Is this why there hasn’t been any Sonic Unleashed DLC for the PS3?
Over at SegaNerds, staff writer Graham poses an interesting question: “Is Sony’s bandwidth charge hurting downloadable content?” For those who aren’t in the know, it was recently revealed that Sony announced to developers back in October that they would begin charging a fee to post DLC on the Playstation Network. This fee, according to Sony, is meant to cover the cost of download bandwidth.
This announcement comes hot on the heels of downloadable content releases for the Xbox 360 version of Sonic Unleashed – but a complete absence of that same downloadable content for the Playstation 3 version of the same game. SegaNerds wonders: Is it Sony’s new bandwidth fee that is holding back the downloadable content for the game? Past games like Battlefield: Bad Company have seen DLC launch simultaneously on both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. But that was in June 2008 – four months before Sony started charging for Playstation Network bandwidth.
However, to some developers, paying for bandwidth is nothing new. For years, PC developers like Epic Games and Valve Software have personally hosted their downloadable content – no doubt racking up quite the bandwidth bill. But to many console-exclusive game developers, having to pay for their own bandwidth is a new concept:
“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,” one publishing source said. “It’s a new thing we have to budget. It’s not cool. It sucks.”
Reportedly, if a 1 gigabyte file is downloaded one million times, it could cost the developer an additional $160,000. Not even demos are safe, as the fee covers all downloadable content on the Playstation Network. Both the Chun-Nan and Spagonia DLC for Sonic Unleashed come in at around half a gigabyte in size.
What do you think? Will the Playstation 3 ever see the Sonic Unleashed DLC? Should Sony be charging for Playstation Network bandwidth? Is charging for Xbox Live Gold a worthwhile way to recoup the cost of things like bandwidth? Sound off in the comments.
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I donät know, but I hope it will come to the playstation network so you can download the Adventure packs/DCL.
*Sign* it is always problems with everything! I like sony, they’re my favorites but this is so uncool. It’s sonys fault! I think, that’s my stupid opinion.
Well this really sucks, guess only the 360 getting the expansions.
for now……
I’ve heard about this some time ago, I was wondering the same thing.
woo 360 360 360
Osnic: Haha! That was fun, first Ä and then you said sign. I guess you meant… ööööööö…… I don’t know how to spell it!
(EDIT – Tremendously off topic -T)
DISABLE COMMENTS
It’s OK Eggfang…I took care of the extra stuff.
Otherwise, I feel like this is a story where comments need to happen. I sense this may become a hot topic within the community shortly.
-T
Shut up Eggfang, just beacuse you and PJman dont like free speech and thinking ,dosent mean everyone else does.
It sucks for devs and pubs, but I guess Sony had to make some extra money from somewhere since the PSN is completely free for use.
Did you delete half my comment? Ok… It was just me talking to my friend about spelling. I didn’t know that you don’t like funny stuff. Then it’s lucky that you didn’t saw when I talked too myself here.
Werehog: No offense…I’m all for humor, but yours didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense, and was a bit too far off the beaten path.
=)
-T
Tristan Oliver: Don’t worry, it’s ok. It was just me and my friend playing with eachother. She’s good at english and I guess I am too, but when I’m not sure I always take the thing that sounds right and then It’s wrong…
We come from Sweden. If I were from USA I would be much better at it. But int Sweden we have lots of stuff from USA and we heare english at TV all the time, so we are not as bad at english like they from france.
Ok, now I came really off toppic.
SEGA just released a Patch for the PS3 build.
I heard this earlier, but on my North American version of the game, no update prompt (or anything like that) comes up. Is there something wrong, or must I just wait for a U.S. update to be released? I sure hope I receive a patch. PLEASE release it and DLC SEGA.
Expect the DLC on PSN next Thursday then.
Seriously, I received no update yet. What is going on? (In North America)
Now Im pissed that I sold my 360 and 06 and then bought Unleashed and 06 on the PS3… I hate sega sometimes… their my favorite company but seriously… If you arent gonna release it on PSN dont release it on XBL
Interesting theory, but otherwise kind of jumping to conclusions a little bit. I wouldn’t exactly have billed this as news.
Well, it was news to me. Not surprising news, but news nonetheless.