Sony needs to be cautious with PSN video pricing

I took a look at the new PSN store with the video feeds. I think that they’re on the right track since they took a cue from the Apple store to sell episodic television SDTV shows for $1.99USD. That’s actually very smart.

And the fact that Sony is now providing HD rentals and selling the videos is a smart move. This streaming business is starting to take off and he who has the most content at the right price will undoubtedly be the winner. But here’s the thing that Sony needs to be careful of. When the games that you download are not cheaper than the actual game on medium, then there’s no reason why people would want to buy the downloadable game. This is apparent with both PSP and PS3 games in the store, when you compare to usual market prices in the the brick-and-mortar establishments.

Similarly, if the downloaded movie isn’t cheap, then it’s not worth it. Some of the rentals were HD and saw that it was about $5.95USD a rental. While that is okay, and I don’t know what Blockbuster now rents them at, knowing that I have a Netflix account and the lowest one of those costs $4.99USD a month. But with that, you can still rent Blu-ray or HDDVD.

By being greedy a little bit for a dollar or a few dollars more, that could create a distance between your loyal consumers and your store. I believe that the people behind the pricing for the store have to be very adamant about keeping on top of the pricing of the markets for both media sales and how much price point they should go over for HD rentals. Exclusive shows do not constitute more payment (as seen with Xam’d).

We’ll see with this new offering by Sony. It’s definitely welcome, but on the flip side if they’re not careful of how they sell their content, then there are a lot less people with PS3s as those with Apple hardware.

Photo Credit: (Dekuwa)