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PSN North American Senior Director Susan Panico leaves Sony
Susan Panico is no longer Sony's North American PlayStation Network Senior Director, a title she's held for the past five years -- basically since the launch of PSN in November 2006. Since then, PSN has garnered more than 77 million users worldwide, introduced PlayStation Plus, and now offers original content, TV shows, movies and even games.Panico oversaw the implementation of all these features, consistently emphasizing the larger entertainment scope of PSN and attempting to expand its audience base with original programming such as PULSE and The Tester.Panico also ran damage control during 2011's PSN hack, after which Sony gave away free games and a massive amount of apologies.Sony Computer Entertainment America's Patrick Seybold confirmed Panico's departure, but there is no word yet on a replacement or Panico's own future plans.
PSN director: The Tester is a 'foundation for something much bigger'
"I hope five years from now we'll be winning Emmys for quality shows," PlayStation Network director Susan Panico said to Joystiq, imagining programming on the level of HBO's Entourage or The Sopranos. She was speaking sincerely about the platform's vision for original content. PSN might be synonymous with gaming, but going forward, Panico hopes it will also be recognized for its original video programming, which currently includes Pulse, Qore and The Tester, a reality competition show about winning a job as a PlayStation game tester, recently renewed for a second season. "I look at what HBO has done over several years, where they started just offering movies and went into the original production business," Panico said, revealing high aspirations for PSN's original content. "By no means am I putting The Tester with The Sopranos and what have you," she clarified, "but if you want to make yourself the go-to destination for content, you need to provide content that people can't get anywhere else." "We look at original programming and The Tester as the foundation for building out something much bigger."
How-to 'everything' videos coming to PS3 XMB
"It Only Does Everything," says the PS3's ad campaign. But how many users actually know how to take advantage of all of the system's features out of the box? With PS3 increasingly positioning itself as a be-all entertainment device, Sony is forced to confront the XMB's clutter of icons, which may be befuddling mainstream consumers. PSN director Susan Panico told us that Sony is currently "creating educational videos that will be a great welcome kit for people that are coming to the PS3 and the PlayStation Network," which aim to "really walk them through all the advantages you get from the PlayStation Network," including the store. The videos "will answer questions like, 'How do I have Netflix movies stream on my PS3?' And it will certainly talk about original content available," Panico noted, referring to PSN productions like The Tester and Pulse. "That's something that's really important to us -- to make sure people understand from the get-go how to find all this great content." While many of the details are still being ironed out, the how-to videos will appear both on the web and on the XMB. "Primarily, it's going to be content that you find very easily on PlayStation.com, as well as on the console itself," Panico said, though "we haven't decided where it's going to live on the XMB." Presumably, it'll be in a prime position, lest Sony find itself posting a "How to find the how-to videos" video.
PlayStation Rewards program to offer free PSN bonuses for 'highly engaged' fans
Sony is preparing to launch a new incentives program called PlayStation Rewards. A closed beta for the offer is currently invite-only -- for "highly engaged" PlayStation owners -- but the full service will open up to include everyone next year. The program will reward players with a number of PSN bonuses, including "exclusive" avatars, dynamic themes and PlayStation Home content. In addition, Rewards will feature "member-only" sweepstakes, events and giveaways. At first glance, PlayStation Rewards seems to offer many of the same features as PlayStation Plus. However, the two services are separate from each other and will offer different bonuses. Rewards is free, and will be open to all PlayStation owners, regardless of Plus status -- although, Plus members are more likely to be offered entry into the service during the beta. Like Club Nintendo and Square Enix Members, PlayStation Rewards is tiered, separating its members into three groups: Select, Pro and Legendary. Playing games, downloading demos, using PlayStation Home, being active on the PlayStation.com Forums, answering surveys and buying content on the PlayStation Store are some of the ways in which members can increase their ranks in a Trophy-inspired leveling system.
GDC09: PixelJunk Eden profitable after one day of sales
Publishers looking for a quick buck don't need to focus their efforts solely on the iPhone. Sony's Susan Panico touted the values of PSN development by providing a case study on PixelJunk Eden, Q-Games' third PSN-exclusive title. Panico told the GamesBeat audience that "PixelJunk Eden made its return on investment within 24 hours." Sales after that period become pure profit.Of course, the success of Eden is a little unsurprising, considering the popularity of PixelJunk Monsters. Regardless, it's impressive that a small independent studio was able to create a trusted franchise exclusively through the PlayStation Network. With so much green made off of Eden, it's no wonder Q-Games is working on an expansion for the game. Eden Encore will be available in April.%Gallery-48237%
