Sony charging editors for PSN?

[betan]

Actually yes, end users do pay for advertising. If you buy ANYTHING from ANY company that advertises, you've just paid for watching their advertisement. Oh and the fun thing is that even if you don't watch an advert you helped pay for it.

Can you repeat your post after replacing "end user" with potential customer (not the customer of the advertised product)? If you bother to reread his post, I believe you will notice what kind of end user he was talking about.

If not, just know that I'm not disagreeing with you, thus we have nothing to discuss based on your post.

 

[eastmen]

xbox live is also faster here in jersey. On a fios connection my 360 is faster. My ps3 is also connected with an ethernet cable so i doubt its that. Downloading firmwares take forever.

 

[betan]

xbox live is also faster here in jersey. On a fios connection my 360 is faster. My ps3 is also connected with an ethernet cable so i doubt its that. Downloading firmwares take forever.

Interesting, considering I often see 16 Mb/s from PSN in NJ. Puzzling stuff.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Let me swipe a quote from the article to create an example of consequence:

"For instance, were the 4 million Resident Evil 5 demos announced last week split evenly between Xbox Live and PSN users, Capcom would have been charged more than $300,000 for distributing the 942MB download. "

I'll go with those numbers. Now look at it from the publishers point of view. They put out dozens of games every year, and for every 10 game demos they put on PS3 it may cost them 3 million dollars. When you look at a number like that in terms of say Killzone 2 budget, then it seems like a paltry figure. But in reality, you can develop an entirely new Wii game for that amount of money. Or, you can port two existing good candidate games to the Wii. Now if I'm sitting in a board room someplace having a meeting on costs, I would have to ask, why not skip 10 demos and/or dlc on the PS3 and try using that money to crack the Wii market?

If your a publisher producing 10 Resident Evil 5 level games a year I imagine you aren't quibbling over the tiny fraction of what was probably a huge marketing budget you spent on bandwidth, nor are you fretting over the Wii shovelware you could have risked that cash on. So lets not pretend every game is RE5 and lets not pretend $300K is not an exceptionally good deal to get your game in front of 4 million interested customers. The truth is bandwidth costs are in all likelihood going to be proportional to your over all budget and your over all success. There's no reason for it not to be accounted for in existing marketing expenditures, especially considering the often ludicrous lengths publisher will go to generate interest and the alternate revenue streams like in game advertising being dreamt up. I'm sure you could probably get Mountain Dew or Doritos or any number of companies to sponsor a demo if it means millions of eyes on "Pizza Hut Presents: An Early Look at Madden 2010!"

 

[Dominik D]

FYI the pricing structure is very similar to what other vendors are offering.

http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/#pricing

So calling it highway robbery etc is misinformed.

Amazon is less expensive than PSN from 13th TB. For a 1GB demo that's 13k downloads. To put it into perspective: 2mln of ~940MB RE5 demo downloads would cost $320k on PSN and (if my calculations are correct) $121k on Amazon. Difference is $200k which is around the salary+bonus+assets for entry level dev for 2 years. So joker wasn't joking that this cost can be offset by pulling dev(s) from the PS3 version of the game.

 

[ShadowRunner]

Amazon is less expensive than PSN from 13th TB. For a 1GB demo that's 13k downloads. To put it into perspective: 2mln of ~940MB RE5 demo downloads would cost $320k on PSN and (if my calculations are correct) $121k on Amazon. Difference is $200k which is around the salary+bonus+assets for entry level dev for 2 years. So joker wasn't joking that this cost can be offset by pulling dev(s) from the PS3 version of the game.

Why not pull devs from the 360 version? If devs really cant afford the 320k and must ofset it by making cuts elsewere you would make cuts where it makes sense, and imo removing devs from the version is already harder to develop for probably isnt the best place to make those cuts.

 

[tirminyl]

Amazon is less expensive than PSN from 13th TB. For a 1GB demo that's 13k downloads. To put it into perspective: 2mln of ~940MB RE5 demo downloads would cost $320k on PSN and (if my calculations are correct) $121k on Amazon. Difference is $200k which is around the salary+bonus+assets for entry level dev for 2 years. So joker wasn't joking that this cost can be offset by pulling dev(s) from the PS3 version of the game.

Maybe I am tired but that doesn't seem right. Did you base the whole 2mln transactions at $0.060/gb? Did I read Amazons pricing wrong because from what I see after each size requirement is hit, the pricing goes down. Did you use the Amazon calculator or view some of their samples? http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

 

[tirminyl]

Why not pull devs from the 360 version? If devs really cant afford the 320k and must ofset it by making cuts elsewere you would make cuts where it makes sense, and imo removing devs from the version is already harder to develop for probably isnt the best place to make those cuts.

Maybe I am missing something but why can't they budget for it in their marketing campaign. They have already budgeted to make a demo, why not include the estimated costs for bandwidth use?

 

[ShadowRunner]

Maybe I am missing something but why can't they budget for it in their marketing campaign. They have already budgeted to make a demo, why not include the estimated costs for bandwidth use?

I agree. The point i was making is that the cost, however much it may be, would be dealt with within the budget of the project as a whole not by laying off ps3 devs, it doesnt make any sense.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

*deleted*

 

[Dominik D]

Why not pull devs from the 360 version? If devs really cant afford the 320k and must ofset it by making cuts elsewere you would make cuts where it makes sense, and imo removing devs from the version is already harder to develop for probably isnt the best place to make those cuts.

Removing devs from the version harder to develop may not be the right decision, sure. But demo is ultimately extra development cost and demo for a given platform is an extra dev cost for this platform. Perhaps extra money put on 360 version or Wii port will generate more money per dolar spent than actually releasing polished PS3 version? I know it's a sad assumption but we're not talking about preferences but money.

Because it is yet again a problem of return of investment. If you're running a business you have to be able to justify money spent. If you're going to spend more money on PS3 version of a game, there has to be a tangible proof that this extra money will pay off.

So if you pull devs from either version of the game, you have to be able to offset money lost on (potentially) less polished game with that other thing you spend money on. Does the demo provide extra sales that justify demo development and publishing?

I also find it hard to understand why do people think that extra marketing cash will help. Marketing can most likely generate more sales with that "demo money" in other ways. The Army of Two is an excellent example of mediocre game that sold well thanks to well targeted advertising.

Any and every decision is being made per-project, obviously, and there's no one-size-fits-them-all answer to what's right. The fact of the matter is that releasing demo (and other content) on PS3 got more expensive and those money have to come from somewhere. So if you are going to pay for PS3 demo SKU development, testing, cert and bandwidth, you better be sure that demo generates extra sales that cover the cost.

Also I will take joker's word for it - if he suggested such a possibility, it's probably considered (at least) an option in the industry (or rather: his company). Unlike you and me he's not just some random dude from the Internet arguing about stuff that we have never worked on.

I hope I answered your question.

Maybe I am tired but that doesn't seem right. Did you base the whole 2mln transactions at $0.060/gb? Did I read Amazons pricing wrong because from what I see after each size requirement is hit, the pricing goes down. Did you use the Amazon calculator or view some of their samples? http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

I may be mistaken, sure thing. I've been in the past. Let's look at Amazon's pricing, shall we?
http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/#pricing
$0.170 per GB – first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.120 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out

Sony asks for $0.160 per GB. When does Amazon get cheaper?

0.16 * x = 0.17 * 10 + ((x - 10) * 0.12) // both sides *100
16x = 170 + 12x + 120
4x = 50
x = 12.5

So once you transfer 12.5TB of data, Amazon starts being less expensive. RE5 demo is ~0.93GB. Somewhere around 13400 downloads Amazon gets less expensive then. With simple Excel formulas and wild approximation of equal amount of demos downloaded from PSN and XBLM (2mln each) I came up with a number which reflects price of 1 860 000GB of bandwidth (to validate this number: 2mln downloads around 1GB each is 2mln GB).

I don't have that Excel spreadsheet anymore but I'll recalculate it again for you. Again from http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/#pricing
$0.170 per GB – first 10 TB
$0.120 per GB – next 40 TB
$0.100 per GB – next 100 TB
$0.090 per GB – next 100 TB
$0.080 per GB – next 250 TB
$0.070 per GB – next 250 TB
$0.060 per GB – next 250 TB
$0.050 per GB – over 1,000 TB

Which means:

$170 per TB – first 10 TB
$120 per TB – next 40 TB
$100 per TB – next 100 TB
$90 per TB – next 100 TB
$80 per TB – next 250 TB
$70 per TB – next 250 TB
$60 per TB – next 250 TB
$50 per TB – over 1,000 TB

1 860 000GB = 1860TB
1860TB = 10 + 40 + 100 + 100 + 250 + 250 + 250 + 860

$170*10 + $120*40 + $100*100 + $90*100 + $80*250 + $70*250 + $60*250 + $50*860 = $121000
http://www.google.com/search?client...250+++50*860&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

at the same time 1860TB on PSN is:
1860*$160 = $297600

Oh, so I was mistaken after all. Not $320k but $298k. It's still $187k difference which is in the ballpark for the numbers previously provided.

If I'm mistaken somewhere, please let me know. I'm not a huge fan of counting money. :/

 

[-tkf-]

And especially when one of those results corroborate me. I think you're letting your knee-jerk defense of all things Sony get in your way, here.

I rarely have issues with the PSN download speed, if any it would be a peak hours where someone releases a new long awaited demo, but i can´t even mention an example

I think it´s pretty clear that some have them, more than often those that complain happen to have a 360 as well. Maybe the Live network just is so magnificent fast that it makes the PSN seem slow. Lucky me i live in the dark ages without a 360 so i don´t know the speeds i am missing.

Or maybe it really just is a pr user based experience, search for slow downloads on google and you will see many PS3 and XBOX users complaining.

 

[RobertR1]

I rarely have issues with the PSN download speed, if any it would be a peak hours where someone releases a new long awaited demo, but i can´t even mention an example

I think it´s pretty clear that some have them, more than often those that complain happen to have a 360 as well. Maybe the Live network just is so magnificent fast that it makes the PSN seem slow. Lucky me i live in the dark ages without a 360 so i don´t know the speeds i am missing.

Or maybe it really just is a pr user based experience, search for slow downloads on google and you will see many PS3 and XBOX users complaining.

Can we get a proper Google Trends on this?

 

[-tkf-]

Can we get a proper Google Trends on this?

Are you mocking me or dailytech because i posted a story about how the 360 is still not a reliable piece of hardware?

 

[inefficient]

I take offense to being told I'm "wrong" when I've used these consoles and downloaded many things from both services over several years. Especially when you link to results from another country. And especially when one of those results corroborate me. I think you're letting your knee-jerk defense of all things Sony get in your way, here.

If you don't want to be called out for being wrong, you should not make sweeping generalizations like "PSN is not a first-rate content provider".

If I'm mistaken somewhere, please let me know. I'm not a huge fan of counting money. :/

I wouldn't read too much into the leak. Without seeing the full contract it's hard to make a direct comparison. I was just trying to show that is not unheard of to charge $0.16 per GB. I'm sure the full agreement has multiple tiers and special clauses not yet revealed that make pricing competitive with any other solution provider.

 

[Asher]

If you don't want to be called out for being wrong, you should not make sweeping generalizations like "PSN is not a first-rate content provider".

If it is significantly slower than its competitor in some of the largest gaming markets in the world, then it is not a first-rate content provider.

I wouldn't be surprised if, here on the east coast of Canada, I'd be downloading from the PSN servers in the Bay Area and Microsoft had a east-coast Canada centre.

 

[Crossbar]

If it is significantly slower than its competitor in some of the largest gaming markets in the world, then it is not a first-rate content provider.

I wouldn't be surprised if, here on the east coast of Canada, I'd be downloading from the PSN servers in the Bay Area and Microsoft had a east-coast Canada centre.

Seattle is pretty close you know.

 

[eastmen]

Interesting, considering I often see 16 Mb/s from PSN in NJ. Puzzling stuff.

where in jersey , i'm in bergen country specificly HO-HO-KUS. I work 8-4 so I'm normaly not on till after 6pm in the evening

 

[obonicus]

If it is significantly slower than its competitor in some of the largest gaming markets in the world, then it is not a first-rate content provider.

How so? All you've described is Canada.

 

[tirminyl]

Doesn't Microsoft and Sony use the same CDN? It will take me forever to find but I thought I remember reading that they both used the same company. Maybe that was something else.