Sony's Online Free-for-All

By Chris Kohler| Also by this reporter
10:30 AM Oct, 20, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO -- Besides "PlayStation 3," the most-heard word at Sony's Thursday afternoon Gamers' Day was "free."

A free Blu-Ray edition of the movie Talladega Nights. The ability to share downloaded games with your friends for free. And free online gameplay.

The PlayStation 3 itself will still be running gamers a steep $600 when it goes on sale Nov. 17. And so it was perhaps in hopes of taking some of the edge off the sticker shock that Sony executives spent Thursday afternoon emphasizing to a few hundred journalists and analysts that many aspects of PlayStation's network service would come with no additional service charge.

Of the 22 games that will be available when the system launches, 19 of them will feature online gameplay, said Jack Tretton, executive VP of Sony Computer Entertainment America. Tretton calls the lack of online service fees "our biggest strategic advantage."

He did leave open the possibility that software makers could, in the future, charge for online play, noting that "publishers have total freedom."

But for now, there's no up-front cost to networked gaming on PS3. Microsoft charges a $50 yearly fee to play games over its online service, called Xbox Live.

Tretton doesn't shy away from direct comparisons to Sony's biggest game-industry rival. "We offer everything that Xbox Live does. The big differentiating factor is that we're not charging you" to sign up for the network service, he said.

Sony also plans to offer a wide variety of small downloadable games through a digital delivery service called PlayStation Store. At the Gamers' Day event, there were long lines in front of the playable version of flOw, a slow-paced action title with mellow music and surreal graphics, based on a popular free web game.

Many of the event's attendees noticed that Sony's other downloadable offerings seemed designed to mimic the games on Microsoft's service. Sony's shooter, Blast Factor, bore more than a passing resemblance to Geometry Wars, the best-selling title on Xbox Live.

Sony announced that players who download games from PlayStation's online shop can share them on up to five other PS3 machines.

If a player logs into his PlayStation 3 account on a friend's system, he can download any game he has already purchased. "You can send that content to four other friends for that initial investment," said Tretton. "We want to get the game in as many hands as possible."

"It's not about generating profits at each and every interaction with the consumer," he said. "I think that really offsets the argument that says, 'Wow, that's a really pricey system.'"

But it is indeed a pricey system -- $200 more than Microsoft's already-released Xbox 360, and $350 more than the price of Nintendo's Wii console, which ships two days after PS3.

A $500 PlayStation 3 package that lacks several of the extra features (like built-in wireless internet and slots for Memory Stick media) will also be available at launch. But Tretton said that retailers were mostly ordering the $600 version: "The number that's been kicked around has been 80 percent [high-end units]."

Some retailers have requested to receive only the $600 model, he said.

It was cost considerations, said Tretton, that caused Sony to leave high-definition video cables out of the package, which it officially announced today. PlayStation 3 will ship only with standard-definition composite AV cables, but will also include Ethernet and USB cables in the package.

To emphasize the fact that PlayStation 3 contains the new high-definition movie format -- widely considered to be the main reason for the machine's high price -- the first 500,000 consoles will be packed with a copy of the Will Ferrell comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, a Sony Pictures film, on Blu-Ray disc.

One wireless game controller, which Sony has dubbed the "Sixaxis" after its six degrees of motion sensitivity, will be included in the box. Extra controllers will cost $50, identical to Microsoft's control pad pricing.

A remote control for easier navigation of Blu-Ray movies will be released in December at a price of $25.