Unwanted burden: Sony charging publishers DLC fee

It probably won’t be too much of a stretch to hypothesize that Sony will be alienating not only the consumers (because of their rigid stance against price cuts for the PS3), but also the publishers, with their quiet implementation of the PlayStation Network Bandwidth Fee. Unbeknownst to probably most of the millions of PSN users out there, the free downloadable content they are enjoying are not really free, and in fact come with a price.

It probably won’t be too much of a stretch to hypothesize that Sony will be alienating not only the consumers (because of their rigid stance against price cuts for the PS3), but also the publishers, with their quiet implementation of the PlayStation Network Bandwidth Fee.

Unbeknownst to probably most of the millions of PSN users out there, the free downloadable content they are enjoying are not really free, and in fact come with a price – but at the expense of the publishers. 16 cents is the price that the publishers have to pay for very Gigabyte of content downloaded from the PSN.

16 cents… that’s not much, right? Wrong. Imagine a demo that is sized at exactly 1GB, downloaded one million times. That would amount to an added US$ 160,000 cost to the publisher, and understandably, they’re not all too happy about it.

 
Sony: Erm, you’ve come for the cocktails, yes?

Said an unnamed publisher source to MTV Multiplayer,

It definitely makes us think about how we view the distribution of content related to our games when it is free for us to do it on the web, on Xbox Live, or any other way – including broadcast – than on Sony’s platform. It’s a new thing we have to budget. It’s not cool. It sucks.

Ah, the good ol’ XBL. Well actually, it’s not like XBL is absolutely free as well. On their side of the fence, it is the consumers who do pay up for the expenses via the US$ 50 annual membership fee for XBL Gold. So one can easily look at this as Sony just tapping another resource to foot the bandwidth bills.

The downside of Sony’s strategy, however, is that it may lead to deter publishers from upping the ante in terms of DLC. We all have seen how far from peachy the economy has been for everyone in general, publishing houses very much included. An added cost will surely be another factor for them to think twice before getting that content up on the PSN.

It sure is not helping, either, that Microsoft is getting all these timed-exclusives on their system. There’s no definite statement about it, but it would be safe to surmise that the publishers feel a tad bit more welcomed on the XBL because they aren’t expected to carry the additional burden of paying for bandwidth costs. Sure, the onus have been placed upon the consumer, but US$ 50 a year is still a small price to pay for DLC as opposed to US$ 160,000, right?

And although publishers may fully well expect that they will be paying for something extra, another nerve-wracking thing is that they are not up to date as to what the DL costs will rack up to. So essentially, it becomes a “Surprise! The good news is that your DLC has been downloaded a million times on the Store! Oh, and you’re paying US$ 160,000 for that too” scenario. I don’t know about you, but inasmuch as I love surprises, I absolutely hate the ones that come from my bill statements.

As succinctly described by a publishing source who has worked with Sony the past year, “It’s like leaving your phone off the hook for a long distance call. The meter is still running.”

For Sony’s end of the issue, here’s what their spokesperson had to say on the probability that the October 1, 2008 policy will scare off publishers from putting in their content on the Store:

Appreciate the opportunity to jump in here, but we respect the confidentiality of our business agreements with our publishing partners. Of course we work closely with them to bring their amazing content to our growing audience, and we are focused on ensuring we, and our publishing partners, have a viable platform for digital distribution. We foresee no change in the high quality or quantity of demos and games available on PSN.

It’s probably too early to spot how adverse the effects of this policy will be, if at all. But the next time Microsoft announces another (timed) exclusive for the XBL, I guess it won’t come off as too much a surprise now to you guys.

Oh, Sony. But sometimes you make it soooooo hard for us to love you.

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• Sony’s Steinberg: Killzone 2 will make 360 owners try PS3, 09 is definitely PS3’s year
• Rumor: PSP getting a price cut too?
• New PS3 SKU spotted bundled with Motorstorm, Resistance – no price cut

Via MTV Multiplayer