Sony has a large advantage over the Xbox 360: the PS3 offers free online gaming and content downloads. Xbox Live of course costs around $50—less if you get a deal—and a good amount of content is made available to Gold members first and Silver members down the line. The only problem is that someone has to pay for all these online features, and if reports are correct, Sony is passing that bill onto publishers.

MTV Multiplayer has gotten hold of a memo sent to publishers from Sony that changes the fees associated with hosting content on the PlayStation Store. Publishers are now charged 16 cents per 1GB downloaded through the store for the first 60 days when it comes to free content, and in perpetuity for paid content. That's not a small amount of money; if a demo gets downloaded one million times, it would cost a publisher $160,000 for a 1GB file; even more if the file is larger. This is on top of the regular fees that Sony charges to put content and games up on the store, mind you.

While no one is willing to speak on the record, publishers are obviously not happy. "It definitely makes us think about how we view the distribution of content related to our games when it is free for us to do it on the web, on Xbox Live, or any other way—including broadcast—than on Sony’s platform,” a source told Multiplayer. “It’s a new thing we have to budget. It’s not cool. It sucks.”

This is bad news for publishers, but it could be even worse news for PS3 owners. Publishers now have a strong financial incentive to release fewer demos, or to make file sizes smaller. Releasing those retail-sized games for purchase may make the PlayStation Network stand out, but it could cause publishers to have to cough up hundreds of thousands of dollars to Sony, giving them a reason to stick to physical distribution.

What's worse is that there is no way to know how much money you'll owe Sony. If a smaller company with a tight budget releases a demo that takes off, it would suddenly have to cough up a huge chunk of cash unexpectedly. Put that same demo on the 360? Smooth sailing. That's an advantage Microsoft has to be more than happy to take advantage of.

Sony, of course, doesn't expect there to be a downturn in content, but these are tough times; even big publishers are looking for ways to cut costs. This program was apparently put in place last October, and the Resident Evil 5 demo was given an exclusive 360 launch in January of this year. While the demo was available a week later on the PS3, perhaps Capcom simply wanted gamers with multiple consoles to download the sure-to-be popular demo on the 360 to avoid the fees?

Maybe we're in tinfoil-hat territory, but now Microsoft doesn't have to pay for exclusive demos of popular games; it need only not charge to host them.