For anyone who was an original member of the Playstation Underground, this shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Sony Computer Entertainment of America says they will unveil “Qore” this week. Much like the original Playstation Underground discs, Qore is an interactive experience, offering exclusive game content, behind the scenes videos, and all kinds of exclusive news. The new feature will be $2.99 per “issue” or 24.99 for a 13 “issue” subscription. You can see a brief preview of it on Crackle.
It sounds like it wants to compete with well known Xbox Live feature, Inside Xbox. “Inside Xbox is Free!” people will boast… and while that is true, it is free, even for “Silver” account holders, the majority of Gold members more than pay for their brief videos and interviews. It may be a little while before we see the value of Qore, but it is something interesting to take a look at. If their sales are lacking, we may see a price adjustment, or if it does extremely well we could see Microsoft try to step up the Inside Xbox offerings.
And so nobody thinks I’m forgetting them, yes, this feature also competes with Nintendo Wii’s new “Nintendo Channel.” Except the Nintendo Channel is strictly streaming video, at this point, it offers no trial version downloads, in game content, etc… See? I’m on top of my game!