NGGP: NextGen Garbage Pile (aka: No one reads the topics or stays on topic) *spawn*

They are two very different things. Live gold offers online gaming features. PSN+ doesn't add very much at all to the online experience. There are cloud saves and patching which Live also offers. PSN+ is basically a content platform offering deals on new content, including free complete games and discounts on all store content. It's more a gamers loyalty programme than anything. As such, PSN+ and Live aren't really comparable. Live should be compared to vanilla PSN, which offers basic online gaming and some chat but isn't up to par with Live.

Having said that, we played Halo 3 on XB360 yesterday and the party aspect was really annoying! Wanted to play split screen coop, and the back of all the Halo boxes said 2-4 player coop in the green section, different from the 2-4 player coop in the red section for online, so we understood it to mean local coop for 4 players which I said I didn't think they had but thought maybe Halo 4 had added. Each controller that we switched on had to log in to an account. Then we loaded the games to be told there were too many players. So we switched off a controller but that didn't log the player out; he was in the party. So we had to switch on the controller, log him out, and then switch it off to play. I just can't get on with the dashboard, either the old one or the new one! Going to the 'game' screen didn't show the game in the drive to play. XMB is far more obvious and user friendly IMO. I wonder where the two consoles will go next-gen? Sony are supposedly abandoning XMB which kinda worries me. It has faults, but should be updated rather than replaced.

 

And those damn kids just wouldn't get off your lawn?
I do find myself missing the original xbox 360 dash from time to time, but in general I just ignore the new one and use the xbox button. The popup has just as much functionality, and is much easier to use.

 

This is more the fault of the way the controller driver works than anything else though - not really a fault of the UI per se. The controller driver is just a bit broken - I've complained about how clumsy things are for instance also when you have a driving wheel and a controller hooked up to a game like Forza. You can't fully use them at the same time like you can on PS4, and you can't switch which one is primary without actually switching everything off (including the game). The logged-on account and controller are really hooked up to each other or something, if I remember correctly. Hopefully they fix that in next-gen.

 

Yes, but it let you to login more than 1 profile at the same time, I guess PS3 can't do it.

 

Sony patched XMB such that a game can track trophies for more than 1 player in a co-op game. I don't know if they all need to be signed in. The trophy data will be attributed correctly. The games have to call the right API I think.

 

Apparently you don't understand, but smart phones did not gain immediate traction or general acceptance. It took a few tries. Kinect has been fairly successful as a hardware peripheral and if a second iteration can overcome some of the firsts shortcomings there's a lot of compelling uses for it. Wii sales probably have a lot more to do with software support than anything about the controls.

Kinect might not be the right product for next gen, it's too soon to tell, but the future of consoles is not just a faster version of the current products. They want more than the cod audience.

 

Yes, I do a lot of split screen Halo and the having to log people out before you turn off the controller is a nightmare, especially with how long it takes to sign in and out.

Often if it's 4 player split screen and people need to switch profiles or controllers it's much easier to just turn off the entire Xbox and sign in everyone from scratch.

 

It doesn't. The PS4 will have a multi-user environment, though. So expect it will work more like the 360 than the PS3.

Hopefully both will have figured out ways to streamline the process of juggling logins for this next generation.

 

Next gen they should sort out mobile devices vs home console login too. Right now, Vita users are not shown in the PS3 friends list. It seems that the entire Vita environment is separate from the PS3 one until Sony started to integrate PSN services back to Vita one by one.

Hopefully Vita users can interact better with PS4 folks.

I am not quite sure about multi-user sign-in but I believe a lot of folks are waiting for Sony to upgrade their underaged account to full PSN account.

 

Live only gives you 512mb of cloud storage. PS+ gives you 1gb for PS3 and 1gb for Vita. At this point you basically get at least one game a week added to your collection. For $50 in your first year you get over 60 games, plus lots of really good sales on PSN. Most recently I bought LBP Karting for $10 and Unfinished Swan for like $3.

 

FWIW I think this is a good example of value perception. PS+ is IMO the better value and yet adoption rates are a very small fraction of Live Gold rates.

 

PS+ just started last year, whereas Xbox Live Gold has existed since before Xbox 360. Part of the explanation at least

PS+ isn't a necessity to have both SP and MP experiences on one game either.

Sony should be planning for pricing models which include PS+ subscriptions though, like they are currently doing with some PS3 system and game bundles with 3 months PS+.

Hopefully some inspiration will come from mobile market to combine low entry fees with multi-year subscription agreements. It would improve PS+ adoption, increase PS4 sales, and guarantee a strong, long term revenue stream for Sony. Xbox is already committed to the same thing with $99 Xbox 360 deals.

$3.74 to be exact

I bought it also

 

PS+ was launched @ E3 2010. Spent its first few months to a year in the limbo. It gained more traction after they added more value to it, probably just before the last E3. All those goodies were not available from day 1. It should be more sticky these days. Recently, some gamers claimed they bought a Vita because of PS+.

XBL has a much longer (and stable) history.

EDIT: Beaten !

In a rough sense, it can be considered the successor to Pulse, that not-so-successful interactive PSN magazine.

 

I always imagined that the controllers would have some cheap onboard memory and user profiles would be stored on controllers (obviously backed up on the console) which would make managing profiles a bit simpler, they could incorporate NFC for syncing controllers to new consoles for the extra ''cool'' effect.

 

Because it's mandatory in order to play online.

For all the talk of Microsoft offering a superior online service, I doubt there would be any Gold subscribers if they didn't lock all their content behind a pay wall. With Sony all you need is a PS3 and you have access to all the available content. Even if MS start offering instant game collections I doubt I'd ever be persuaded to re-subscribe to gold with all the pay wall shenanigans still in place.

 

Yeah, no one thinks paying protection money to the mob is a good value, either. They do it so their shit doesn't get wrecked.

 

I've always found paying for online play to be some sort of scam.
Especially when you don't have to pay for it on another console. On the same game.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense either from a "paying for service either". A whole lot of multiplayer games are hosted by gamers themselves and don't pose a real burden on their servers as it's responsible for the matchmaking.

I'm not sure Microsoft pays for the servers when the developers/publishers are responsible for the servers either.

Just imagine having to pay for Bit Torrent.

 

You have to put it into perspective.

Microsoft was actually pretty forward thinking inside the console space. They brought out Live when nobody was even taking online gaming seriously on console. PS2 was blindsided completely with their nonexistent service, and Nintendo only started caring very recently.

Whatever one wants to say about Microsoft's goals, they transformed the console landscape to how it is today. PSN and Nintendo network would neither exist if not for Live.

But all that is besides the point. My main point, is that at the time, online (especially online with DLC and updates) on a console was a novelty factor. Nobody was doing it and it was something that they managed to create a service out of by being so new to console consumers. Its the only way they got away with it.

We can look back now when we look at competing services and say that their ecosystem was some sort of scam. But the fact remains that it has stayed the way it has since its conception and as long as people have no issues paying for it, it will not change.

 

But 200+ FPS in a next gen game is out of reach even for a high end gaming PC. It's hard enough to reach more than 100 FPS in a current gen game without playing on low settings (I know since I'm playing on a 120Hz screen). 200+ FPS in next gen games is impracticable. Oculus Rift would be impracticable.

Timothy Lottes spoke about some interpolation (?) technique for both next gen consoles, though he deleted his post due to the fanboy rage in the comment section. Does someone remember what he was talking about?

 

Sony and Nintendo were waiting for the online market to grow up (e.g., PS Home started in the PS2 era and remains a "hobby"). MS jumped in with its own resources. Sony's online model is more about all the partner companies doing their own online infrastructure. They don't really want to bear all the online infrastructure costs themselves. Hence they are able to offer free services but the experience is not consistent.

Same for natural UI. MS jumped in and invested heavily after Wii's success. Sony was again still fumbling around. ^_^

What Sony did focus on was expanding its studios, and investing in small developers. And here we are.

Edit: Forgot Sony also invested heavily in Blu-ray and Cell. In any case, they all kinda found their niche.