Sony Charging Publishers For DLC

Publishing sources have told MTV Multiplayer of Sony’s previously un-reported new “PlayStation Network Bandwidth Fee”.

The charge is stated to be 16 cents for every Gigabyte (GB) downloaded off of the PSN, which is of course proving unpopular with publishers.

You can certainly see why publishers might have to think twice before publishing content on the PSN, Microsoft is not reported to be charging publishers for downloadable content, although they do charge users a subscription charge for the Xbox Live Gold membership.

One source, who wished to remain anonymous to prevent any issues with Sony had the following to say;

“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. It’s a new thing we have to budget. It’s not cool. It sucks.”

The blog also states a good example of the costs of creating and sharing a demo over the PSN;

“Publishers already pay costs for creating a demo, a process that can run six figures. Sony’s fees add a new expense. For a demo that is sized at exactly 1GB and is downloaded one million times, that would add an extra $160,000 that Sony is now charging and that Microsoft isn’t. That’s what could scare publishers from placing content on the PS3.”

The charge is lifted for free content (demos etc) after 60 days, for paid content (map packs etc) the charges rack up until the day it is removed from the store.

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