Crystal Dynamic's Riley Cooper, the company overseeing Lara Croft lately, believes the PlayStation Network will offer more flexibility than Xbox Live for delivering content in the future. Cooper says that, for developers, the PSN service is better to bypass retail because of the constraints Microsoft has placed on their service.
Cooper is basically talking about Xbox Live Marketplace's size restrictions more than the service. He believes console games being sold online is inevitable and the gates are slowly opening for that to happen in various channels. While he's right that digital distribution is going to keep getting better, we still want to see some additional savings for consumers if we're not getting boxes, manuals, and all the other incidentals. We had the cost-reduction dream for advertising in games too, but ad-heavy and no-ad games are still the same price.
Reader Comments (62)
Posted: Jan 3rd 2008 1:54PM (Unverified) said
I almost died laughing the other week when I was playing R6V online, and saw an ad for Assassins Creed in the lift.
By that I mean I was laughing at the advert, and someone shot me from behind.
If the devs are getting money from adverts, then they should either make DLC free, or they should give us some other form of benefit. We put up with adverts on TV because it means the programming is free, so something similar should be applied to games.
By that I mean I was laughing at the advert, and someone shot me from behind.
If the devs are getting money from adverts, then they should either make DLC free, or they should give us some other form of benefit. We put up with adverts on TV because it means the programming is free, so something similar should be applied to games.
Posted: Jan 3rd 2008 4:54PM (Unverified) said
It is free now, but originally paid for. It was just an example of companies such as Ubisoft in general, not a specific.
Reply
Posted: Jan 3rd 2008 4:57PM (Unverified) said
I pay for satellite TV, but I don't pay for the channels. Live is a service that is not paid for by the devs, the same as you pay your ISP, but the websites are often advert funded.
Reply
Posted: Jan 3rd 2008 2:37PM Lekko said
You must LOVE sequels and rehashes.
Posted: Jan 3rd 2008 4:33PM (Unverified) said
Actually, there was a version with and a version without the headset. Headset one costs a bit more... how much more? About the price of a headset. :)
Posted: Jan 3rd 2008 4:38PM (Unverified) said
This is from the company that tried to sell me TR:A on Xbox as a non-sellable/non-transferrable download (that requires TR:L to play) when you can buy the non-restrictive disc for the same price.
If there's any restriction it's that you can't sell that downloadable content back, and that's purely the fault of the content holders, not MS.
If there's any restriction it's that you can't sell that downloadable content back, and that's purely the fault of the content holders, not MS.
Posted: Jan 3rd 2008 11:28PM (Unverified) said
So I'm the only one who saw the word constraints and assumed it was referring to Lara's top?
Posted: Jan 4th 2008 3:49AM mnemo said
Okay, I've read the original article three times now and what exactly is Cooper saying? "PSN is better and more flexible because downloadable games can be bigger." Duh. Great list of arguments.
I tried to PURCHASE seven songs for SingStar last night via PSN. The "shopping" is integrated into SingStar directly with only the purchasing done via the standard PS3 browser. PITA! Several times when I put a song in the basket, the game said "The store is not available right now" and threw me back to the menu, sometimes losing all the stuff in the shopping basket. Although I have to admit that the video preview directly in the in-game store is pretty cool (compared to the gray text-only lists on XBLM). But the kinks when purchasing really need to be ironed out!
I tried to PURCHASE seven songs for SingStar last night via PSN. The "shopping" is integrated into SingStar directly with only the purchasing done via the standard PS3 browser. PITA! Several times when I put a song in the basket, the game said "The store is not available right now" and threw me back to the menu, sometimes losing all the stuff in the shopping basket. Although I have to admit that the video preview directly in the in-game store is pretty cool (compared to the gray text-only lists on XBLM). But the kinks when purchasing really need to be ironed out!
Featured Stories
Super Joystiq Podcast 004: 38 Studios meltdown, Gravity Rush, Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, Dragon's Dogma
Posted on May 25th 2012 3:30PM



