"Buy DLC" Links via RockBand.com for PS3?

[PlatStrat]

I'm sorry I misunderstood, I thought that he was referring basically editing the announcement forum post with the links as they become available. Also I was not thinking about doing this retroactively just moving forward.

[MaximusDM]

You underestimate the matter significantly, I'm afraid.

There are 2,740 songs available for sale on PS3. Even if it only took 10 seconds to load the PS3 page, load the HTML for the song page, copy the link, and paste it into RockBand.com, that's still 7.6 hours of work. It would also cause site downtime every Tuesday as we updated the new song pages.

But that's not how the site is built. (You can tell because we don't have downtime every Tuesday.) Instead, song pages are created dynamically, and the Xbox purchase links on RockBand.com are automatically updated and inserted by a system that is over two years old and is absolutely not compatible with the new PS3 online store.

Consequently, we'd have to redesign the song page (to accommodate the new buy link), rebuild the song page (to include the new buy link), and then build an entirely new back end system to pull song links off the PS3 online store and insert them into the new song page. We would also have to build an explanation popup (as you can see on the Xbox purchase) And then we'd have to QA everything.

In sum, this would require work from at least 5 people, and rather a bit more than 10 minutes.

It would still seem worth it so long as people actually use it to give you their money. Not sure if you can track purchases through the website vs on the console. But since the PSN store on PS3 has turned to complete sluggish, hard to navigate, trash after becoming its own application. and getting pro upgrades on the crashing in game store is a meta-game in itself. I'd opt for the website everytime.
You'd only have to do it one time anyway and moving forward with new songs shouldn't be that much of a hassle to convenience people.

But I guess the way you look at is, if people are gonna buy it, they are going to be willing to jump through some hoops to get to it if need be.

[SheSaidSheSaid]

Remember, this is the company that's shifted nearly all of their resources away from RB. It probably would not be worth it bearing their current direction in mind.

[Bront20]

It would still seem worth it so long as people actually use it to give you their money.

The number of people who would have to use the link would have to be enough for them to make significantly more money off of it than it would cost a team of people to implement it.

On the other hand, a generic link to the PSN online store Rock Band section might be pretty easy to put in place. Still unlikely to happen.

[Dangimarocker]

I don't see how this is important at all, how many people would even use it?!??

[Bront20]

I don't see how this is important at all, how many people would even use it?!??

At this stage, not many.

[Santa Claustrophobia]

Actually, it's the same number of people who'd flock to Rock Band if only HMX did something specific that totally isn't an attempt to cater to a small minority!

[Bront20]

Actually, it's the same number of people who'd flock to Rock Band if only HMX did something specific that totally isn't an attempt to cater to a small minority!

This makes no sense. Are you saying HMX caters to a small minority almost all the time? Or that there's no large majority waiting flock to Rock band? Or is this some poor attempt at sarcasm?

[tnevaker]

I don't see how this is important at all, how many people would even use it?!??

i would. pretty convenient to buy the songs on the computer during the day and then just DL them once i get home. but yeah, probably not enough people are even buying DLC, let alone in this particular way, to make it worth HMX's while.

i haven't used the online PS3 store yet. how exactly does that work? when you log onto the PS3 at home, is there a list somewhere of the songs you've purchased online, so you can DL them easily, or do you have to go back in the store and search for them again?

[SheSaidSheSaid]

They show up in your download history. You do have to open the in-console store, but you don't have to pull up the specific items again (though it would probably work if you did it that way, too).