When I was a kid, especially on long vacations, I would read comic books.  Yeah, yeah… insert old guy jokes here… I’d read Richie Rich, or whatever super hero comic the gas station rack had at each stop (I would pretty much read anything I could get my hands on, but with my parents buying them… I got a lot more Richie Rich than Green Lantern, or Captain America.)

At some point, I stopped reading comics completely.  As an adult, I’ve tried to start again but I felt like an outsider not knowing which ones to buy and worse, I’d hate actually stumbling across a comic book only to realize it was issue 5 of 12 in the story arc.  According to rumors, Sony may be moving toward a plan that could actually bring me back to comic books again after all these years… no word on Richie Rich though.

Watch Sony’s video after the break…

According to Joystiq’s anonymous tipster, Sony sent this video and a survey about pricing out to gauge community response.   I have to admit that after watching that video, I wanted to know how much something like that would cost.  I’m probably more guilty than the next guy of using my PSP for non-gaming purposes more than actual gaming so having one more use for it wouldn’t bother me in the least.

I do have to ask though, what does a proposed plan like this mean to the collectible comic book industry?  I mean there is clearly going to be a core group of purists that consider comics  to be comics only in their tried and true physical form, but if something like this caught on, could it cannibalize the industry a bit?  I have to think there are more casual people out there than me that would mainly be interested in the stories as opposed to collecting as an investment.  Do you think the value of physical comics would increase or decrease if all of the sudden entire series of comics were available digitally (and instantly) to anyone with a PSP?

The survey had to do with pricing (both ala carte and subscription based.)  What would be a reasonable price for you?  I picked up a couple comic books for a friend’s son that underwent an appendectomy recently and was surprised how spendy they’d gotten.  If I were to read 10-12 comics per month, a service like this would be a savings even at $30-$40/month but that price seems ridiculous even if it was for unlimited downloads.

Watch the video before you respond, the Auto-Flow feature looks pretty sweet.  While I’m sure it’s wishful thinking, the video proposes they’ll have thousands of comics including rare classics.  Do you think this is something worth Sony pursuing or is this simply another in the long list of things people would prefer they drop in lieu of working on, well, games?

Tweet This Post