Game Trailer Roundtable with industry figures *

Shifty Geezer said:
I agree some of the anticipated features are unproven as of yet, but that's quite a cry from 'Sony's online abilities are vapourware'.

I'll also add that it is possible for a company to overtake an experienced rival. It happens all the time. The easiest analogy is "You seem to think Sony can overcome 15 years of development and industry support Nintendo has had in a span of one console, I don't see it happening," but there's plenty of other examples in all industries. It's not like Sony have to start at year 0 with no knowhow at all and have to learn everything for themselves from scratch. They can take everything learnt from MS's Live work and developer feedback from those who have used Live and know what they want, and apply it with their own network services. That's 5 years of RnD ready to be built upon.
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Exactly, people are talking about Sony as if they never overtook Nintendo and Sega 10 years ago "starting from zero" and became the uncontested dominator of the console market. As if Apple never resurrected themselves with that little thing called the iPod. There are so many examples.

Things happen all the time, and while i'm not saying Sony will come out with something that will make Live look like crap, it's defintely worth remembering what happened and expect what could happen.
 
mckmas8808 said:
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It may not be perfect, but if one small thing isn't right don't act like it can't compare to Live.
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I agree, but there are obvious deficiencies at the start of which we are aware (voice chat in game, leaving voice messages, reading replying to text messages in game, friends list not universal between games, an inability to ignore or mute other users universally with a one time setting, friends features in general being game dependent rather than universal etc...) these are all huge to me and were deficiencies in Xbox 1 live that have been corrected with 360 Live.

not to say that these will not be addressed in the future on PSN but at this time we don't know what will happen or what is possible based on the way the system is structured. LIVE is at this point evidently more integrated with the hardware itself, which IMO is a huge reason behind 360 Live being as good as it is. love or hate MS ... they know software and services. ;)
 
Again Sony's online foundation looks great all they have to do is execute correctly. If they execute it correctly they will be on Xbox Live's level sometime within 2007.
 
mckmas8808 said:
And see that's the thing. I see lots of people pissed off at small things with Live today. It's still a great online system. I'll give it an 'A' on the report card, but you should be the sameway with Sony's solution.

It may not be perfect, but if one small thing isn't right don't act like it can't compare to Live.
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I think the worries Scooby has aren't just small things though. First there's the free-to-charge-for-games. I'm not expecting that to be an issue, but it is unproven at the moment what games will charge. And who'd have thought $5 for a horse?!

The other concerns are to do with meeting up with friends I think. If I have a PS3 and online game, it'll be with my real-life friends. I would like to have one list with them and the ability to meet up online. Independent clans per game would mean fo reach game we play, we'd have to set-up our friends lists again. For me that wouldn't be a big deal, but for people that do a lot of online gaming it could be an aggravation. Similarly if you can't contact them in the middle of a game to say 'hey, I'm here online! Stop what you're doing and play [game] instead!" then you're hampered when it comes to meeting up with those in the friends list.

We don't know for sure the state of any of these features in Sony's network.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
I'll also add that it is possible for a company to overtake an experienced rival.
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Did I ever sat it wasn't possible?? ;) There's a big difference between thinking something is unlikely, and saying it will never happen.

And as far as I'm concerned, until it's launched, and the public is playing it, and we can see what they've actually managed to implement by Nov 17 it's still vaporware, sure we've seen demo's but you never know what's actually behind a demo.
 
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Besides, they can just copy from MS's level and they're good to go. Surely there will be people online bitching about how Sony copied yet another thing, but in the end, if it's good, who cares??
 
Tap In said:
LIVE is at this point evidently more integrated with the hardware itself, which IMO is a huge reason behind 360 Live being as good as it is. love ;)
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I agree and understand every single thing that you said until I seen this statement. I fail to see how LIVE is more intergrated into the hardware (360) than PSN is with the PS3. They seem to be the same to me as far as that goes.
 
mckmas8808 said:
Again Sony's online foundation looks great all they have to do is execute correctly. If they execute it correctly they will be on Xbox Live's level sometime within 2007.
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I think there's plenty of reason to be sceptical of Sony's execution though. PSP has taken an age to get halway to what I was expecting of it's services. It was supposed to have an online networking and store thing going, and they've barely got together a store for it. I can imagine they were delaying all that to integrate it into the PS3 service, but it doesn't set a good precedent for Sony delivering on expectations.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
I think the worries Scooby has aren't just small things though. First there's the free-to-charge-for-games. I'm not expecting that to be an issue, but it is unproven at the moment what games will charge. And who'd have thought $5 for a horse?!

The other concerns are to do with meeting up with friends I think. If I have a PS3 and online game, it'll be with my real-life friends. I would like to have one list with them and the ability to meet up online. Independent clans per game would mean fo reach game we play, we'd have to set-up our friends lists again. For me that wouldn't be a big deal, but for people that do a lot of online gaming it could be an aggravation. Similarly if you can't contact them in the middle of a game to say 'hey, I'm here online! Stop what you're doing and play [game] instead!" then you're hampered when it comes to meeting up with those in the friends list.

We don't know for sure the state of any of these features in Sony's network.
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Is it now a fact that all Sony games online will have seperate friends list that will need to be updated for every game? I thought that was just for Resistence and that was mostly do to it being a launch game.
 
london-boy said:
Things happen all the time, and while i'm not saying Sony will come out with something that will make Live look like crap, it's defintely worth remembering what happened and expect what could happen.
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Yes it is woth remembering what has happened in the past, take a look at Sony';s online initiative for PS2 for example. Or take a look at their online store for music which is absolutely horrible. Or PSP which is on what, it's 10th firmware update?

Sure all Sony's has to do is 'execute', but the fact is they've shown a fairly strong pattern of being unable to execute when it comes to online functionality. And the fact remains, we still haven't seen anything in action so I think I'm completely justified being a little skeptical. If you choose to be optimistic that's fine as well...
 
Shifty Geezer said:
I think there's plenty of reason to be sceptical of Sony's execution though. PSP has taken an age to get halway to what I was expecting of it's services. It was supposed to have an online networking and store thing going, and they've barely got together a store for it. I can imagine they were delaying all that to integrate it into the PS3 service, but it doesn't set a good precedent for Sony delivering on expectations.
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Like you said (and Sony has said themselves) the PSP service was just going to be pushed back to come out with the PS3. Hate it or love it that's just the way they wanted it. But I can see where you are coming from.
 
london-boy said:
Besides, they can just copy from MS's level and they're good to go. Surely there will be people online bitching about how Sony copied yet another thing, but in the end, if it's good, who cares??
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It's like Picasso says, good artists create, great artists steal!

I think the same goes for software design... ;)
 
I think this kind of discussions can be summarised very quickly with:

MS = Software company
Sony = Hardware company

End of.

If Sony can reach MS's levels of network integration and level of expertise in making service software (not games, that's a different puppy!), then good for them. But until then, they have a lot of work to do.
Much like MS could never reach Sony's levels of expertise in hardware development, from TVs to Digital cameras to anything else Sony produces. Not that MS would ever want to get into that business, software production is much much more profitable.
 
mckmas8808 said:
I agree and understand every single thing that you said until I seen this statement. I fail to see how LIVE is more intergrated into the hardware (360) than PSN is with the PS3. They seem to be the same to me as far as that goes.
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What makes all of the 360's XBL features universal is the integration within the dashboard across all games. That universal backbone (part of the OS that is in flash) is what makes that and all of the subsequent updates possible. It was a consolidated effort by MS when designing the 360 (as I've read in Xbox Uncloaked) to integrate Live as a part of the machine, eliminating as many layers as possible for devs to not have to worry about coding for the online features.
 
Tap In said:
What makes all of the 360's XBL features universal is the integration within the dashboard across all games. That universal backbone (part of the OS that is in flash) is what makes that and all of the subsequent updates possible. It was a consolidated effort by MS when designing the 360 (as I've read in Xbox Uncloaked) to integrate Live as a part of the machine, eliminating as many layers as possible for devs to not have to worry about coding for the online features.
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Oh okay I see.

Oh and not like it's something that will break the camels back or anything, but lets not forget that with the PS3 it will have a full fledged online browser.

They days of only having one computer to get online is NO MORE!
 
Tap In said:
What makes all of the 360's XBL features universal is the integration within the dashboard across all games. That universal backbone (part of the OS that is in flash) is what makes that and all of the subsequent updates possible. It was a consolidated effort by MS when designing the 360 (as I've read in Xbox Uncloaked) to integrate Live as a part of the machine, eliminating as many layers as possible for devs to not have to worry about coding for the online features.
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Fair enough, but that's not necessarily structurally different from the PS3 or even the PSP ...

And +1 for the Browser. I'm already finding the PSP's browser a big help (for reading these forums in bed, for instance ;) ) and on the PS3, with wireless keyboard support (as well as predictive text when using the controller) and on a nice big hi-res screen, it should be a nice addition as well. Not to mention that devs can use it to integrate with their games, giving them the option to fully integrate their online store within the game.
 
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london-boy said:
Those days were long gone way before PS3 was even thought of being created! ;)
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Not in a lot of homes my friend. Lots of people just have one computer hooked to a broadband connection. At least now some people next year when they get a PS3 they will have another means of getting on the internet.
 
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