Unlike Sony, Microsoft Not Planning To Profit On Avatar Clothing Sales

MTV Multiplayer writes:

"We recently showed you what kind of fashions you can spend about $20 on to make your PlayStation Home avatar look just a little more snazzy. For 49 cents, you too can wear a virtual cowboy hat - or at least your Home avatar can.

So is this the future? A world of cheap avatar fashion purchases?

Sony seems to believe in it. Microsoft, I've learned, does not."

[MURKERR]

...

[Nathan Drake]

And boom goes the dynamite.

[DavidMacDougall]

Yeah there getting enough money from the 50 a year gamer tax to care

[Marceles]

zing!

[morganfell]

It has nothing to do with XBL charges. If they could get money they would. Rather it's like MS trying to charge for Bluray. They don't have that functionality. The same goes here. What functionality do the MS avatars possess?

You are less likely to pay to have a car repainted or give it new seatcovers if the car doesn't run, you can't drive it around the block, hell you can't even get it out of the garage.

[sonarus]

Nobody is going to pay for clothing i know i won't I probably will never change the way my home avatar looks...EVER. The best they can do is what microsoft is doing where specific clothing items can be unlocked via trophies or whatever.

[caladbolg777]

I probably will never purchase any articles of clothing on the HOME store. Actually, I have a hard time imagining a handful of people I know that would. I do like the idea of unlocking special outfits with achievements though. That would actually give me an excuse to waste time accomplishing them.

[TheDude2dot0]

Yeah morganfell's right. The clothes for the avatars in NXE aren't really worth paying for because you really don't use them much.

[xlg]

How much? Just $50 a year? How much people pay to play a MMORPG? Are they complaining? $50 its nothing. I Bet you spend more money in a year for stupid things! But hey your free HOME its boring http://ps3.ign.com/articles...

[Ryo-Hazuki]

wow, whoever wrote this garbage is an idiot. Microsoft already said initially they wont charge for avatar clothing.....key word "initially"

[gaffyh]

Lol, I seriously doubt that MS is not thinking of making money from avatars, when they charge for gamer pics.

And if either company does charge, it should only be for premium clothing (i.e. brand names), atleast then people have a choice of what to wear

[Jrome]

exactly, they've already paid for the clothing

[theEnemy]

They just want to make profit on everything else.

[UltimateIdiot911]

You already can do that. Download Namco Beta demo through the Japanese store. I'm not sure how the unlocks work but so far I've unlocked about 7 items or so through that. You can unlock a total of 16 clothes I believe and arcade system. Also, you can unlock items with those in game arcades.

[yaboi]

is going to start a flame war!!

[ruibing]

So I guess silver members are being subsidized by gold members? I almost didn't notice that the article mentioned the pricing different between the two services until the very last paragraph in parenthesis.

[ezcex]

I know that I read that MS said they are giving the first couple for free, and that they will eventually charge. Someone look it up please to shut these idiotic fanboys up. I know its somewhere on N4G, I don't care enough to go research that is all.

EDIT: NVM I was wrong. It said MS will be updating clothes for the next 6 months. Not sure if they will charge or not yet. Sorry again. My fault.

[Xi]

wrong post.

[Light Yagami]

Sony ripping people off like always.

[ProperFunked]

personally the only reason i did is cuz i dont wanna look like every other single person in Home, individualism. and its just 49.cents, whats the big fvcking deal? and considering im blowning $110 on Ben Sherman shoes i dont have a personal problem with it at all, i just perfer to look good, VR or RL. unless im playing my clowny fat chick for kicks

[Mozilla89]

If you read the article the guy says "We don't see it (avatar clothing) as being a tremendous source of revenue.". I don't think Sony is thinking "Were gonna make millions of clothes in Home!" Its stupid to think so. Basically this guy is a fanboy, neither company is really gonna profit from it.

[pathetic fanboys]

a rush to defend sony, and attack microsoft at every turn and thread on n4g. just look at every comment above me, and then look at their agrees..lol this is one pathetic web-site and community now. why is their even a pretence of impartiality on here now?

90% of the community are in love with sony, nearly all the contributors, and people with approval rites aswell. plus, it's crystal clear what side of the fence the pathetic and most useless admin i've seen on any web-site site.

[Megatron08]

The idoit ps3 fanboy talking about 50 dollars are just that idoits. 1st off you can get it for 30-35 if you watch for sells. 2nd you dont even need a gold membership to dress/play with your avatar you can still do that with a free silver account.

I'm betting sony will be make a lot of money off avatar clothing. Seems stupid to pay for it if you ask me but I think the same thing about themes and game pis on XBL and people buy tons of those.

People having been saying MS needs to do something with there achievements/gamescore for a long time and this is what they came up. People using to buy multiplat games on 360 of the achievements now that sony is starting to come out with achievements too MS will lose that so they need a way to make theirs better. Plus sony been talkin about a reward system for their achievements too but they havent said what it will be yet.

see competition really is good

[paul-p1988]

M$ NOT wanting to make money off of every possible little thing??? Has hell just frozen over? Is Satan on ski's? Is my very existence even reality?? So many questions that need answering now!!

[phosphor112]

I call BS. MS always tries to capitalize off of their things whether they admit it or not.

[SL1M DADDY]

The more I am truly enjoying it and getting to know people is great. I have added several new friends to my list and knowing all of this, I could quite possibly see myself spending a couple dollars for clothing later. A couple bucks is nothing and considering that I already pay for services like Live, I can't see why spending a dollar or two (a Mcdonald Value Meal's worth) on a couple virtual outfits for my "Homie".

[godofthunder10]

The same people that's saying it's not bad that sony will charge for the cloths are the same ones that were saying Microsoft will because they are greedy.Look at morganfell and ProperFunked post.When the aviatas first came out for the 360 they were saying that Microsoft will charge the people for the cloths and they would never pay for them.Now that Sony will charge for the cloths for their avitarts the same ones are now saying they will buy them because it's not bad.It's funny how fanboys always change their minds when it's about the system they have.

I'm also tired of the same people that keep saying microsoft is out to make as much money as they can.They act like sony isn't.The fact is that sony is just like microsoft.The only reason that sony put BR in the ps3 was to try and get it in the homes through the ps3 so they could make BR the next format so they can make money.Sony didn't do any of these things to help the people, they did it to make money just like every company does and that's a fact.ps3 fanboys should just stop acting like sony cares about them.The fact is that sony doesn't give a sh*t about them and microsoft doesn't either.

The same people are the same ones that keep saying that microsoft screwed the people when they gave every one a 3 year warrinty.They act and say things like sony would never do anything like that.The fact is that sony lost a class action lawsuit over the ps2.The ps2 had a defected drive in it.It would read can't read disc when you try to play a game.Sony gave the people a 2 week warrinty from a date they gave.After 2 weeks and your ps2 went out you had to pay sony to fix it or buy a new ps2.I had to buy 5 in less then 3 years.Every one that i knew that had a ps2 had to buy at least 2 and every one i knew had a ps2.In a way i guess they are right when they said sony would never do anything like microsoft did by giveing people a 3 year warrinty for a defected system.Sony only gave a 2 week warrinty for a defected system and that's a fact and all people have to do is look it up.

The fact is that sony does the same thing like microsoft does.The fact is that all big companies deals under the table som times.if they never did they wouldn't be where they are right now and that's a fact.if sony never had made deals under the table they never would be as big as they are and the other companies would have distroyed them.

The ps3 and 360 are both great systems with negative and positive things about them.They both have bad and good games on them.The wii will win this generation.The 360 and ps3 will fight it out for the #2 spot and the loser want be for behind.The fact is that they could all stop fighting who's going to win this generation.The only ones that's not fighting over it is the wii owners and wii is the one that will win.

[phosphor112]

While you do have a point, you must keep in mind Home is more of a virtual world while 360 Avatars are only, well, avatars. People would pay to pimp out their Home characters and strut around in what ever outfit they have (or what ever bigscreen they bought on there and what not) than to pay for an outfit for a character that is virtually non interactive beyond making him/her dizzy/smile/etc.

Also the PS2 defect, yes it did exist, but it was about 5% of the PS2's. I bought a launch PS2, and I had to finally fix it this year. I opened it and adjusted the knob that is available to realign the lens. You really can't do that with the 360 if it were to RROD. Anyway, that's not the point.

Sony really has "cared", of course they want to make money, as does every other company, but Sony has taken many steps to make things convenient for the PS3 user. Sony has put a lot of time and effort into Firmware updates, releasing new features almost every time. The built in BR wasn't just a choice to make it the winning format, but they also realized games will need to be larger, and larger games mean a need for a larger storage medium.

Also keep in mind sony has been going negative with each PS3 sold, so for them to want to gain money isn't something suprising. Just keep in mind that while MS has put a lot of effort into their console, most of their effort went into the RROD and making it go away, while sony has been improving their products hardware AND software (along with helping developers).

[Elven6]

Of course not, isn't Sony charging for furniture and such?

[Megatron08]

phosphor112 yes and there are a ton more ps2 sold then 360. At 5% thats 7.5 million defective ps2.

Home avarats are completely useless and you apartment is even more usless spendin money on a fake apartment that maybe max 20 will ever see. Your avatar can walk around a room with a few people in it 99% of them will never even notice you. Thats if anyone is still even using home in a couple of months.

NXE avatars your friends will see everytime they log on. They are also designed special games that you can play with your avatars. While there are only a few right now they are working on more. So over time NXE avatars will be used more and more while over timehome will fade away.

[bpac123456789]

Microsoft already charges 50 dollars a month they make a profit on there xbox live service. Sony is free and with the years of work that wen't into home they need someway to recoupe the cost. If they have to nickle and dime the consumer than so be it. I For one won't buy a thing to customize my avatar, but some people might.

[house]

unlike ms sony does not charge for internet. so why wouldnt sony wanna make money off of home

[No Way]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

[Nathan Drake]

Sony doesn't charge for the ability to play Online.

(Waits for someone to come in with "teh silver member special month in effect!")

[DiabloRising]

Sony, unlike Microsoft, does not charge for Theme Packs.

[NaiNaiNai]

microsoft unlike sony doesnt shutdown there servers. yea thats right, when a game on a sony console drops below 1000 players for a extended period of time, they shut down the servers. or just shut them down cause they feel like it. >.> if i recall even forza 1 is still up and running.
-nai-

[SCThor]

Good luck playing alone!

[Ghoul]

Unlike Microsoft, Sony Not Planning To Profit On :

- Wireless Lan
- Recharable Controller
- Online Gaming
- Overpriced harddrives
- Theme Packs
- Demos (gold member crap)
- a broken console
- an obsolete dead media addon.

And probably the MOST important. Sony doesnt bash randomly on microsoft or nintendo like ms is doing it all day.

EDIT ::

@NaiNaiNai
So does microsoft and any other serverhost on this planet. grow up...

[GiantEnemyCrab]

You don't have to have a Gold sub to be able to use and access avatars.

Sony unlike Microsoft doesn't charge for Wireless Lan

That's great, it's also starteing at $199 vs $400 for a PS3. So the price is appropriate for what you are getting. I don't use wireless LAN for my gaming. You can also spot the wireless n00bs with their crap ping times. If you are on wireless LAN don't bother playing with me, if my clan sees your crappy ping times you are booted.

Sony unlike Microsoft doesn't charge for a Recharable Controller

Buy yourself a pair of rechargable batteries for $8 and your done. Unlike the PS3 controllers that once that battery stops holding a charge you are either going to have to buy another one or send it in for service. The battery is not user servicable if you want to keep your warranty.

Sony unlike Microsoft doesn't charge for Online Gaming

Like I said above you don't need to pay for online gaming to use what this article is talking about. When I compare the options of the 2 services I will pay for XBL.

Sony unlike Microsoft doesn't force you to buy overpriced harddrives.

They don't force you to get anything. Prior owners can get a FREE memcard to store their profile or a 20 gig HDD for $20. The Arcade SKU comes with a 512MB for free and now the Jasper revision comes with the memory built into the system. I agree not having an HDD in every console sucks but there are options and you are not forced to do anything. The 1 SKU that doesn't come with an HDD is not aimed at gamers like you or me. It's aimed at someone who wants to throw a game in every once in a while and the Arcade SKU does that just fine.

[Sitdown]

"Sony unlike Microsoft doesn't charge for Wireless Lan
Sony unlike Microsoft doesn't charge for a Recharable Controller
Sony unlike Microsoft doesn't charge for Online Gaming
Sony unlike Microsoft doesn't force you to buy overpriced harddrives
Sony unlike Microsoft doesn't charge for Theme Packs
Sony unlike Microsoft doesn't charge for Demos (gold member crap)
Sony unlike Microsoft gave you a working console
Sony unlike Microsoft gave you a bluray reference player instead of giving you an obsolete dead media addon.

And probably the MOST important. Sony doesnt bash randomly on microsoft or nintendo like ms is doing it all day."

Is Sony given their controllers away for free? From my understanding they are the ones with rechargeable controllers....the 360 controller is not rechargeable.....but you can get rechargeable battery packs or batteries. What happens with the ds3 once it will no longer hold a charge?

Forced to by a harddrive....they must suck at forcing people, cause I have not bought one as of today..and I have had a 360 since launch.

Anyhoo they both have their positives and negatives....it would be nice if everybody was able to enjoy all the consoles....this is my first time being able to own all three major consoles...and its great.

[Ghoul]

abolutly agree, i love em all pc consoles what ever. those stupid "news" on the other hand deserve to be counterd with the same illogical craptalk.

Mostly because im really getting sick about the unpolite manners of ms. They bash the competition whenever possible without reason, are they that feared ? unpolite ? what is it i cant understand it. It's stupid childish and divides the community instead of bringing them together.

[Jrome]

@Sitdown
When the ds3 will no longer hold a charge...you simply unscrew the screws...and replace the battery with another lithium ion battery.

/owned

[gaffyh]

@NaiNaiNai - what kind of sad bastard wants to play a game online when no one is online?

@GiantEnemyCrab - You can replace the battery in the PS3 controller, it's just a lot harder than the 360 controller. On the other hand it doesn't die as quickly (as in amount of times it's charged NOT how long the charge lasts) as the 360 play & charge kit. Also who wants to always have to take the batteries out of the controller and charge them separately?

[Xi]

Microsoft's online functionality actually works.

I hate this "you can't complain if it's free" attitude. If someone throws a rock at you, are you going to complain? even though you didn't have to pay him to throw said rock at you? Just because something is free doesn't make it good.

and ghoul... what do you call qore? is it not sony's goal for people to pay for early demo's and releases codes via that? What about home clothing/furniture, is that not just them packs for your home avatar?

edit for ghoul.
Tell that to the socom fans, and a plethora of other problems that people were facing in games like warhawk, and even the recent home issues.

[Ghoul]

"Also unlike sony.
Microsoft's online functionality actually works.
"

are you high ?

i own both system and psn wasnt down a SINGLE time
while L!VE had downtimes for several DAYS

[Sitdown]

Haha...you owned by answering my question? Wow....you are the MAN. *stands up and begins to clap* Ahhh may your "victory" be sweet, and you rest well at night.

[Xi]

Do you have to pay for those batteries, or does sony ship them to you free of charge?

/owned.

[rockleex]

Because PSN was down for a whole month last Christmas while Xbox Live was working the whole time!!!

/sarcasm

[Megatron08]

Unlike Sony MS doesnt force you to buy overprived dvd players
Ulike sony MS doesnt jack up the pirce of their systems to include trash you dont want like wifi
Ulike sony MS doesnt keep down grading their system and removing features.
Ulike sony MS doesnt doesnt take years to upgrade their online serves
Ulike sony MS doesnt force you to buy a new HDD cause of forced install
Ulike sony MS doesnt force you to buy extra cables to play you games in HD
Ulike sony MS allows you to talk to your friends on XBL no matter what game you are playing.
Ulike sony MS allows talk to 8 friends no matter what game anyone is playing
Ulike sony MS doesnt release system that are defective to make a release (oh and it was proven that sony does in a court of law)
Ulike sony MS doesnt put viruses on there software that uploads to your computer (again proven in a court of law)

[0verdrive]

LOL what kind of wireless router do you have?

ping times on a wireless lan are barely higher than wired connections, in realtime while playing games. honestly, especially now with wireless-n routers, wireless has evolved high enough to be comparable to wired speeds while playing games. just because you have a 10+mb connection doesnt mean you are going to be constantly pinging 3 in a video game. the bottleneck is the servers, not your router. you have have the fastest internet in the world, but the xbl servers are not going to be able to handle those kind of speeds. wireless is just fine, your just making an excuse to hate on wireless. honestly, if you end up buying a 80 foot long ethernet to connect your xbox in your room to the router in your family room, youll probably have similar speed degradation as wireless. no one "needs" wireless, but its a damn nice convenience, and it comes at very little price in terms of speed(in terms of gaming online, at least)

and this whole shibang about the ds3 controllers not being able to hold a charge is ridiculous. the buttons the pad are going to stop working before those batteries give out. seriously. people need to stop trying to beat around the bush and change the subject just to try and win arguments.

[phosphor112]

But it happened to my friend, and he got it replaced for free. They just swapped out the battery on his controller. (its ok, he was still able to play cuz he had other controllers)

[gaffyh]

@Xi - I don't remember seeing the PSN down at an unscheduled time in the whole two years I've had it. They only take it down for server maintenance and when they are ready to do a major update.

[LoVeRSaMa]

"Unlike Sony MS doesnt force you to buy overprived dvd players"

-The Xbox is an Overpriced DVD player...

"Ulike sony MS doesnt jack up the pirce of their systems to include trash you dont want like wifi"

-I need WIFI for my Wireless network (welcome to the 21 century)

"Ulike sony MS doesnt keep down grading their system and removing features."

-Because the Xbox Arcade is full of features?

"Ulike sony MS doesnt doesnt take years to upgrade their online serves"

-PSN has only Exsisted for years, and considering the length of time they have been out compared to Microsoft's Online Service, id say there doing pretty well.

"Ulike sony MS doesnt force you to buy a new HDD cause of forced install"

-Some Xboxs dont come with a HDD, I havent replaced my HDD its fine, and even if I did thats £80 for a 320GB, where as it would be like £100 for an 80GB, something stupid rediculus.

"Ulike sony MS doesnt force you to buy extra cables to play you games in HD"

-£13 and extra charges, please dont let me start, the Xbox is barely HD anyway, whats that most dont even have a HDMI port?

"Ulike sony MS allows you to talk to your friends on XBL no matter what game you are playing."

-I can type to my friends, but talking is getting there, its likely ill have it in a firmware update that will be released soon, you know because the PS3 is updated almost every month with improvments and more cool features :)

"Ulike sony MS allows talk to 8 friends no matter what game anyone is playing"

-Wow I might just go out and sell my PS3 now.

"Ulike sony MS doesnt release system that are defective to make a release (oh and it was proven that sony does in a court of law)"

-Wait wait Wait, your telling me that SONYs systems are defective?
I don't even need to reply to this one, ill just leave this for you to think about.

"Ulike sony MS doesnt put viruses on there software that uploads to your computer (again proven in a court of law)"

-Windows?
I am sorry thats the biggest peice of spyware on my PC tbh, constantly closing programs, trying to make sure I am not doing anything I am not suppused to be, Vista is the biggest virus in History imo, and Id love to see this Sony Virus your speaking of.

---------------------------

At the end of the day, know nothing Kidiots like yourself are going to blab crap all over this news site and it cannot be helped.

Please, Please Continue, I love reading what you guys put it makes me smile =D

How can someone be so wrong?

oh yea -1 Bubble(s) for your Ignorance, and +1 Disagree.

[xwabbit]

ROFLMAO! this has to be the funniness article on N4G.

[Jazz4108]

I own both systems and downloaded home last night for the first time, after trying to get in for over 1 hour i finally did and boy is it lame.

[khsmooth]

Supposed to be used to report what's wrong with the article so the person submitting it can actually fix it, and not to make random comments which should go in the comment section? Yet I forget that this site is much like bizarro world lol

[Foxgod]

Glad they don't charge, no way in hell i would pay for a piece of virtual clothing.

[TrooGamer]

They do charge tho dont they?

[Foxgod]

According to this article MS leaves the decision in the hands of the developers, MS gives an example that clothing items could be earned by unlocking them in game.

That would be neat, you could have your little halo avatar or final fantasy avatar.

[SCThor]

I have:

-Echocrome clothes
-Pacman clothes
-Ice Breaker hat,t-shirt,etc
-An Arcade Machine in my place

etc,etc...and FREE.

[MGOelite]

and unlike microsoft, sony isnt planning to profit off online services. works both ways MTV

[Kleptic]

Greenburg is the definition of douche, although I think this article did a good job of pointing out the obvious XBL fee thing at the bottom...

as far as I knew though, Sony wasn't profiting on things like this either...the profit is for the actual clothes manufacturer, as the entire thing is geared in an advertising sense...

Sony collects checks from their partners who want to offer stuff in Home...the partners collect the revenue from the sales of the clothes...there obviously may be a slight royalty fee or something, but its not somewhere that Sony is looking to profit on...

So once again...Greenburg misses the point of Home...you get free stuff from Sony, just like you get for avatars in XBL...he makes it sound like you have buy everything in Home, which is wrong...there is premium stuff if you want it, but you don't need it...and in fact you will most likely simply get made fun of by others if you do buy it...

mean while...Greenburg sits back and basically paints Sony as the better company...in that they fully admits they are charging you XBL subscribers to pay to play online, when Sony doesn't, and that THAT is easy profit...

Greenburg sucks...he's one of those 'I don't get it, so it can't be good' type of bags that just needs choked...

[AngryTypingGuy]

I think the idea of unlocking avatar items through game achievements is great. It's bragging rights in a way, especially if you can unlock a cool item that your friends can't. I like that idea way more than spending little bits here and there to upgrade your avatar.

[Nicaragua17]

Oh please,Microsh1t charge for XBL,and charge for DLC that game developers want gamers who bought their game to have for free.The BS detector went off instantly.

[I_am_rushin]

Then why the F*ck are they charging for them?!?!?!?

[gambare]

just for those who wants to pay for something special, in any case there is a strong rumor about the trophies being "virtual money" for stuff in home, so many people will wait.

[GiantEnemyCrab]

Who are you talking about? If you are referring to MS they are not charging for any clothing. What cloths have you paid for? There are none that cost money.

[SmokingMonkey]

...just on over priced hard drives and wireless network adaptors......and faulty systems.

Is it true this new jasper model is STILL 10% defective?

[SmokingMonkey]

i just copied and pasted the title of the article

[Foxgod]

you made a faulty comment about hardware that is not needed to play on your 360.

Also the comment about the Jasper you just grabbed out of the air.
That is considered a flame debate.