Phil Harrison officially wins the award for man of the day. And rightly so: he's been dishing out a wealth of knowledge for what to expect from Sony. In the coming months we're going to hear a lot about the big buzzword that's been thrown around lately. Episodic content is where it's at (or will be, apparently). With the PlayStation Network on the horizon, many people want to know what kind of digital distribution we can see from this new open network platform.
Mr. Harrison told reporters that user-generated media is even in the cards. Since micro-payments will be a feature of the network, do you think it could be possible to even sell this user-generated media over the network? An entire facet of fan-made material could blow up and become huge if this system allowed gamers to create and market their own virtual wares.
And digital downloading will become the status quo before too long. Just look at the Xbox 360! With downloads in the millions, it'll only be a matter of time before CD's become extinct.
However Blu-ray has to live it up before that happens. He made clear that even though widespread digital distribution is getting closer, "Blu-ray will be the primary distribution method." The hard drive will obviously have a hand in complementing this online network. If broadband permits, it would be something extraordinary to see next-gen titles marketed straight over the PlayStation Network. Even several months away from the launch of the console, we can see this is pure speculation. But it's still fun to toss around ideas and see where they take us.
1. If gamers could market their own games/software/media over the PS Network, it could be a dream come true for many would-be independent developers out there. Think about games like the XBox360's Geometry Wars. Lets say someone designed a game for the PS3 that had that kind of success, but charged $0.50 for each download. Who wouldn't pay $0.50? Games for your cell phone cost many times more than that, but $0.50 times say, 500,000 downloads, is a lot of money for making something in your spare time.
Posted at 8:41AM on Mar 25th 2006 by John