{"id":4100,"date":"2009-07-10T15:24:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-10T13:24:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T22:00:00","slug":"ps3-games-too-big-to-offer-as-downloads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/playstation\/4100-ps3-games-too-big-to-offer-as-downloads","title":{"rendered":"PS3 games \u201ctoo big\u201d to offer as downloads"},"content":{"rendered":"

In May Microsoft announced that it will be launching a digital distribution service that will allow Xbox Live users to purchase and download full AAA games<\/a> instead of having to purchase retail copies. The service is essentially what PC gamers have been enjoying for years in the form of STEAM and Direct2Drive.<\/p>\n

Planned to launch in August, some of the launch titles will include Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect and BioShock. While this is great for people in countries with decent bandwidth pricing and official Xbox Live recognition, it will not help local Xbox Live users much as getting onto Xbox Live requires one to lie about their destination. Furthermore, it is currently not possible to make use of local bandwidth with Xbox Live.<\/p>\n

If Sony were to provide a similar service then local gamers would have something to smile about. This is because we have access to a locally hosted Playstation Network (PSN) mirror which allows local internet users to access PSN using local bandwidth, which costs in the region of R10 per GB. This would effectively allow local PSN users to download PS3 games at international prices plus a minor local bandwidth fee.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately Sony has no intention of launching such a service. Their reason? PS3 games are too big.<\/p>\n

PSN Director Eric Lampel has this to say: “It’s not something we have planned, just because the size of the games is massive.”
Lempel goes on to elaborate, “With Blu-ray we can put up to 50 gigs on a dual-layer disc, while [Xbox 360] is still on a 9-gig media. So technically it’s possible, but I think the issue would be, ‘Do you want to download 40 gigs and keep that on your hard drive?’”<\/p>\n

The only problem with Lempel’s argument is that although the PS3 does have access to massive Blu-Ray storage capacities, 90 percent of games released for the console are launched on the Xbox 360 as well and therefore have to be around the same size. Even games released exclusively on the PS3 do not make full use of Blu-Ray’s storage potential.<\/p>\n

It is obvious that Lempel’s comment was intended to impress a broader audience who have no idea how these things work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sony offers decidedly weak answer as to why it won\u2019t match Xbox Live\u2019s game download service<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11681],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-playstation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}