PSN and its support

Despite the fact that Microsoft's Xbox Live charges gamers $50 annually for online gameplay, most players today are still likely to tell you that Xbox Live is a superior experience. Sony, however, has certainly made numerous improvements to its PlayStation Network, which remains completely free. Wrapping up our conversation with Rob Dyer, SCEA Senior Vice President of Publisher Relations, we asked the executive about PSN's growth, and particularly how third parties feel about the network.
“When I first started here [at SCEA] two years ago, it was slow and cumbersome and we were really struggling to put any kind of a dent into Xbox Live," Dyer admitted. But PSN has come a long way in just a couple years. Dyer continued, "What we're now finding is we're at par and offering as good if not a better experience; and publishers are putting a lot of content on our system now that they can't put on Xbox Live. And having been a publisher on the other side, I can say that PSN is a lot more egalitarian. It's easier to get stuff up, it's easier to get it promoted and easier to get it to your consumer, versus what you have with Xbox Live. It's not as big a sales pitch as it once was, particularly when you saw the results we announced coming out of December. We're just going from strength to strength, especially with as many consoles as we're selling; people are hooking it up to the network and they're downloading stuff. It's simple math – the more you sell, the more people get online, the more PSN content you'll sell."
Downloadable content (DLC) is becoming a bigger and bigger component of the industry, as publishers look to bring in additional digital revenue and extend the lives of their retail games. This is one area where Dyer feels PSN definitely gives third parties an advantage of Xbox Live. "If you're making a game and you want to have DLC that you can send out to everybody on a system, if you're with Sony you can do that because everybody has a hard drive [with PS3]. Microsoft's consumer base, on the other hand, can't download everything. So if I'm a developer, which system should I make the content for? And look at the results for the GTA [episodic] pack... candidly, that's why it's coming out on disc, because a lot of people couldn't access it," he said. "So when people come to us, they can provide us with exclusive content and know that it's going to get to a lot more users because our machine has that hard drive. They don't have to create a lowest common denominator; they can do what they want it to do.”
More from Rob Dyer:
PSP to See 'Big, Big Titles' This Year, Promises Sony
PS3's Motion Control Approach: Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick
PS3 Benefiting From Wii Publisher Backlash
PS3 Better Serves Publishers Than 360, says Sony