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June 15, 2006 - Sony to offer free online play, placing its online revenue hopes on e-Distribution
Sony's online gaming service—which we believe will be dubbed HUB once launched—will feature free support for a number of online options, including online play, according to comments from Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi.
"We don’t charge for the basic functions of the network like matching services. Things like that are taken for granted on a PC, aren’t they? There’s the feeling of why a game console gets to charge for a service that’s normal on a PC. So, we just made the basic services available, and based our business on the contents," he said.
Kutaragi also said that Sony has plans to sell "content" online, saying that they had wanted to do it as far back as 1999. He hinted that the American market was still too dominated by modems at the time, however, and so they had to cancel plans and wait for the opportunity to return with the PS3. In the meantime, he says, "Apple realized e-Distribution. So we figured it was about time for us as well." He added that, "In a year or two, I think everyone will just expect [commercial content distribution over networks]."
Kutaragi also took an opportunity to take a swipe at Microsoft, saying that the Redmond giant calls the Xbox 360 "just a game console"—a dig couched in Kutaragi's insistence that the PS3 is a computer. The rhetoric will only intensify as the PS3 launch draws nearer, and Sony appears to be ready to champion its online service over Microsoft's more mature Xbox Live.
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Source: ars technica
By: Ken Fisher
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