Sony has announced a Summer Festival for the PSN, or as everyone else will call it ‘The Summer Sale’. Running from the 17th of July (today!) to the 28th of August the sale covers games, video and music.
From this Friday, 19th July for one week only you can pick up the critically acclaimed Tomb Raider for just £16.99/€20.99 with PlayStation Plus members getting an additional 10% off which by my tappings on the calculator takes the price down to a mouth-watering £15.29.
For comparison Amazon UK  are selling the game for £25.97, ShopTo are at £22.97 and Play.Com will send you Lara for £21.55.
Also in the sale is a whole year’s subscription to the Music Unlimited service for£59.99/€59.99, once again PlayStation Plus members get a discount taking the price down to £41.99/€41.99.
Rounding off this first set of deals is Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained to rent from the movie store from £0.99/ €0.99.
Source: EU PS Blog
Blair Inglis
Good, but not quite Steam Sale impulse buy prices – I got Tomb Raider for £7.49 on there!
bunimomike
I wish there was some sort of parity between the PC and console prices but there we go. Maybe in another generation.
BULLofDOOM
You’re forgetting the £500+ on hardware to run the game well. Plus the fragmented experience PC gaming puts you through.
I loved the PC built for Diablo III, but soon grew tired with the cost of upgrades etc. Then there was Origin, Steam, Punkbuster, Gamespy, Games for Windows, I just want to play the effin game!
Happy to take a hit in visual quality for a consistent experience with no sodding driver downloads. At £16 on top of a £200 console it is a much better deal than Steam, and doesn’t look half bad on PS3 either.
Gamoc
I haven’t upgraded my now 5/6 year old PC in 2 years (and that was only a £50 graphics card) and I’m perfectly playable of playing most current releases (the only exceptions are Crysis 2 – possibly 3 as well but I haven’t tried it – and Planetside 2). I can’t max out the settings, sure, but I don’t really care about that. I’m still surprised what I can run on my PC considering its age.
This will likely end in a year or so though as with the new consoles games will become more demanding and my poor PC will be left in the dust.
bunimomike
That’s my choice of investment, though, surely. It has no bearing on the developers costs or am I missing something completely?
Hell, if anything, it should be MORE expensive on the PC as that’s the usually the worst seller for games.
Call of Duty Black Ops sold something like 12 million for Xbox 360, 10 million for the PS3 and an abysmal 1 million on the PC (global sales).
UKZ-N3M1515
BULLofDOOM, Do you own a PC? a standard PC will probably set you back £300, most people own a PC or laptop anyway, add in a GPU and maybe splash out a couple hundred more n the other parts and the extra cost to get it running high quality games will only cost you the price of a new console anyway.
And the “fragmented” is honestly a load of shit. 80% of everything is on Steam, and Steam is a fantastic service far superior to any other digital gaming service.
colmshan1990
What? Apart from the excellent prices, Steam is a poor service for gaming.
It’s worse than the PSN! It’s literally one big DRM program. There’s an offline mode which is inconsistent at best on quite a lot of people’s computers. The automatic download of updates becomes very annoying on a limited connection. I couldn’t play Sleeping Dogs for over a day because Steam decided it wanted to download an update over 4GB in size! And downloads automatically pause if you start a game, even single-player ones.
This puts it below even the PSN as a gaming service in my eyes. Fantastic prices, but a poor program. There’s a reason I tend to play my humble bundle purchases in their DRM free version, rather than through Steam.
KeRaSh
@Gamoc:
What graphics card only cost 50 Pounds two years ago and is capable of running current games well?
Also: *a wild specualtion appears*
Considering your CPU would be at least 5 to 6 years old by now, even if it was a top of the line model it would be cutting it pretty close and must have been pretty expensive when you bought it in the first place.
KeRaSh
@colmshan:
“And downloads automatically pause if you start a game, even single-player ones.”
Not anymore. I just tested this yesterday when I was playing GTA4 while downloading the DLCs.
Also, the downloads from Steam are blazingly fast. I have a shitty 3k connection and I constantly download stuff from Steam with transfer rates about my theoretical max transfer rate.
bunimomike
It’s not for everyone, Col, but the server speeds are sensationally robust if you have the connection.
Also, adding to Kerash’s comments, I noticed a few GB of a game tanking it down at the usual 8MB/sec (here) whilst playing L.A. Noire, yesterday. I think Steam’s managing to allow us to download whilst gaming. The PSN does the same if the game doesn’t need every ounce of the resources. Thankfully, the PS4 gets around any such trouble by doing this in the background with a separate, smaller processor (CPU) I believe. Bloody awesome. Hope the PC goes this way too or at least Steam has the cunning code in there to recognise that 1% of resources is all that’s required to continue downloading in the background.
Tuffcub
Sony and MS take a cut of every game sold. If you take that out, games would be closer to PC prices.
Not stop squabbling the lot of you, else it’s bed and no supper!
bunimomike
Do keep in mind, Col, that you can set every game to manually update or automatically update so you have full control. If you leave games installed but don’t want them updating (as you’ve already played them) simply switch off the auto-update feature for that game.
I did that when I had a download cap a few years ago.
bunimomike
TC – Valve take 20 to 30% cut, I believe.
KeRaSh
Yes, Valve does take a cut. They’re not a charity. Imagine hosting all the games and the subsequent downloads for free. :P
psychobudgie
My current PC cost around £350 to build inclusive of the Nvidia 650 gtx that sits in it. It runs pretty much anything I’ve thrown at it, at 720p or higher but as others have stated, there are occasions where I’d still rather pay and extra tenner for the console version just for the convenience of it.
matthangzhou
@psychobudgie
Would you recommend that card? Or did you wish you’d bought a different one?
UKZ-N3M1515
@Matthang
I recommend holding off upgrades until after next gen consoles release, just to see what will be needed to max the launch titles that come on PC too
gaffers101
.99p for Django Unchained rental sounds like a bargain.
Tuffcub
Yes, I shall be taking that offer up, quite fancy seeing that.
tactical20
It’s alright. A 2 hour film spread over 3 hours.
matthangzhou
Watching it as I type. Would recommend to anyone on the fence.
gaffers101
Going to watch it in the front room on the sofa. I don’t think the fence will take my weight!!
Broonba
Nice. I was waiting on TR getting a discount. Anybody know how big the digital download will be?
bunimomike
My Tomb Raider download (on Steam) was 10.5 GB, fella. :-)
bunimomike
I’d like to think the PS3 version would be that or less.
jayboy31
12.5gb according to the full priced version thats on there at the mo.
jayboy31
What time does the Tomb raider offer update?
I’m now based in Australia and i’m getting impatient waiting for the UK Store to update :)
jayboy31
Also, how do I put some sort avatar up for my posts? Thanks x