After napping for its entire lifecycle, PSN got out of bed last month, going from almost nothing to a near-40% adoption rate in Europe. MCVUK is reporting that this turn of events comes as a surprise not just to the gaming public, but to Sony too. Seriously! Check this out.
“One thing that has surprised us is in the Network purchases and the general level of interest that has been shown around the Network business,” said SCEE president and CEO David Reeves. “We’ve gone from zero to almost double-digit millions in terms of what people have purchased in euros.”
It’s interesting how closely this turn of events for PSN follows the recent “not outage” with Xbox Live. I wonder how many dual-console owners got sick of getting kicked out of CoD4 and decided to try moving their ethernet cable over to their Blu-ray player.
How long do you think they are going to be able to keep PSN a “free” service, if usage in the U.S. were to skyrocket like this. It seems likely to me. Do you think a successful FREE PSN puts any pressure on Microsoft to notch down the subscription charges for XBL? Or is it going to swing the other way and force Sony to find ways of financing their apparently growing online product?
When my kids won’t eat their dinner I wrap it up and save it for them. The next time they say they’re hungry, out comes their abandoned meal that they refused to take a bite of. Maybe that’s what has finally happened with the PSN. Maybe gamers finally got hungry enough. Pardon the unavoidable Green Eggs and Ham reference… “Try them and you may I say”
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I get the feeling MS may be pressured into cutting their prices. You’ll not find a lot of people charging to access dedicated servers they run for PC gaming, plus aren’t Sony using a lot of PS3s as servers themselves (in Warhawk at least), hence saving them money in buying third-party servers and not having to charge for the PSN?
That said, PSN downloads are a ripoff (in the UK at least, where we can be charged more than double the US, for half the content).
so, now come the games, right?
@Youlikeyams
Well thats always been like this.. games on discs are nearly twice the price america gets.. even xbox 360 games (not sure bout wii games)
and even hardware is nearly twice the price that gets paid in the US.. i mean the PS3 launch price was £425 which was more than 1.5 times the price of US and twice the price of the Japan price.. i think the xbox 360 is also like this.. even now the PS3 in uk is more than the PS3’s in the US/Japan
MS will NEVER not charge for Live -they’re too greedy, and most people will just pay the fee anyway -even if they do complain about it.
The more likely scenario is Sony charging for the PSN. I would pay a certain amount if they stepped it up to make it worth my $$
Sony isnt going to charge, they are going to to create a city esk theme for home and allow companies to create virtual billboards and buy space in home. Sony will make most $$$ off advertising then actual players.
hmmm?
Actually so far Sony has managed to keep their network free and that is commendable. However the question remains, Will they be able to keep this approach as more games are added to their library?. Will it be mandatory for all games to have some sort of network connection? What would be the cost in the long run and will they be able to justify it? Will they keep their system free but force their community through a series of networks ads in order to keep thier system free?
The connection issues on Live specially on COD4 are a pain and i know quite a few players that have made a leap to the PSN but out of all of those maybe one has moved on permanently. Most are just waiting for Live to get fixed.
Sony have always said they will never charge for the PSN, they re-coup the losses in other ways, via the downloads
Razorwing most game servers are provided by the game publishers themselves eg. EA. So it dosnt really mean the more games the more servers Sony need.
And when new games come out with online play, many games will start to become inactive and much less players will be playing and soon servers shut down
Personally, I hope Sony never charges for online play. An XBL gold membership is only $50 a year, but that is practically another game. Plus, I enjoy playing Warhawk online for free.
I cant see Sony charging us to go online. The only thing I can see hapening is Microsoft eventually dropping Live charges. Im not saying this will happen but it could possibly. In a few months (summer) they could drop it giving a months notice to all Live users. Then again theres only a small chance of that happening Bill dosnt want to stop all this money from coming into his bank account.
I have a xbox 360 and i was frustrated during the recent live outage. The recent live outage simply woke me up. I no longer need my LIVE fix everyday like i once did. I just bought a PS3 last week with some gift cards, mainly for the blue-ray. Although i havent bought any games yet(waiting for the exclusives, only with good reviews) i have found myself fooling around in PSN. I must say LIVE is 100 times better than PSN but its free. I guess i wanted to see what the darkside had to offer. I believe the playstation buzz will quiet down shorty because ultimately 360, its games, and network service is still better.
I have an xbox 360 with live and a ps3
the psn network is more than enough to game on, the store is fine. (though I have to use my old left over razor copperhead mouse to browse it since they use HTML).
ni fact I in someways like it better than xbox live since it is very close to PC network games.
very open network to uses servers from anything and let you port it over, 99% of the reason why you cant play games like phantasy star with the pc and ps2 people is because of Xbox closed network on psn this policy is non- you can network with anything you want to.
as for there store content they have some good stuff it’s growing.