Be Excellent To Each Other

So, it's live. Kotaku.

• $50/£40 a year.
• A 60-minute free demo of inFamous, which you can then unlock for a further $30. Same as the disc version.
• Some free stuff: Wipeout HD, Rally Cross PS1 Classic, Age of Zombies mini, Warhawk Fallen Star Pack, themes and avatars. Total about $30 value.
• Each month they add another PSN game, another PS1 game, and two Minis. You can only play those as long as your sub runs though.
• 50% discounts on some other downloadable games.
• Free LittleBigPlanet for a few days only.
• Automatic downloading of game and console patches when it's in standby.

Really, Sony? REALLY?

I can see you're not impressed.

It does rather appear to be £40 a year to rent some old games.

Err. That's shit.

You could pay £12 right now, sign up for three months, get LittleBigPlanet, then leave again. Unlike the other games the free LBP keeps working. Actually, that should be in the bargains thread. Other than that this is beyond shit.

As I said Twatter during E3: No more swaggering "we're free!" bullshit from Sony now then.

Well, I suppose to be fair, it's just as free as it ever was right now. You still don't pay to play games online and that is to their credit over the 360.

Waiting for Nintendoh to announce their scheme to charge to swap irritating friend codes for each game now.

Waiting for Nintendo to release my stolen Star Points.

Also, let's not be fair. I was fair to them during the PS1-2 eras. Now I am not fair. No fair. Fair.

You're just a fair weather friend to them, Dimrill.

Like me.

So to compare

[*] Xbox live is £39.99 a year (although you can get discounts if you shop around)
[*] There are many similar setups on Live , the one that springs to mind is Fable II where you get the first episode free
[*] Themes and avatars are occasionally given away free but generally cost points The only free games they have given out were 1 Vs 100 , Dorito's dash of Destruction
[*] No regular 'free' stuff
[*] 'Sales' which regularly give 50% discounts on games (there have been a lot more of these recently)
[*] No free games for signing up
[*] No standby patching

*However* the whole Xbox 'experience' from match making , in game chats , game demos , system updates , and everything else is *much* smoother and easier on the Xbox than the PS3

Stop being fair!

And Undertow, TotemBall, Carcassonne, Texas Hold'em(?) for a limited period. An amazing collection.


Yeah, except patching on the xbox takes less than half a minute at worst. Patching on the PS3? I've known it to take the best part of an hour at worst.

I'm not getting it for my PS3, as I don't think it's particulary great value for money.

I'm still sad that I missed Carcassonne. Although I've got the proper boxed game anyway so ...

Yeah, but you don't get Dimrills gurning mug (Or more commonly, a black square where there may be a mostly naked Dimrill) with that.

(And I have that too, with a few expansions)

Are the expansions any good? I didn't even know they existed!

I'm just really unsure as to how they're going to market this...

"Here, buy the PS3 and play games online for free! Or pay us £40 and play games online... for £40!"

I'm not against companies charging for online stuff but I'm struggling to see how they're going to convince Johnny come Casual that what he once had for free is still free.. unless he wants to pay for it.

I think it is utterly disgusting that their product has had a serious problem with patches and updates since launch, they are only just now fixing it and they have the audacity to charge for it.

Bet the Frag Dolls talk it up, too.

XBox live is a tenner a quarter for a virtually rock-solid and excellently integrated online gaming platform with occasional half or two-third-priced downloadable titles/content. If you want to do online multiplayer, it's that much and it works, bitches. A straightforward pay this get that sort of an arrangement.

If Sony wanted to compete with that they'd come up with better/quicker integration that Live Gold and charge £30 annually for it. As it is, this thing they've got now is.... stuff.

I remember playing the Llamasoft PS3 on the Llamasoft mega-monitor. I asked to see 'Home' and a little update was needed for when we walked the avatar into a cinema in the shopping centre. After three hours wait for it to install, I got in my car and drove back to Cardiff. No idea when it eventually installed.

Although if you gave them more money they might be able to afford decent servers
(or are the patches that massive that they take forever to download?)

They do tend to be large - although I should note the only games I have bar ffxiii are exclusives.

Steam, of course, does all that for free. PSN online play isn't as slick as Live but it's not a total horrorshow either. If none of us had ever had an Xbox we'd think it was the bee's knees.
360 title updates are capped at a very modest size - about a meg I think. PS3 ones are generally much bigger and often (Burnout Paradise, for example) have content which was released as DLC for the 360. Think also of the "free car in every car pack" workaround that Forza uses. Whilst the PS3 system is less slick than the 360's, it's not without merit.

I've just downloaded the update and there's a new video editor and they've changed the way you view pictures... nothing major but it's a change none the less.

Just testing now to see if Vidzone still doesn't work.

Edit - Nope, still broke.

All I can see:



So you have to pay extra for them to fix games efficiently.

Every single time sony manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Sony might have found a reason for this to exist. People have found a line in the source code to the signup for Hulu Premium (Hulu is like iPlayer but for most of the US networks; Premium is their on-console/STB/iOS service) that seems to require PSN Plus. So you have to pay twice, once to Hulu, once to Sony. That's the same as Netflix, though, which only works on Xbox Live Gold.

Next month:

Full Lineup
Invisible, Inc., PS4
Stories: Path of Destinies, PS4
Hyper Void, PS3
Tiny Troopers Joint Ops, PS3 (Cross buy on PS4 and Vita)
Color Guardians, PS Vita (Cross buy on PS4)
VVVVVV, PS Vita

Damn, Zaphod is really slacking these days. Tch.

At least I can get the right thread :-)


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