Digital Superheroes
It happened on the 16th December 2009. The world of PlayStation Network was rocked by a massive explosion as the Digital Superheroes crashed through the worlds orbit and made landfall in the hands off PlayStation Portable owners!
Digital distribution has had a massive effect on the entertainment world over recent years, for example it is hard to imagine where the music industry would be without it. One of the other area which has seen digital distribution having a massive effect has been the world of video games, especially the home console market now with the idea of the games console sitting in your living room not just being for games, but instead it has become your home entertainment system. With the advent of Xbox Live and PlayStation Network we are seeing the platform holders expanding their offerings to other forms media, not just games. Though a big part of these services are still focused on offering you video games, they have also been expanded to offer digital distribution for video content as well as other services. So what is next on the list for these platforms?
Well if your Sony Computer Entertainment, the next on the list for digital distribution via PlayStation Network is digital comics for users off the PlayStation Portable. Digital comics aren’t a new thing, they have been around for some time now in a few different forms. Perhaps the most notable service until recently has been Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited which has offered a rental system off sorts which lets you read as many comics as you like for a monthly fee as long as you have a internet connection. More recently though mobile platforms have been the main focus of expansion for digital comics, with various companies such as iVerse Comics signing deals with different publishers to offer their comics through Apps developed for the iPhone and Android phones. With Sony having over 50 million PlayStation Portables out in the wild around the world, all with the ability to access PlayStation Network via a wireless internet connection, and with the cross-over between gamers and comic book readers it’s not surprising that Sony would want to get involved with the digital comics market, and personally I think it was a very smart move by Sony to do so.
The idea of reading a comic on your PlayStation Portable is obviously going to raise a few questions, but the team behind the Digital Comics service for PlayStation Network have done some amazing work to solve to the problems you might be thinking about. What they have come with is a Digital Reader which was released with firmware 6.20, it is the application which you will use to read all your comics (the Digital Reader may be used for other forms of print material in the future). Simply connect to the PlayStation Network and fire up the PlayStation Store and you will find a new “Comics” store front which operates exactly the same as the games and video store, after you have downloaded your comic you open up the Digital Reader and it will update its database to contain your new comic.
Creating a single application to read every comic instead of individual apps for each comic isn’t the key to what the folks at Sony’s Studio London have created though, the key is the features they have built into the Digital Reader and those features make for a very enjoyable reading experience. The main feature of what Sony are offering is what they are calling AutoFlow, and it is this system which really makes the whole idea of digital comics on your PSP work. AutoFlow is simply a system which direct you through the comic as the creator had planned, and all you have to do it tap right on the D-pad and it with automatically move you from panel to panel, zooming it or out when it needs to and panning the camera around to make sure you see everything on the page. The system of course doesn’t magically do that by itself, but Sony have provided the tools needed to all the publishers involved so that they can implement the AutoFlow system so it can guide you through the comic as the creator had planned. The Digital Reader also has manual controls for those times when you want to look at something more closely, or perhaps you want to navigate the comic yourself.
Simply using AutoFlow to be your guide would be good enough for most people, but the team behind the Digital Reader have clearly put a lot of effort into it and have thought off some extra bells and whistle that add very nicely to the whole experience. They have included a built in mp3 player so that you can listen to music while you read your comic, and they have also included the ability to bookmark any comic your reading so that you can easily return to that page any time you like. Perhaps the most notable extra features that Studio London have added though are the extra features with publishers can add to their comics, these include the ability to manipulate the camera so that they can create some special effects, for example you can create a rumble effect to shake a panel if it has a fight scene or a big explosion in perhaps and for me even though its quite minor it can add a greater sense of action to a panel that your standard print version of a comic can’t. Publishers have also been given the ability to add audio to their comics, and at present it comes in two forms, one being small added sound effect much in the same vein as shaking a panel, but the other audio option is rather special and that is the ability for the publisher to add audio commentary to their comic like you would find on the special features of a DVD or Blu-Ray. If a comic includes audio commentary you will find the option to listen to it under the “Extras” tab when you a viewing the comics description before you start reading it.
So the Digital Reader works really well and the interface is very sleek which all adds up to very good user experience, but like most things there are some improvements which can be made to the Digital Reader itself, though not that many in my view. At present the biggest issue with the Digital Reader itself is that there is no way to delete comics from your PSP itself, to do that you will need to hook your PSP up to a PC and either use the Media Go software to delete them or delete them straight off the memory card. Most people are likely to have some form of access to a PC, but it is still a fairly big oversight especially considering that most PSP comes with a relatively small memory card, though most of the comics weigh in at between 20-50MB so they are pretty small. That issue is something the team at Studio London are already working to resolve though so you should expect an update for the Digital Reader to be coming along fairly soon. Other issues are harder to pick out, but one might be that it would be nice to have a few more categories to browse your collection by, but that is a very minor thing and as it is now it is still very easy to find the comic you want even in a large collection.
The only other issue I would consider worth noting with the Digital Reader is that if you have a Japanese PSP, you are going to run into some problems. For what ever reason, Sony Computer Entertainment Japan have developed and released there own Digital Reader and Digital Comics service for PSP and when you update your PSP to firmware 6.20 it detects which region the hardware is from and will automatically install the Japanese version of the Digital Reader which will not support comics bought in a different region. Going by forum posts and general internet chat this seems to have effected a fair number of people, but it not something I think you could blame Studio London for. They are trying to find out from the firmware team to see if they can work out away round it, but it doesn’t sound like something that will be an easy fix, but those are the sort of risks you run when you import something from a different region.
Sony also have one other card up there sleeve when it comes to Digital Comics for PlayStation Network, and that is the publishers involved. Right from the start when the service was publicly announced at Gamescom 2009 in August they had Marvel Comics on board as one of the publishers to provide content right from the launch of the service. On top of Marvel they have IDW Publishing, 2000 AD, Insomnia and Disney, plus through iVerse Comics they also have content from the likes of Image Comics and Red5Comics. It is thanks to that early support that Sony were able to launch the service with a great line-up of comics and are able to keep offering weekly updates which means the Comics store will continue to grow. The hefty launch line-up and weekly store updates might bring to light one issue with the structure of the PlayStation Network’s Comics store, and that is simply how do you organise the store to make it easy for people to find what they want? As it stands you can browse the store by publisher or genre, and that is split-up A-Z aswell. You can also check out what the latest store update had in it, but it could perhaps be organised better. But if you know what your after you can always use the Search function to find it.
Something else which might raise a question from you in the pricing, how much will a digital comic cost you? Well, this was something that actually really shocked me when I found out about the pricing, but in a good way. Normally if you go to pick up a single issue of a comic from a shop, or even online they cost you around £2.40 which is rather expensive in my opinion and is the one of the reasons I’ve always been one to wait for the collections to be released (the other reason being that finding a comic store here isn’t easy!). With that in mind I was expecting the publishers to charge about £1.50 per issue, but instead a single issue only costs you £0.79 or £1.19 depending on the publishers! Still I see people saying that’s expensive, but compared to the print version? Not really. Also worth noting when it comes to the price is that IDW Publishing who have been the first to use audio commentary in Ben Templesmith’s Wormwood series are still only charging £0.79 for that even with the extra audio! Oh and you will also find a selection of free comics available to download, and Insomnia have stated that the first chapter of all there books will be free so be sure to check those out. Free doesn’t equal rubbish when it comes to this.
Other people have been asking about a subscription model but it seems like thats something that PlayStation Network doesn’t support at the minute, though being able to subscribe to a series would indeed be very nice, in the meantime though you could see publishers bundling full story arcs together for a slightly reduced price, but we will have to wait and see on that front. People looking a monthly subscription to have unlimited use of the store like Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited aren’t likely to see that happen as far as I can see. For one, you are actually buying a digital comic from PlayStation Network instead of just basically paying to view a digital comic online and the other issue is how would you get the different publishers to agree to it?
The final part of the Digital Comic service to talk about in this now really rather long blog post in the PlayStation Network Comics website which has some very nice features which everyone should be aware on. The site has it own Blog which I’m told will be getting regular updates (I’m looking at you Pete!) as well as forum for the community to use, but the most notable feature in the Catalogue which will let you view everything that is available on the store, and lets read the description for each comic which is very nice when your planning your shopping list. But it also provides for you with a link to buy each comic which will take you to PlayStation Store via Media Go, and that sort of integration is something I’ve wanted to see from the other sections of the PlayStation Store for quite awhile. As with the Digital Reader the team at Studio London also have plans to expand the website features, one of which might be the addition of previews. So make sure you keep an eye on the website to see what is happening on that front. And if you use Twitter then make sure your following the Official PSN Comics twitter to keep up to date with what is going on, or just to bug Pete with loads of question.
As a comic reader who mainly stuck to reading books from DC Comics, but was always interested in what else was out there, especially from Marvel, Digital Comics on the PlayStation Network has been a godsend. Even with the store just having launched last month, I’ve already found numerous comics that I’ve had a fantastic time reading and I’ll list some of my personal highlights below. Al-in-all though, the launch of the service has been a tremendous success in my eyes and its something which will only improve with time as Sony improve on the features they are already offering and the amount of content on the store continues to grow. Along with that I’m sure we will see publishers making more use of the features they have available to them, and getting better at using them. Really can’t wait to see how the service has progressed by this time next year, though my wallet might not been so happy by then!
Recommended Reading
Slaine: Book of Invasions #1: Moloch
Cancertown: An Inconvenient Tooth
For myself the Digital Comics service along with the introduction of PSP Minis has really revitalised my PlayStation Portable, it was before hand only getting use now and again, might even of went months without being touch by now it’s hardly ever out of my hands when I have free time.
