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The Truth About Sony’s “Cross Buy” Deal | PSNStores

The Truth About Sony’s “Cross Buy” Deal

Posted by on August 15th, 2012 | 7 Comments | Tags:

Gamescom has played host to all the big names in gaming, and it was also the place to find out about Sony’s future plans for the Vita. One of the bigger announcements was their Cross Buy program. The first titles to be offered for Cross Buy are the first-party PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time, and Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault.

There has been some confusion over exactly how the deal works. Sony plainly describes Cross Buy as “buy once, get it on PS3 and Vita.” Cristian Cardona, Associate Product Marketing Manager of Software Marketing, responded to a comment in the “Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time Gamescom Trailer…” post by saying you will be required to buy the PS3 version if you want to be given the PS Vita version for free.

So we sent him an email which was promptly replied to by one of the Sony PR leads for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale and Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Jennifer Dean. She clarified one thing for us, all three of the first-party Cross Buy enabled titles announced at Gamescom will fall under the same restrictions. You MUST buy the PS3 version to get the Vita version for free. Jennifer did not elaborate on how the PSN voucher code for the Vita copy will be distributed, but Cristian Cardona did in that PS Blog post by saying “It’ll be digital.  The PS3 version will not include a Vita game card.”

As is usually the case with PR and early announcements like Cross Buy, we couldn’t get any confirmation on the price of either versions of any of the three games. GameStop is listing the price at $59.99 and $39.99 for the PS3 and Vita versions respectively. The Vita downloadable versions are expected to be discounted by 10% in the PlayStation Store as Sony has done with other first party Vita releases.

There have been many PSN games already released with the same premise as the Cross Buy program, and none of them have come to agree on what to call it. We’ve seen the deal referred to as “Cross Purchase“, “cross platform entitled“, and even “cross-play” has been used. Now can we all agree to move forward with Cross Buy?