I just came back from a focus group regarding Playstation Network.
It seems Sony is thinking of implementing a rewards/loyalty service and/or gold (360 like) service.
They gave us 3 options at the meeting:
(A) Rewards: You don’t have to pay, just sign up and you get rewards based on your activity on the network, like playing games, downloading demos, posting on the boards, watching movies, Home, etc…throughout the year you get rewards like discounts ($5, $10 or $15 off games), Home stuff (virtual clothes, houses, etc.)
(B) Rewards and Gold Service: You have to pay a fee. You get whats in option A plus exclusive network access, even more Home stuff, exclusive demos, 10% off PSN, other things I forgot. I’m not sure if it means better network service as good as or better than Xbox Live, but I just assumed that and we kept hammering that point to the moderater even though he just wanted to talk about these rewards and subcription service.
(a) All the way. That would be a good perk to being a PS owner. The free system they have already would be negated if they were to switch to a pay-for-perks system. Not to mention, even if PSN were a pay service, it wouldn’t be as “good” as Live. Although, IMO, PSN isn’t bad. Not AMAZING, but not bad.
I agree with you guys, free is better, that’s pretty much what we came up with in the group and (a) was what I personally gave the highest marks for.
Free has been one of the selling points for the PS3, but then again, so was backwards compatability. One guy was really intent on the pay service, but he also owns a 360, and he said something to the effect of you get what you pay for, which I can agree with to some extent.
I haven’t had too many problems with the network, but the only games I play online is sf4 which is ok, and hd remix, which is not as good, connection wise but has the benefit of lobbies. I don’t have any experience with xbox live so I don’t know what I’m missing really.
Should be interesting to see what they come up with.
Yeah, option A for me too. But to be honest, PSN is good enough for my online needs as it is. What I’d really like to see them do is somehow further optimize in-game XMB so it doesn’t take so long to pull up profiles, occassionally lock-up during messaging, etc.
I like A. I spend a disproportionate amount of my free time and money wasting Sony’s bandwidth. If they wanted to pay me for that, I wouldn’t complain.
Interesting note, out of the eight guys in the panel, I was the only one who mentioned SF2 as my favorite game of all time, everyone else was into first person shooters. It would have been nice to have another fighting game guy there.
I could care less about free minimal percentage discounts off of things or exclusive demos. what i really want is a quality network for online play, even if that means a small monthly fee.
“A” is definitely the winner. As for psn itself, I love the fact that it’s free. But there could be major improvements with the xmb and communication among other players. Yet again its free so how could i complain :D. Love freeee stuff.
