Well I told you guys earlier after my onslaught of negative attacks on Sony that I would post some information in a more positive light. That information seemed to come at no better time than earlier today, while some of the information is speculation much of it is regarding statements made by Ken Kutaragi himself.
“We don’t charge for the basic functions of the network like matching services. Things like that are taken for granted on a PC, aren’t they? There’s the feeling of why a game console gets to charge for a service that’s normal on a PC. So, we just made the basic services available, and based our business on the contents,” he said.
Sony is expected to use the online support for a distribution program as well, much like an itunes service except on your console. I guess this e-distribution is comparable to Microsoft’s Market Place but hopefully they don’t sell useless garbage like much of the Xbox 360 Market Place creations.
Whether or not this will be used for Arcade games, Expansion Packs, or even movies is still currently unclear, but expect Sony to be pulling all their punches, because at $600 USD, they better damn well deliver the coolest service ever.
via: Arstechnica
June 14th, 2006 at 10:00 am
It leaves some concern for me.
1) Does this mean they won’t charge for online games? His wording is vague in that regard and Sony has yet to make a decisive comment on that. I mean, MS basically claimed a free version of Live, but then it was discovered that it included everything but game play.
2) If it is free, I’m concerned it will be just as open ended as it was on PS2. The PS2’s general online support was pretty awful in quite a few ways.
I suppose we’ll see. I’ll try to be optimistic about that. In any case, I hope that the “marketplace” they showed at E3 is substantially different in the final product… what a cluttered mess that was lol.
June 14th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
well thats why a lot of people fear it’s success, it will be free. All basic functions of pc online gaming is free, as well as things like friends and messenging. So they are not just giving us the bare bones like in the ps2. But do expect them to be selling something.