Tag Archives | Sony

Playstation Plus: Required for Hulu Plus?

Posted by Jared Newman on June 29, 2010 at 8:04 pm

Hulu Plus may cost a bit extra — the price of a Playstation Plus subscription, actually — when the service comes to Playstation 3 in July, according to some language hidden in one of Hulu’s Web pages.

I stumbled upon the evidence when double checking that neither Sony nor Hulu had acknowledged the other’s subscription service. Hulu did announce upcoming support for Playstation 3, but a lack of details made me wonder why Playstation Plus, which launched today, wasn’t mentioned at all; some sort of deal for PS Plus subscribers seems like a no brainer. (If you’re not caught up on either of these services, by the way, see Harry’s post on Hulu Plus or Sony’s rundown of Playstation Plus).

Just to be sure I didn’t miss anything, I did a quick Google search, and found this (see the second result):

The text of the second result comes from the page source of Hulu Plus’ device page, and appears in Google’s search results even though it doesn’t show up on the website itself. “The instructions below will help you install Hulu Plus on your PS3,” the hidden language says. “Note: you must be a subscriber of the Playstation Plus Network.”

The next few lines describe a “Playstation 3 Activation Procedure,” in which you go to the Playstation Store and redeem a download code that lets you install a Hulu Plus application. View my screen grab of the page source if you like.

So it looks like Hulu Plus won’t be available to PS3 owners without a Playstation Plus subscription, which costs $50 per year or $18 per month for three months. That seems like a raw deal, considering that Netflix doesn’t cost anything extra on the Playstation 3 (it does require an Xbox Live Gold subscription on Xbox 360, and Microsoft has already confirmed that the same rule will apply to Hulu Plus when it arrives on Xbox 360 early next year). Still, it’s not clear whether PS Plus subscribers will get a deal on Hulu content, or if it costs the same $10 per month as everyone else.

I’ve pinged Sony and Hulu for clarification and will post an update if I hear anything.

Update: Apparently, the text is not hidden to people who already have a Hulu Plus preview invite, as one Kotaku reader reported after reading about our coverage. If that’s the case, I’m not sure why Hulu or Sony PR haven’t said anything.

Update 2: “We don’t comment on rumors and speculation which is all that is at this point,” Sony told G4 (but not us).

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Sony Playstation: The Kitchen Sink Approach Continues

Posted by Jared Newman on June 15, 2010 at 4:21 pm

Marketing taglines usually serve as little more than memory triggers, but there’s actually some truth to Sony’s claim that the Playstation “only does everything.” Today’s press conference showed a company desperate to make its console the jack of all trades, adding 3D gaming and motion controls to the Playstation 3.

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Sorry Sony, HBO's Still Beholden to Cable

Posted by Jared Newman on May 25, 2010 at 5:25 pm

When content providers wade into digital distribution, there’s always a catch.

In the case of HBO bringing its hit shows to Sony’s Playstation 3 — starting with True Blood at a date unannounced — that catch is an 11-month delay between cable broadcast and console download. The $2.99 price tag also stings, considering that the Playstation Network’s other on-demand shows cost a dollar each. At least iTunes and Amazon get the same pricing.

Still, the irony is rich in Dow Jones’ report on the story. “Networks like HBO can be beholden to the cable and satellite companies, or they can play wherever the consumers play,” Sony Playstation chief executive Jack Tretton proclaims, as if to ignore the time-delay issue. If there was any doubt that HBO is protecting its relationship with subscription TV providers, HBO’s home entertainment president Henry McGee erases it: The 11-month lag, he explains, is meant to discourage people from dropping their cable and satellite packages.

Maybe that’ll work, but it won’t get me to sign up for cable again. A time-delayed content agreement is better than no content at all, and if I stick to three or four HBO series per year, the pricing works out in my favor. Through cable, HBO is $14 per month. Assuming three show downloads on PS3 with 15 episodes per season at $3, divide by 12 and the monthly cost is $11.25 per month. It’ll just take a little patience to get there.

Add HBO to the PS3’s existing video choices, which include Netflix, MLB.tv, on-demand video and the free legacy version of PlayOn, and the game console becomes a formidable cable alternative.

Just don’t tell HBO.

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Games Bounce Back, and Sony Gets a Killer App

Posted by Jared Newman on April 16, 2010 at 4:08 pm

A couple significant things happened with last month’s North American video game sales figures from NPD: The industry as a whole improved over March 2009, and software sales for Sony’s Playstation 3 dominated the charts.

The overall industry gains aren’t a huge deal to me. Console and software makers will boast to their investors that March 2010 was a year-over-year improvement, but that’s only because sales tanked in 2009. Compared to March 2008, overall video game sales are still in the red, at $1.53 billion this year compared to $1.7 billion two years ago.

More interesting is how Sony took more games in the top 20 than any other console, and led the charts with the blockbuster God of War III. That game sold 1.1 million copies. Looking back at the debuts of other notable PS3 exclusives — Uncharted 2, Killzone 2, Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet — no other game came close. Another Sony exclusive, MLB 10: The Show, also got into the charts last month.

Non-exclusives are a wash: Final Fantasy XIII for PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 version, probably because the series is a Playstation mainstay, but Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was most popular on the Xbox 360, perhaps because Xbox Live provides a better multiplayer experience, and because there weren’t many other hit action games out for the Xbox 360 last month.

Still, Sony’s got to be thrilled that its heavyweight games are finally going toe-to-toe with the Xbox 360. For game developers, it signals that the console’s ripe for development (see: Activision’s once-harsh words for Sony), and that’s always good for PS3 owners.

Meanwhile, I’m just loving that the PS3-exclusive Heavy Rain stuck around in the top 20 for its second month. Maybe there’s a market for experimental interactive drama after all.

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Sony Shuts Down Linux on Older PS3s

Posted by Jared Newman on March 29, 2010 at 6:44 pm

Video game systems are more like computers than ever, with PC-like power and connectivity to the Web and to other hardware. It’s all wonderful, but it’s causing console makers to draw and redraw lines in the sand on what you’re allowed to do with these powerful machines.

The latest news on this front comes from Sony, with the announcement that it will kill the Playstation 3’s little-known “Install Other OS” feature with a firmware update on April 1. The feature allowed users to install Linux distributions on the PS3 and run “hundreds of familiar applications for home and office use,” according to Sony’s Web page on open platforms for the console, which you can still read.

Sony already stopped including the feature on the PS3 Slim, released in September, but this firmware update will apply to all PS3 models. Spokesman Patrick Seybold said Sony axed the feature due to “security concerns,” but elaborated no further. However, hacker George Hotz, who is best known for his iPhone jailbreaks and who released the first-ever PS3 hack earlier this year, thinks he had something to do with it. He apologized to PS3 Linux users on his blog, saying he “weighed the pros and cons, and considered the possibility of an impact on OtherOS support” before releasing the hack, which could potentially be used to pirate games.

In theory, I like the idea of gaming consoles as open systems, in which users can experiment with the hardware and software without fear of persecution by the console maker. Amazing things can come from user ingenuity, like the Wii Remote-powered interactive whiteboard and a thriving Wii homebrew scene. But companies worry, for good reason, that letting users do whatever they please opens the door to piracy, cheating and other exploits. Microsoft uses that rationale to outlaw modified consoles from Xbox Live, and presumably will require a specially-made partition on external USB storage for the same reason.

Regardless of whose argument you prefer, I think we can all agree that it’s wrong of Sony to remove an advertised feature of the Playstation 3. I wonder if the company did a cost-benefit analysis of locking down the console at the expense of people who bought it based on its open platform support.

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It’s Inevitable: Google TV

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 18, 2010 at 6:12 am

The New York Times’ Nick Bilton is reporting that Google, Intel, Sony, and Logitech are collaborating on a new platform for Internet-enabled TV called…Google TV, of course. Bilton doesn’t have a lot of detail, but he says that it’ll be an open-source platform that can run third-party apps; that it will include Google search; that it will run the Android OS and Chrome browser on Intel’s Atom processor; and that Logitech is working on remote controls, including one with a tiny QWERTY keyboard. Google has a prototype box, but the technology could be built into TVs; consumer products may arrive as soon as this summer.

It would have been startling if Google didn’t try to something along these lines, given that TV remains one of the most important screens in the lives of millions of people, and one without any Google presence to date. And nobody’s figured out how to build an Internet TV platform that’s truly a breakout hit–even Apple, which famously keeps insisting that Apple TV is a mere hobby. Roku and Vudu are both pretty nifty, but neither is close to becoming a household name.

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The PSP Go: Toast?

Posted by Jared Newman on March 16, 2010 at 5:30 pm

Based on some mysterious guesswork, gaming trade publication Gamasutra came up with some grim numbers for Sony’s PSP Go handheld: 6,000 to 10,000 units sold in the United States last month.

Sony has never released any official sales numbers for the PSP Go, a console that’s smaller and lighter than its predecessors and only supports downloaded games. But last week, Japanese industry watchers Media Create said 1,275 PSP Go device were sold in the first week of March. Regardless of the exact number, it’s safe to say the Go isn’t doing well. Gamasutra believes that Sony will launch a next-generation handheld this year and let the Go “experience a slow death at retail.”

That seems to be happening already. I used to see ads for the PSP Go all around Los Angeles, but no more. And the Go is conspicuously absent from Sony’s announcement of an upcoming PSP bundle for Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. You won’t see much love for the Go at GameStop’s Web site or stores, either. A rumor from February held that Sony was going to relaunch the Go with a reduced price, but so far, nothing.

I believe the PSP Go’s commercial troubles are due to several errors on Sony’s part, rather than one major problem. The $250 price point is hard to justify when the $170 PSP-3000 has all the same features, albeit in a larger size. Existing PSP owners were alienated because they couldn’t transfer their UMD games onto the device. Bad reviews didn’t help — those from Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera and Destructoid’s lovably-vulgar Jim Sterling stuck in my head for noting how unfriendly the device was to its users.

But while it’s tempting to knock the PSP Go’s underlying concept — a download-only handheld that precludes people from buying and selling used games — I don’t think Sony was wrong to pursue it. Apple proved with the iPod Touch that a download-only device can find commercial success. Sony just erred on the execution, not on the idea.

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Playstation Move: Motion Control for Whom?

Posted by Jared Newman on March 11, 2010 at 9:22 am

For too long this morning, I’ve been trying to think of something pithy to write about the Playstation Move, Sony’s newly-unveiled motion controller for the PS3. But aside from the facts — it’ll be out later this year, for $100 including one controller and a camera that tracks the controller’s movement — all I can spit out are conflicted opinions.

I’m somewhat excited for the Move, if only because it’s a more sophisticated version of Nintendo’s Wii, with its wand-shaped, button-laden controllers. The difference is that the Move uses an existing product, the Playstation Eye, to track the controller’s motion along three dimensions. This allows you to step closer or farther from the table in virtual ping pong, or make 360-degree turns in real space.

Cool technology, for sure, but is it a cohesive vision for motion control, or a half-hearted attempt to capture the so-called casual gamer? I can’t tell yet.

Take the games, for example. There’s the requisite Wii Sports Resort clone, but with more realistic graphics. There’s an on-rails shooter, but with a playful, arcade look and feel. There’s a pet-training game for children, but there’s also the military shooter SOCOM 4. Instead of showing off a killer app, Sony’s throwing pasta at the wall, hoping to find a target audience that sticks.

The Move has a controller issue as well. Some games will require you to wield two motion controller wands, while others will use a Wii Nunchuk-like secondary controller, with an analog stick. That means even if you’re playing solo, you’ll need three controllers for every possible scenario. It’s confusing, and it escalates the cost well beyond $100. Can this kind of set-up compete with the $200 Wii? Doubtful.

I think the issue is that Sony’s still in tech demo mode. I’m sold on the technology, but not on the product. This early look at the Move suggests that Sony wants to create both a Wii Sports killer and a Halo killer with motion control, but so far we’ve seen a controller that does neither.

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