In an interview with Gamasutra, Rob Dyer SCEA’s Senior Vice President of Publisher Relations discusses a wide variety of industry topics as they relate to the Sonyverse. Specifically he gave his on thoughts on DLC (downloadable content), his preference for disc based delivery of content, and how these things relate to console exclusivity.
One of the questions that came up is exclusivity. In the day and age we live in, it’s not as common place as it once was as publishers can expand their games to a much larger audience given the market share of the PS3 and the 360. Rob commented on this by stating that in those instances, it’s about exclusive features. With Batman’s exclusive content as an example, he made the point that “exclusive content that is meaningful” and it adds to the overall value from both a publisher perspective and a gamer perspective. He further went to add that it’s “Not about taking share away from Microsoft. It’s about expanding the pie” which is why securing the right type of content is so very important.
The next big topic was DLC (downloadable content). When mentioned that Microsoft has been extremely aggressive in the DLC space, he had some very specific comments surrounding that situation. He cited that, their being aggressive about that as being the difference between Microsoft and Sony. It comes down to the product lines. With two different machines, publishers have to make a decision on how they are going to distribute DLC. He mentioned “are you going to give it for the arcade user or that guy that actually has a hard drive”? That being said, he made the point that publishers know that 100% of the PS3 user base can utilize the DLC generated for it regardless of their PS3 type provided they have access to it.
Along the same lines, he highlighted that, he would encourage more content on disc than via DLC. The reason for this is from an access standpoint. Siting that the PSN userbase is 70-73% of the installbase, that’s a significant number of people that for whatever reason, will not have access to any DLC based content. While not only highlighting the blu-ray capabilities of the PS3 by being able to include large amounts of additional data as a value add, he mentioned focusing on disc based content versus DLC based content is preferable so that “100 percent out there can play”.
Rob then discussed the complexities of DLC from both a developer and publisher perspective. That it goes beyond just deciding their will be DLC, it’s determining what type it will be, which vendors will get what types, and coordinating it all prior to release takes quite some time. For example, he stated “We did the Batman deal 15 months before street” which gave them the necessary time to “get everything lined up”. Rob eluded to a few a deals that should be surprising by saying “Come find after our press event at E3. There’s going to be some announcements. You’re going to look at me and go, ‘Okay, when did you start these’?”
With E3 on the horizon and Comc-Con 2010 right around the corner, expect to hear even more from Sony when it comes to content.
