SPOnG had a fiddle with the new video download store, which hits today, and if you’ve ever used the Game side of the PlayStation Store, you don’t have anything to worry about. It works exactly the same. Rentals sit on your hard drive and are playable for two weeks, until you begin playback in which case you have two days to watch it to the end before it disappears.
Both rentals and purchased movies can be transferred between PS3 to PSP with ease, but you can’t watch the same film on both devices at the same time. Displayed on huge HD TVs (Sony-branded, of course), both SD and HD films were very high in visual quality. HD offerings are limited to rentals at the moment, but I was told that buyable HD movies will be available soon.
In having a closer examination of the store itself, it seems that while the visuals are top notch, the audio might leave something to be desired for some tech-heads. SD purchases and HD rentals offer 2 Channel Stereo only, but perhaps this is something SCEE will upgrade once buyable HD films are rolled out.
Whatever Sony’s reasons, it’s still enough to incense people to anger - one riled attendee was so disappointed in the audio offering that he threatened to Twitter how Xbox’s video store was superior. Madness! Speaking of which, 300 was one of the films on show, and it looked great. Rock on, highly defined Gerard Butler-face.
As I ate miniature Shephard Pies and drank from the rather interesting Sony-branded cocktail menu (take a look at the pictures from the event, by the way), I managed to sit down with Alison Turner, SCEE’s Director of Content, Marketing and Programming for the VDS. We spoke of the launch, the workings of the service and the possible future. Take a look.
Alison Turner: Exactly, we’ve been working really hard to get the movies that we think our consumers would want to see. To do this, we have an acquisitions team, and they go out and make the deals [with other movie studios]. Then we decide what films from those studios we want to put on there, and after that it’s just a case of marketing it.
SPOnG: Europe’s had to wait a year or so for the Video store. It must have been a challenge to roll that out across all the different countries, how have you tried to tackle that?
Alison Turner: Well what we’ve done is really focused on how much content we wanted to provide. So for now we wanted to keep this a purely movie-based experience and just focus on getting movies on the service first. With that in mind we were able to commit ourselves 100% to getting deals with studios, and as a result we’ve ended up with about 2,000 pieces of content across Europe. It’s not just the big Hollywood studios either, we’ve really tried hard to get localised deals with local studios involved as well. So that’s what’s taken a lot of the time. We’ve been really diligent in going out and getting local product.
SPOnG: How difficult has it been to approach other studios about your proposition? I know they want to get their own content to as many outlets as possible, but they all have a rival in Sony Pictures right? Was that a problem?
Alison Turner: Not really, they’ve all been amazing! (laughs) Not only on just doing the deals with us, but also in moving forward and putting some promotions together. We have a free copy of Transformers for new PS3 registrations, and for current customers there’s a copy of The Da Vinci Code when you purchase Angels and Demons as well, and we couldn’t have done those without the relevant studios’ support.
The studios are really game for helping us with promotions like those, and we’ll be lining up some more, similar offers around Christmas time.
SPOnG: The PlayStation Video Delivery Service is the latest in a string of applications that consumers can use to purchase and rent movies. For a while the Xbox 360 has been doing it, and there’s also the iTunes store for PC users. What would you say would be the unique selling points of choosing the PSN’s service?
Alison Turner: A combination of things. For one, you have the choice of carrying your purchases around with you wherever you go - your movies can be transferred onto your PSP so you can watch it anywhere. The quality of our downloads is very high as well, if you choose to watch on your big screen; even in SD our movies look great on your TV.
I think the fact that we’ve done some local deals is to our benefit too, so we have a real breadth and depth of content. It’s not just the same movies as you might find in other stores or online, you’ll be able to catch some unique indie titles too.
SPOnG: It certainly seems like the PSN has come in leaps and bounds over the years in what it offers for download and the integration, if you like, of various forms of media. For example, I could buy PixelJunk Monsters and then buy the full music soundtrack afterwards. Is that something you’re considering with the VDS, do you think you would offer film soundtracks too?
Alison Turner: That’s an interesting idea! We’re totally focused on movies right now, but I think what we really need to look forward to doing is rolling out the service across all European territories in 2010. That’s going to be a priority, but afterwards it would be great to look into things like soundtracks.
SPOnG: Do you have any scope or timeframe for when the other European countries can enjoy the Video download store?
Alison Turner: We haven’t made any announcements, but our plan is 2010.
SPOnG: How do you plan to sustain the video store after its launch? Is it something you will continue to update on a regular basis?
Alison Turner: Well we’ve got 2,000 movies right now, and we expect to introduce another 50 titles every week. So there’s quite a lot to go through (laughs).
SPOnG: Finally, you say you’re concentrating on movies at the moment, but do you have any plan for things like TV shows or are you going to see how well the movies do for the time being?
Alison Turner: I think we’ll just focus on movies, roll it out to the rest of Europe and then see what we can do about adding new sections to the video store.
SPOnG: Alison Turner, thanks for your time.
Alison Turner: Thank you.