Pay for Watching Play
[Edit: Gah! Tosh put up a post about this while I was editing this one! Ah well, I’ll leave this here anyway. See Tosh’s post below for the video preview.]
When I first saw the title of this new offering from Sony, I thought it was a cool name. Qore. With that weird spell-a-thing that seems to be so popular with the young folk these days. At first I thought it was a website, and then I realized that it’s not a website at all, but a video show. Produce in HD at that. And that we’re gonna have to pay for it in order to watch it. Which I thought was odd because it sounds like the show is going to be a great big Sony PlayStation commercial. Don’t advertisers usually pay to have their commercials aired, not the other way around?
At $2.99 per episode, each episode better be at least an hour long. Man that’s steep.
I have a feeling that it will not be an hour long, and that it will not be worth the three bucks. But that’s me. Am I the only one that thinks this is rip off?
(after 3 weeks... but for 23.5€ I cannot remotely complain!)
So merry Christmas!
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:01 am
Yep, it is a rip off. It should be completely free. Is this the first step in Sony eventually charging for the PSN as a whole?
They’d better not.
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:23 am
FAIL.
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:24 am
if you wanna read the official playstation magazine you have to buy it too. so whats the big deal ?
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:33 am
It’s about value for the money. I pay $10 for a movie, and I’m quite entertained for two hours. So $3 should get me a very entertaining experience for 36 minutes. But it’s not on the big screen with big sound, so I expect either more entertainment or a cheaper price. (Substitute “information” or “gaming news” for “entertainment” in this case.)
Or take the PSM magazine. It costs twice as much, but surely you can spend much more than 36 minutes reading the magazine.
It’s all about discretionary income and where it’s best spent. And $3 for an episode that’ll likely run less than an hour doesn’t do it for me, especially considering that much of the information will probably be available on the web as well.
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:35 am
It’ll probably just be boring marketing stuff anyway.
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:47 am
yeah this stinks of rip off. especially when you know it’ll get ripped and put online. keep PSN free sony.
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:18 am
A for-pay online zine? There’s tons of free gaming coverage on the web.
It’s simply not realistic to charge the end-user money for media content like this. We shall see…
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:39 am
It should cost 6 pounds in UK, and 10 euros in the rest of Europe, because Europeans like Sony and US dollar is a more valuable currency (!).
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:52 am
I don’t agree with them charging for it, but I also don’t see it as a rip-off since no-one is forcing you to buy it.
IF it’s made available via the UK store, I may buy the first one to see what it’s like, and if it really offers anything worth paying for.
I don’t like this attitude many people have that EVERYTHING should be free. The PSN is free, and works extremely well. Updates are free, and the store contains a lot of free stuff. Yet people still moan about “we should have this, Live has had it for ages.” Well, yes, but Live is a paid-for service - at least, you have to pay if you want to get anything remotely useful from it.
There’s only so much Sony - or any company for that matter - can do to add value to a service while keeping it free. Some things you just have to pay for. At least Sony are giving you the OPTION.
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:23 am
I dunno what Sony wants to do with this…
Most websites on the internet are usually faster at pointing out news than Sonys blog themselves AND they are free…
And, those videos are sure to hit the internet minutes after launch, as copying them to the PC (be it via S-Video or whatever if it is DRMd) is as easy as pie.
At 3€ (or Dollars for now) an episode, this really is pushing it. An hourly episode each week might temp me to pay the yearly price as of now (i.e. quadruple the episodes!).
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:25 am
I agree with Paranoimia…and DavidBoring…
No one is forcing you to buy this. It’s just another “something” that you may or may not want. But if you’re interested, then they want to charge you a small fee for the time it took to assemble the piece. We can all vote with our wallets. If it turns out that no one wants to pay $2.99 for such content, then I imagine they’ll be forced to either make it free, or not have it at all. We all have CHOICE.
On a side note, I imagine this is sort of a response to XBL offering episodes of “G4: Attack of the Show” or “X-Play”. (which leads me to wonder how those shows can not be biased towards M$, if they are being put on XBL?)
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:28 am
I’m not saying we don’t have a choice or that we can’t vote with our wallets.
I’m saying that I think that this is a rip-off.
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:50 am
It’s not a question of fairness. Sure, it’s fair to charge whatever they want. It’s just unrealistic. Consumers don’t want to pay money for this kind of thing. Producers need to develop more realistic revnue streams or their products will flop. Look at Firefox or Java: those are amazing products with tons of brain hours and dollars behind them, but charging the end user even a single penny would be a huge mistake.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Call me crazy but it doesn’t really bother me.
I doubt I’ll get many but I’m pretty damn sure getting Thursdays and the LBP releases. Thursdays mainly to see how ‘exclusive’ the info is and the SoCOM beta invite. Hopefully the ‘interactive’ features are more then just the crap we’re seen before.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Been reading up on Qore and it seems like Thursday we can expect in the first edition…
* Calling All Cars [Full Game] (for annual subscribers)
* Hidden “Easter Eggs”: Mini-game
* Incredible Hulk exclusive 6-minute trailer
* Secret Agent Clank exclusive preview
* SOCOM: Confrontation upcoming beta invitation
* SOCOM: Confrontatio theme, interviews, and videos
* Star Wars: The Force Unleashed exclusive pages from the graphic novel
* … and more!
Kinda sucks for me. Already own Calling All cars. don’t care about Hulk or Star Wars novel. But the SOCOM beta and mini game along with Clank might be interesting.
At least after Thursday we’ll know what to expect better. Although it seems this site seems to think it’s crap, only a PS3 related video and should be free……
June 4th, 2008 at 1:08 am
I think no rip-off, but linking it to faster downloading of Demo’s and let people without a subscription wait for the same Demo’s is not fair..
June 4th, 2008 at 10:29 am
It’s cheaper than a magazine, so I’m not sure what the problem is…
10 years ago, I was buying about 3 magazines (or subcribed to) every month. They became more expensive, and I could get most of the information for free on the web anyway, so I simply stop.
Today, I’m buying maybe about two magazines per YEAR. Mostly because they have those incentives packed with them. (Free demo, software, etc).
It will be the same with Qore. Nobody forces you to buy it. But trust me, if the incentives (minigames, beta invitations, faster demos, etc) are worth it, $3 a month is nothing, and it’s in fact pretty good for the environment.
So, like the magazines, I hope we will be able to see what’s on the menu everytime it does come out and be able to buy single issues. If so, people will likely start buying one, two, three issues every year. And then maybe eventually subscribe.
So, again, like a magazine, there’s nobody pointing a gun at me to buy it. If it’s worth it, it will sell by itself. If not, it will stay on the shelf!
And yes, you could rip the video, but I’m pretty sure you won’t get the incentives with it though. And that’s a good chunk of the $3 worth. (Particularly if you get beta invites…)
June 4th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
i’ll probably subscribe, i’m a big fan of veronica belmont
the latest episode of the game theory podcast talks with one of the people who works on qore and they discuss the whole $ vs free thing: http://gametheoryshow.com/index.php?post_id=346199