Did us PS+ subscribers help fund the new PSN Store redesign?

[Andrespetmonkey]

Slimebeast said:

kitler53 said:

first off. software sales have declined in equal proportation to the xbox360 software decline from what i've seen.   i'd say psn+ as of now isn't adversly affecting software, we're just at the end of the gen. 

second off.  sony did boast about psn+ profitability.  before this last E3 psn+ only had psn downloadable games as the "free" games.  post E3 we have full retail releases (LBP2, saints row, ect.) in addition to the smaller games.  they very clearly stated (boasted) at that time that it was the success and profitability of psn+ that allowed them to improve the service.  i'm not sure the was much press on it but as an advid follower of ps3 news i remember that bit.

i'm not sure if you are a psn+ service member but i've noted that many of the free games are make free at the same time a new DLC becomes availible.  i can't speak to the overall numbers but i'll wager more than a few people have ended up paying for the DLC to go along with their free game.

Okay, so perhaps it is profitable.

But my point is, what proportions do we have?

What we do know is that MS is charging $40 or $50 from +15 million people for just the possibility to play online. For something that Sony provides for absolutely free. That's essentially $750 million in free money for MS.

Meanwhile we have Sony who gives a lot of valuable stuff in return for the same yearly subscription fee of $40 or $50. And we haven't heard any announcement of how many members PS+ has so it's pretty safe to assume it's a couple of million tops.

So all in all we have MS who get $750 million in free money and Sony who get a couple of measly millions at best from their respective subscription service.

Sony isn't in the position to start charging monthly for PSN. They completely underestimated the importance multi-player gaming and connectivity would have this gen so they picked a model that isn't the most profitable and now they have to stick with it. It's gonna take a MASSIVE update to convince people PSN is now worth $50 or whatever amount a year after it being free for 6-7 years. I think they'll keep a similar model for next-gen though, as F2P MMOs are becoming more and more popular and just about every game is starting to have multi-player features and having a lot of DLC tied to their multi-player features. If it's free Sony can get more people into these games to be "nickel and dimed" in F2P games and buy DLC in multi-player focused games. And again, it's just a great selling point.