Sony is not starting from ground zero.
pipo said:
It sure ain't rocket science, but you can't implement it right when it's an afterthought. Or: Live 360 works because it's fully integrated into the system.
And I'm not even talking about playing music or downloading demo's, just the friends, achievements, gamercard, VOIP (when in different games), uniform way to handle messages, etc.
Sethamin said:
Do not underestimate the amount of effort it takes to build an online service. Just because you can imagine how it could be built, doesn't make the actual building of it easy. The amount of backend work required, let alone the whole operations centers you have to spin up to support millions of users, is not trivial at all...
It is still not rocket science compared to game development. I am speaking from personal experiences and I have built unified login systems for 14 different companies in the 90s (That's why I knew about FireFly, before MS acquired it).
For new gaming-specific services (e.g., player matching), it's pretty much a clean slate (or borrow from SOE). So there should be no retrofitting issues. I think SOE also already has a single id for all its game packages for more than a year.
For integrating into Sony's existing assets (If that's what they want to do): Usually the most hassle is the user database and schema (e.g., name clashes between existing services). This is also where your gamercard, friends, achievements, .. comes in. Glue-code has to be written to calculate and store the user attributes properly. The user authentication and authorization framework also needs to be "harmonized" to provide consistent check-and-balance (billing).
For VoIP and messaging, it's irrelevant at this layer. The VoIP directory and gateway can take a different (hidden) unique ids to route calls. There are existing standards + components (e.g., SIP, Jabber) that Sony can use easily. But they may consider partnerships to lower their cost and avoid these infrastructure.
In general, there are a few tricks to retrofit XBL-like services into existing apps and provide a good enough user experiences... while they shift the backend over time to simplify the operations. Most of these are transparent to the users.
The harder part is actually the UI. It's not easy to get it right *and* keep it simple when your site has tons of things to offer. Looking at Sony Playstation's online assets: SOE (station.com), connect.com, playstation.com, Sony Style (portions relevant to gaming), ... there are A LOT in place already (> Xbox LIVE but in a different way ?).
From the outside view, Sony seems to let these sites run loose. May be they are, or may be they are just having a tedious time trying to integrate all these mess together. Tedious != Difficult but still take time.
IMHO, the hardest part is to defend against hackers when you have so much legacy code. But I think this can be left to the individual divisions to handle (for now). And again it's usually transparent to the users unless shit happened. Scalability is something they should already do well given their sizes.
pipo said:
If Sony didn't prepare for a dashboard/guide-like app to run on PS3 in the first place, they're going to have a lot of fun implementing that sort of functionality later on (now?) in the project.
While the backend is getting ready, Sony can integrate Cross Media Bar as the front end. I think there were some posts about Sony extending "XMB" to handle the Internet, HDTV for PS3. In any case, PSP already has a headstart there. It also has a "Location Free" icon in v2.6.
However I think more refinement is needed to integrate the experiences organically (instead of just 1 menu icon that says Location Free, "everything" should be Location Free within XMB).
Sethamin said:
... and then there's SDK and libraries you have to provide to game developers to hook in to. It's actually a pretty staggering amount of work, even without providing servers to host games. The reason no one seems to appreciate how much work it entails is that MS is the only one who has ever really done it (successfully) up until now. Also remember that Sony's core competency is hardware, not software, so it'll be that much more difficult for them to build it.
SOE has a subset. Also Game SDK companies have some. IBM also has a hand in butterfly.net (grid computing for games), but I think that venture tanked ?
Sethamin said:
No, I would doubt very much we're going to see a very full featured online service from Sony. I can see a simple one with just basic authentication and unified identity, but more than that and I'd be suprised. More power to them if they can.
You may be right but they are not starting from ground zero. They need to bring their existing user base forward from all over the place, instead of starting something new (again).
