Incredibly high prices paid by the publishers of games for the PS3.
In the console wars there have been many points of contention, and one of the main ones in this latest generation has been the internet connectivity - namely, that Sony doesn't charge for theirs while Microsoft does.
A massive drawback to this free gaming service on Sony's side is not just the confusion that some users go through when attempting to find other friends in a multitude of friends lists, but that the bandwidth costs are not absorbed by a subscription fee.
Every gigabyte of data that was previously downloaded in the form of a demo or trailer was paid for by Sony to host and transfer, while Microsoft had all their costs factored in to the 360's Gold membership service.
In a very radical move, Sony have sent a memo out to the publishers, and have stated that they're being charged a whopping sixteen cents per gigabyte downloaded!
Arstechnica shows just how huge this really is:
That's not a small amount of money; if a demo gets downloaded one million times, it would cost a publisher $160,000 for a 1GB file; even more if the file is larger. This is on top of the regular fees that Sony charges to put content and games up on the store, mind you.
This is only going to hurt PS3 gamers in the long run, as publishers will be less likely to publish even free content on the service when it costs them as well as developing/marketing the games proper.
Give Arstechica's story a full read, and comment on Sony's sillyness below.
Issue: 106 | November, 2009