Sony: "As Many Free Services As Possible" For PS3 And PSP

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Everyone loves "free." If they were giving away free pieces of Styrofoam down at the mall, there'd be a line. This is why Sony is all about free when it comes to new services for the PS3 and PSP, according to president of Sony Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida.

During a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Yoshida said the company really wants to "provide as many services to PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable users as possible," which includes the freshly announced free music video streaming service for the PS3. It was unveiled at Leipzig and it's dubbed "VidZone;" it's a good example of Sony's current focus. Said Yoshida:

"We're more open about approaching and bringing services in to PS3 and PSP. We can't support all the needs of the consumer and there are great companies providing services on the PC already - so we're very open to provide the opportunity to those companies to reach our user base as well."

As for the free stuff, like VidZone, that's also very important to Sony and we're certain the consumer will agree. The PlayStation Network remains free on the whole, although one does have to pay for some downloadable content on the PlayStation Store. But as Yoshida explains, the users don't represent the only form of revenue for the Network-

"We like to provide as many services as possible for free - we already provide our network access for gameplay for free - and the interesting thing about the network side and the Internet business is that there's a variety of revenue sources. Not necessarily getting people to pay, but with advertising and so on. Those are things we're looking at, and learning how we can provide a service without people having to pay - but we still get our operation running with funding from somewhere so that we can maintain the level of quality we want."

VidZone is coming early next year, and yes, you can even create your own favorite playlists and transport them over to the PSP. And in the future, you can expect more cool services from Sony, and if they hold to the maxim outlined here, many of those system extras should be free. We repeat, free is good.

8/28/2008 Ben Dutka

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