The reality is that right now people are hurting for entertainment capital. It's not level with their knowledge of acquiring digital media for free.

Lots of geeks out there working an hour just for two gallons of gas - if that! The economy can't take much more screwing with before the entertainment sector looses out to rent, transport, food, and broadband.

While I'm disappointed that Sony found this to be a success, it's not that big of a surprise to see it as the most downloaded show for the first week. Out of all the videos that launched last week, this was the only original program that no one had ever seen before. A lot of people downloaded it to test out the service instead of paying for a show or movie they've already seen before. I saw many gaming review sites pick Xam'd to show in their demos.

Now that everyone has had a sample of the service, I will be surprised to see how many people (including Gia and yourself) decide to stick around for the 2nd and 3rd episode at that price. ;-)

In the meantime, I'll continue to enjoy my cheaper FUNimation downloads that don't expire after a 14 day/ 24 hour window.

At first I thought it was a bit expensive, but if you put it in a different perspective, it really isn't at all. Think about small one and done expenses that you make every day. Lunch, toll fare, subway/bus fare. Chances are you might spend twice as much on lunch alone as you would on Xam'd. $3-$4 just once a week is not a big deal compared to spending that every single day on stuff that might bring you no joy at all (unless you have amazing lunches). And honestly, if a few bucks extra a week is gonna set you that far back...guess what: Maybe buying a Playstation 3 wasn't the wisest idea.

Also, keep in mind that as of right now this is the ONLY source of revenue for the show. It isn't even available in Japan yet. Sure there are some anime on PSN available for $1.99 but those have been around for years and have had DVD releases all over the world. Xam'd has not.
Besides, just based on the first episode, it's one of the best anime I've seen all year. It was good enough that it left me with no qualms whatsoever about continuing to rent the show in HD.
Still, I am hoping that they drop the price a bit, and I would like to see this done for more series...because what they tried with Druaga and Blassreiter was not that great (I hate watching anime on my computer, and I hate watching it in crappy quality even more)

@bahamut

The problem I have with the pricing is that it's way above the standard for episodic downloads right now. Everyone charges $2 per each download-to-own episode. That's the price on everything in iTunes, Amazon, and XBLM, and it's the price of every episodic show on Playstation besides Xam'd.

The fact that they are singling out Xam'd and charging such a huge premium on it is ridiculous, and it's not going to convince people to give up on fansubbing it. And I just find it a bigger insult that when I pay them such a huge premium, I am forced to watch it all in one sitting. No freaking way.

@scott
I'm with you on the pricing of these shows but I'm totally against setting a price point at all.

I think these shows should be totally free to download and if the publisher wants to make money then he should add advertisements at the beginning of the show just like every anime we download.

Publishers should relies that they can't stop the pirates from pirating these products and they should bend to their demands.

I mean now its fairly easy to break any kind of DRM. Just look at xam'd in mininova: http://www.mininova.org/search/?search=xam%27d as you can see there is both the high quality and the low quality versions of xam'd posted yesterday. So the incentive for buying these shows is now diminished.

@b00017065: We've heard that to death already, and it's been explained to death already why that doesn't fly. Get with the program.

Back to the topic:

I'll be blunt, SONY has ticked me off a lot in the past for all sorts of reasons, especially how they've handled their PS3 (the hardware and pricing for it is excellent; how they talk to game makers and set up their marketplace however leaves much to be improved).

In this instance I agree with the rest of you guys, the pricing is a little high, REGARDLESS as to whether it's ONLY available legally through them. All that is is SONYs usual monopolistic approach. You don't see people pay 10 bucks extra on 360 games just cause they're only available on the 360, so why should they make an exception here? They need to learn that if they make something exclusive through them, their best option is to make it so they can make it as competitive as possible, not use it as an excuse to jack up the price.

HOWEVER, I believe most would agree the real issue with this though is in the limited timeframe they give you to watch it. Not only are you paying above regular price for it, you're not even able to watch it whenever you want, which is highway robbery pure and simple. Every Single Other major digital marketplace lets you keep whatever you download to watch again later, including the comparable Xbox Live Marketplace, and plus it costs them NOTHING to let you keep what you pay for on your PS3's hard drive, so there is absolutely NO excuse for this other than pure a**-hatery.

All the more reason I'm sticking with 360.

[quote]@b00017065: We've heard that to death already, and it's been explained to death already why that doesn't fly. Get with the program.
[/quote]

I agree on this point. No matter what format a media source is and no matter how affordable the price, there will always be somebody looking for something for nothing. There's always going to be illegal fansubs, mp3 rips, etc ad infinitum, and there will always be people who never had any legitimate interest in paying for the product in the first place who will download for free. However, there is a significant population that can be turned by reasonable offers despite the presence of fansubs, which is what most people here are talking about.

I also totally agree that the limited timeframe is the kicker to Sony's horrible deal. I can deal with a premium price, but c'mon guys. At least GIVE us the product. :P

And it doesn't cost Sony a d*** dime to let us keep it on there, so why the hell not!?