Sony Dashes Dreams of DualShock Diddlers

Vivid founder Steve Hirsch told CVG recently that negotiations to bring their premium, HD stroke material to the PSN were a nonstarter. He had attempted to begin these negotiations last September when a porno service was allowed onto the Japanese PSN marketplace. This only proves that Steve Hirsch doesn’t have the first clue about how things roll in Japan. What flies there doesn’t fly here. I should know. I’ve been trying to get a used panty vending machine business started for years, but these damned closed-minded suburbanites sued me under when I just started dropping them their in subdivision cul-de-sacs.

Speaking of suburbia, I also recently read a pretty decent editorial that makes the case that walled-garden services like the Apple App Store (and even though Virginia May doesn’t mention it, PSN fits the bill too) are the suburbia of the tubes. The weaklings that can’t hack it in the thick of the dirty, urban internet where malware is sitting on every corner, waiting to zombify the desktops of those who aren’t savvy enough to protect themselves, retreat to the suburbia of their safe little shiny iPads, lattes, and turtlenecks. And We Rule. And FarmVille.

Fuck that.

So let’s be real. This topic is good Google-bait, because people love them some pr0n. But to just write-up a couple factual paragraphs and throw it out into the tubes is missing a much larger issue in the world of gaming right now. For a few decades, a lot of gamers have taken it for granted that there’s this industry that revolves around fulfilling a relatively niche need. But the end of that era is fast approaching. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m definitely not the guy who hates something just because it’s popular. I enjoyed the hell out of Avatar, and I am prepared at a moment’s notice to go on at length about why Armageddon was actually a bitchin’ flick.

But as a gamer, it breaks my heart to see the popularity of these stripped down social networking Skinner boxes being referred to as the future of casual gaming. I wish they didn’t exist, but they do. Because even though I’d love to see my hobby supplant Baseball as the national pastime, that’s just not realistic.

So what, really, does that have to do with PSN laughing off Vivid’s request to put up some HD pr0n on their service? Well, it comes back to the idea of the walled-garden suburbia I was talking about a few paragraphs ago. As for the Apple App Store, I definitely get the reason they fit into that model. Steve Jobs has made a fortune selling himself off as a non-threatening gadget Messiah to the easily swayed suburbanite masses of America. It only makes sense that the virtual environment surrounding those gadgets reflect their target demographic.

But PSN has no real excuse. The only reason I could think of to reject Vivid’s proposal that makes any sense at all is that there’s not much use for a paid porn delivery mechanism in a world where Google is the ultimate free porn delivery mechanism. But even then, Vivid is hurting because of that fact on all fronts, and if they want to try another way to keep signing Katie Morgan’s paychecks, then more power to them. And let’s not forget that On Demand porn is doing pretty well for cable and satellite providers.

Ultimately, PSN is missing the boat here. They’re allowing the stigma attached to pornography by the vocal moral minority of Americans to block them from fulfilling a fairly large consumer demand. Is it too much of a stretch to say that this type of thinking could lead to them one day making the decision that highly profitable but skill-deprived Skinner boxes like FarmVille and We Rule deserve the place that was once held by games like Noby Noby Boy and PixelJunk Shooter? I don’t know. I know I hope to hell it is, but something tells me it’s not.