct me if I'm wrong, but to this day I still don't know of a way to go to the psn store and have it just show me the new ps3 demos. On Live it's so easy, I can see all new 360 demos sorted nicely, or new 360 indie games, etc. Maybe I'm crazy but I still can't see how to do that on psn, instead you have to go to the "new releases" option which lumps everything together in a totally unintelligible form. To have that kind of primitive interface in 2010 absolutely blows my mind. For example the ME2 demo, I didn't even know there was one until I read about it here because it got lost amongst all manner of other useless content shown in the what's new section so I missed it.

 

[Alkohallick]

Somewhat more on topic....

I spent some time in the PS Store for the first time last night. This seems awfully unfriendly to someone who doesn't know exactly what they want and wants to just browse around to see what's available. Allowing for multiple layers of filtering would go a long way towards making it a more user-friendly experience. As it was I was able to look for PS3 content OR I was able to look for a specific genre OR I was able to look for PSN exclusive content. This needs to be additive. At one point I was going through an alphabetical list and was going through the A's, then I backed out one level so I could select the B's and browse those, repeat ad nauseum. This all needs a major overhaul.

Then once I selected a couple of game demos to download I thought, "I'll watch a BluRay while my demos d/l in the background." Apparently, though, they stop downloading when you play a BluRay. Why?

Once the demos finished d/l'ing (while I did chores around the house), I went to play the game...only to find that the demo had to be installed first. Sigh, found more stuff to do while that got done. Played Uncharted demo. This is pretty good. You guys should try it .

Next I tried to play Wipeout HD demo. I was expecting the install this time. What I wasn't expecting was that after the demo installed I then had to sit through a patch download/install. Really? Played this demo. This was also good.

From these experiences, I would tend to say that the content isn't the problem. It's the user experience of finding/acquiring the content that needs a lot of work.

This drives me insane If I remember correctly it used to keep downloading in the background as long as whatever you were doing didnt involve the psn i.e. i could play single player games while demos dl'd but that seems to have been axed w one of the fw updates.

 

[corduroygt]

Here are two problems with what you are saying above. First, "the only thing that could be organized better was to get a party going", I mean that's kind of key and fundamental to online playing no?? More importantly though is that you do what everyone else here does, in that you pick one of your favorite games to use as an example of how psn is ok. Now, what if I don't like U2 and never bought it? Or R2 lets say as well? Experiences on one game are irrelevant because they potentially mean nothing to millions of people out there whose games that they play are still stuck in the cretaceous period with regards to online play and support. On Xblive it's a non issue, every game works the same and they all have the same great feature set, and you can demo them to see if you like them. While it may be thrilling that someone has fun in their game of choice and that the only "minor" issue is getting a party going, but all that does is point out how far behind psn really is in this now 5 year old generation.

First of all, getting a party going was a minor issue in UC2, since invites sometimes would not work, but they'd work most of the time. I'm willing to put up with 5 minutes of that in order to get out of paying for multiplayer. You are right that it's not consistent across all games, but there are few games worth playing multiplayer to me anyways.

I'll give you an example, I played GOW3 for 10-12 hours, while I played Borderlands for about 30-35, with 5 of that being online, which actually worked fine with voice chat for me, but I had finished the campaign, and bored of the game by then. To me, those 10-12 GOW3 hours are worth hundreds of Borderlands hours, because it was a better quality, bigger budget, more cinematic game. Each hour was of higher quality.

You rave about XBL, because multiplayer gaming is a big part of your life. For me, every game has to stand up on its single player merits before online is even considered. For example, I can't understand how people like L4D games on 360 with terrible graphics, camp story, and generic gameplay over UC2.

However, even 360 owners play more offline games than online. Offline gaming is very important and PS3 does just fine with the occasional online gaming, which is exactly in line with my gaming habits. I even sign out of PSN from time to time so people won't contact me and ask me to join their games when I'm playing my own game offline, and I sure as hell don't want to talk to them when I'm playing my own game, so why should I care about these extra XBL features?

I always wonder this when I see ps3 folk posting. How bizarre it must be to worry if your game will work right and play right. Time and time again they huddle around the forums wondering if online will be descent.

Before even worrying about online play, you already have to worry about whether the game you're getting is even good, and that's true for any system. On the PS3, the online is a part of that. Killzone 2 didn't have a proper lobby system for online, yet it was still an excellent game, still preferable to many online experiences I've seen.

People spent $600 on their ps3's. another $150 to replace the hdd, $100+ on steering controls, thousands on tv's, hundreds on games, etc, the hobby costs a lot of money.

PS3 HDD's don't cost $150 like the MS ones. MS are experts at ripping you off when it comes to the Xbox division. I mean wifi adapter for $99 in 2005 through first half of 2010? Every other console and handheld of this generation had it from the start.
All the other costs (TV's games, controllers, etc.) are the same for any console.

They are not charging for p2p connections, they are charging for a complete and consistent online service.

Then why won't they make p2p matchmaking free, and charge for invites, cross game chat, etc? Some people just want to get online and play occasionally. The reason they won't make it free, is because they know a lot of XBL memberships would get canceled right away.

For example the ME2 demo, I didn't even know there was one until I read about it here because it got lost amongst all manner of other useless content shown in the what's new section so I missed it.

PSN has a lot of content, and actually I find the indie games superior to XBL games, which are mostly 80s arcade games or flash games you can play free on your browser that are being sold for a buck or two, which are worthless to me.

However, finding that content inside PSN is very difficult, you're 100% right on that.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If we want to discuss the need for voice chat in games like God of War 3 or Heavy Rain...

That's a no brainer. I certainly didn't read "compulsory voice chat" as meaning outside of sensible multiplayer application and forcing devs to include it in single player games!

Edit:

No, Shifty Geezer says it has to be a feature of all games.

Reality check. I said:

VC is essential for any cooperative game to be fun and seamless.

Did I say all games? For someone who's complaining so much about the lack of quality of discussion on this board at the moment, how's about you actually follow the debate accurately.

It's not as if the universe hasn't produced a multitude of ways for people to converse while on opposite ends of the earth. To say that's a necessity for a video game console IS console bias. It's an emotional rather than rational argument.

It's not bias based on console preference. My opinions regards voice chat don't stem from an affiliation with PS3 such that I'd be of a different opinion if I played Wii. It's also not emotional but a logical consideration of convenience and practicalities, for which most human inventions are, and very, very few are actually necessary. I can voice chat in Dead Nations and Alien Breed using skype and a laptop. This adds some 30-40 watts of power consumption just to chat, which isn't needed if the console were to handle that. It also requires me to have headphones which interferes with the game sound, and Skype isn't great quality. I can't use any other system. Using the phone would tie up the household phone line, so isn't practical. Mobiles have limits and I don't have a mobile anyway.

Thus wanting my hardware that is emminently capable of providing decent voice chat to provide decent voice chat in all multiplayer games, where communication plays a noteworthy part of the game experience and enjoyment, does not seem so irrational to me. The lack of effort by Sony to improve the PSN service might well be turning off some people from trying it, and so growth of accounts isn't as strong as it could be (trying to keep this on topic!).

 

[Scott_Arm]

So the argument is now becoming the PS3 has better games, requires fewer and cheaper accessories, and multiplayer is overrated, so PSN's flaws are irrelevant especially because it is free. I'm not sure what that has to do with PSN being profitable or having revenues about 1/3 the size of Xbox Live's.

People are more willing to pay for Live and are more willing to pay for content on Live. I'm curious to know why. It's all guessing. Maybe it's as simple as it being harder to find content on PSN, where Live is more in-your-face about what is new and available. Maybe people play less multiplayer games on PS3 and the difference is fewer sales for multiplayer add-ons for games like COD. Maybe the difference is feature set. I really don't know, but they're all interesting ideas. Maybe there are other stories out there about purchasing habits, success of DLC etc that could enlighten us. I think it's all of the above, but there could be some other interesting Live successes that PSN hasn't taken advantage of yet.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So the argument is now becoming the PS3 has better games, requires fewer and cheaper accessories, and multiplayer is overrated, so PSN's flaws are irrelevant especially because it is free. I'm not sure what that has to do with PSN being profitable or having revenues about 1/3 the size of Xbox Live's.

Neither have I, and a clean up crew will need to be brought in if following posts can't distinguish between PSN vs. Live! features, and comparable profitabiltiy of different services.

Your post provides on-topic starting points.

 

[corduroygt]

So the argument is now becoming the PS3 has better games, requires fewer and cheaper accessories, and multiplayer is overrated, so PSN's flaws are irrelevant especially because it is free. I'm not sure what that has to do with PSN being profitable or having revenues about 1/3 the size of Xbox Live's.

People are more willing to pay for Live and are more willing to pay for content on Live. I'm curious to know why.

First of all, your numbers are a bit wrong. 36B Yen is about 400M USD going by last year's exchange rates, and 434M if you use today's, but we'll use the 400M number, since this amount was for FY2009 (according to the Google translation of the japanese article), and it's expected to double for FY2010, which will end in March 2011.

There was a much larger user base disparity in FY2009, which is from April 2009 to March 2010, where there was no PS3 slim for the first half of that year, and shortages for the second half.

400M in PSN sales during that period is nothing to scoff at IMO. MS's $1B number for last year is roughly divided 50/50 between subscriptions and purchases, so MS did $500M of sales. 400M vs. 500M is actually better than the average install base ratio during that time, so I don't see how people are buying less content from PSN. It also does not help that a lot of PS3's are sold to countries where the online store is much more sparse compared to the US store.

 

[joker454]

Reply to OT post removed

So the argument is now becoming the PS3 has better games, requires fewer and cheaper accessories, and multiplayer is overrated, so PSN's flaws are irrelevant especially because it is free. I'm not sure what that has to do with PSN being profitable or having revenues about 1/3 the size of Xbox Live's.

People are more willing to pay for Live and are more willing to pay for content on Live. I'm curious to know why.

I think a lot of it has to do with psn just being a bad experience. If a service is bad, then one won't spend much time (and conversely money) on it. I don't use psn anymore, basically I gave up on it for this gen. So in my case it has no chance of ever generating more money from me than Live. I have many friends on psn, but few of them use it for psn, they stick with Live. Hence likewise as with me, psn is very unlikely to extract money from them. If you can't get people to get immersed in your service, then you can't get them to give you their money. Throw in obstacles like poor ui, etc, and it becomes even less likely to get money from them. I really think that is the crux of the problem. Having used both extensively, it becomes really obvious that it is so much easier to part with money on live than it is on psn.

 

[dobwal]

First of all, your numbers are a bit wrong. 36B Yen is about 400M USD going by last year's exchange rates, and 434M if you use today's, but we'll use the 400M number, since this amount was for FY2009 (according to the Google translation of the japanese article), and it's expected to double for FY2010, which will end in March 2011.

There was a much larger user base disparity in FY2009, which is from April 2009 to March 2010, where there was no PS3 slim for the first half of that year, and shortages for the second half.

400M in PSN sales during that period is nothing to scoff at IMO. MS's $1B number for last year is roughly divided 50/50 between subscriptions and purchases, so MS did $500M of sales. 400M vs. 500M is actually better than the average install base ratio during that time, so I don't see how people are buying less content from PSN. It also does not help that a lot of PS3's are sold to countries where the online store is much more sparse compared to the US store.

While the vast majority of Xbox Live revenue is generated by the 360, you cannot say that for the PSN and the PS3. PSN is accessible to 100 million+ devices or have you forgot about the PSP.

PSN only requires $4 of revenue per PSP/PSN on average to generate $400 million while xbox live needs to generate $22 per 360 on average to produce $1 billion regardless whether its content or subscription (the primary motivator for going gold is getting access to the multiplayer content of 360 games). I guess you can add Zune figures into those numbers but I don't know Zunes sales figures or if true, how much of Zune's marketplace revenue is counted as Xbox Live revenue.

To put into other terms, xbox live only has 25 million subscribers be they silver or gold, while PSN has 60 million subscribers. Xbox live generates about $40 per subscriber while PSN generates $6.70 per subscriber.

 

[jonabbey]

I wonder if Sony has any major plans to improve the PSN experience this gen on PS3. I don't see how they can try go turn back the clock and incorporate a Live-like multiplayer experience given all of the existing games which would have no awareness of a system-wide party system, etc.

They could roll something out for new games, like they rolled out trophies, but they'd have a hard time charging for it without spoiling the message they've been sticking to so far.

Not that that would be a new experience for them ("rumble is so last-gen!") this generation.