We as gamers have it much better these days, as there are free content and demos floating around on gaming networks and download kiosks for us to enjoy a sneak peek of a particular title before deciding to drop some serious coin for the final product. Unfortunately, are these really “free”? After all, somebody has got to pay – and according to a report by MTV Multiplayer, Sony has started to charge publishers a per-gigabyte fee for bandwidth used when downloading content. This deal would seem rather strange as it gives off the vibes for not releasing popular content or demos on the service instead.

It also goes against conventional wisdom at this moment in time as Sony surprisingly has a large advantage over the Xbox 360 as this platform offers free online gaming and content downloads. While Xbox Live costs approximately $50—less if you get a deal, where there is a treasure trove of content made available to Gold members first and Silver members down the line, Sony will instead pass the bill onto publishers for these online features. We suppose the high road that Sony could take would be to absorb the bandwidth costs and hope that this incentive will cause publishers to be more enthusiastic about the PS3 by releasing better quality games that will let more and more people sign up for this as the gaming platform of choice instead of the Wii and Xbox 360.

It seems otherwise though as MTV Multiplayer has managed to get hold of a memo sent to publishers from Sony which changes the fees associated with hosting content on the PlayStation Store. Publishers will now have to pony up 16 cents per 1GB downloaded via the store for the first two months where free content is concerned, and in perpetuity for paid content. That’s not chump change by any means as a demo which is downloaded one million times will cost a publisher approximately $160,000 – all this on top of the regular fees that Sony charges to put content and games up on the store. Do you see a solution out of this, and is the Xbox Live model a better one to follow?

Source: Ars Technica