PS3 Gamercard?

[betan]

I don't see why would they need the registration of a second account for another controller. One account should be just fine including moderation purposes.

My main concern with gamercard is privacy.
I hope at least visibility of it will be optional.
I don't want others to know my amazing Resistance stats either.

 

[scooby_dooby]

For online I can understand the need for accounts, if just for banning people . It's the 'offline', or single machine multiplayer, where I think accounts should be optional. If someone wants to record Achievements let them log on an account. Otherwise let people just play the game.

New features can be great, but the core experience of the console should always be root simplicity IMO.

I don't think it's not a console decision, as much as the game design.

I've seen games that allow guest accounts, and others that don't.

I mean, ya you have to signup for a profile initially on the 360, but that's part of the initial setup you must go through anyways, and if you're offline, it's simply a matter of entering a username. A one-time thing.

Anyways, back on topic, this is a great news to me, anything that Sony can do to match XBLive's featureset, makes it much harder for MS to justify their $60 fee. Hopefully, once enough pressure mounts, MS will have to give in and just make it free.

 

[DJ12]

His attempted cover up was brilliant

 

[patsu]

I don't see why would they need the registration of a second account for another controller. One account should be just fine including moderation purposes.

My main concern with gamercard is privacy.
I hope at least visibility of it will be optional.
I don't want others to know my amazing Resistance stats either.

Don't be shy... You're a great soldier. You beat me when I was whoring the shotgun in The Mall.

On a more serious note, I think Sony is after My Space rather than XBL. We already know they have a My Page that auto-generates HTML content summarizing your activities and achievements in PSN. I fully expect Sony to introduce privacy tools to manage the exposure of your private space (e.g., Home, media sharing, stats).

The gamer card could be a condensed form of My Page (for XMB users). In fact, I am not even sure if it's the final name. I hope they focus more on clan/party/event management. The MyPage concept together with in-game XMB is more than sufficient to identify, search and know a member. The next step is to give them more tools.

So far, we have heard game lobby integration and user created scripts, but let's roll it out fast Sony. The issue would be usability (especially launch time). We are supposed to have an open beta this month too.

 

[Dave Baumann]

For online I can understand the need for accounts, if just for banning people . It's the 'offline', or single machine multiplayer, where I think accounts should be optional. If someone wants to record Achievements let them log on an account. Otherwise let people just play the game.

The easy thing to do there is just create a couple of dummy accounts on the console that anyone can use. You can still autologin to you most frequent account, so it doesn't need to be a chore to the primary user of the system. Anyone additional players that come round just use one of the dummy accounts.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's in essence what we do. The inconvenience for me isn't so much the creating an account (created XB360 and Wii accounts on his consoles) but the having to log in to them (or any account) to play a game. It's a tiny little thing, but it's those tiny, little things that are often the most annoying. It's an unnecessary complication that has me harking back to the 'good old days' when you just plugged in consoles and played games. I'm in the market for minimal faf!

 

[DeanA]

The inconvenience for me isn't so much the creating an account (created XB360 and Wii accounts on his consoles) but the having to log in to them (or any account) to play a game.

Given that PS3 and 360 both allow for an account to auto sign-in on power up, I fail to see where this 'having to log in' applies.

You don't have to do anything manually.. and as such the process (and behaviour) is much like previous generation consoles (without users/accounts) if that's what you're looking for.

Cheers,
Dean

 

[patsu]

I think Shifty is talking about the registration part (The need to create an account for each player at the beginning) ?

If so, Warhawk does it best: Auto-create the temporarily accounts.

 

[DeanA]

I think Shifty is talking about the registration part (The need to create an account for each player at the beginning)

Ahhhhh...! I see!!

In which case, yes.. it can be a pain in the arse..

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think Shifty is talking about the registration part (The need to create an account for each player at the beginning) ?

It's not even the registering that's a bind. A once-of setup process is no problem. It's the need to use a registered account for each player in a game, and for each player to sign up one at a time. I think 'signed in' is the proper term, not 'logged in'. Achievements are great for those interested, but they could have been handled a bit better.

If Gamercards serve the same purpose, or even Home achievements, PS3 will have to handle gamer accounts on PS3. It'll be interesting how they manage that. If we have four players, A, B, C and D, and A and B have PS3 PSN accounts, C and D don't, and they are all 'round A's house, how will multiplayer online through the one machine (Warhawk for example) be handled? Ideally you'd have A logged in on their account, enable B to log in as their PSN account, and let C and D just use null accounts, or create local accounts on the PS3. How would the signing-in process work in a such a setup?

 

[Dave Baumann]

The account only needs to be present on the unit itself - its not registered anywhere else. And its for game saves as well as well as achievements etc. I guess I'm just not seeing it as much of a chore to hit the XBOX button to bring the user blade up, in game, to login - thats all that need to be done.

As for handling other peoples account on another console, I don't know how that will/would be handled on a PS3, but existing accounts are transportable on 360 via the memory card. With an NTSC 360 downstairs and a PAL upstairs I just switch my account between them with a mem card - I can of course do that with other peoples 360's or going to shows, etc.

 

[Arwin]

I'd say you wouldn't really need an account at all for a local game. Just like you don't need one now for two player games of Super Stardust or Tekken on PSN, or a four player game of Fl0w.

What's more, as far as I remember, you could play splitscreen online multiplayer Halo 2 and PGR3 on Xbox Live without having to set up an account for the other player. He'd just show up as Player2 or whatever, or MyAccountName2, can't remember exactly.

Have I got this wrong? Or has this changed just for achievement's sake? And if so, is a side effect that Microsoft wanted to achieve perhaps to just have more registered accounts on Xbox Live? It would be a nice perk.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Have I got this wrong? Or has this changed just for achievement's sake? And if so, is a side effect that Microsoft wanted to achieve perhaps to just have more registered accounts on Xbox Live? It would be a nice perk.

That's actually something I've wondered. We know people have registered at international servers too. The actual tie of console owners to Live accounts might be a fair bit lower than first glance would suggest. I can't imagine that was a deliberate intention though. I certainly hope not!

 

[infinity4]

how long does it take to create a unique identity (profile whatever) that i am seeing some complain about this?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

how long does it take to create a unique identity (profile whatever) that i am seeing some complain about this?

No-one's complaining about that! If it's a once off event to spend a couple of minutes creating an account, that's no bigger. Did that on Wii no worries, same as XB360. The complaint is that whenever you want to play multiplayer, first player 1 has to open the Blade, select their account and sign on, then player 2 has to open the Blade, select their account and sign on, then player 3 has to open the Blade, select their account and sign, and then player 4 has to open the Blade, select their account and sign on. Contrast that with multiplayer last gen where everyone picks up a controller and plays...

It's only a moment's extra time, and in the grand scheme of things it's a nothing hassle, but it's an uneccessary overcomplication of multiplayer for what amounts to no benefit at all for some players. In the same way many small bugbears irritate, like a mosquito bite is absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of your life - it's a tiddly amount of pain and irritation that exists for a miniscule fraction of your entire life - if you take the Big Picture view there's nothing to complain about, not in this need to sign on to accounts, nor in the bus being late, nor in getting rained on, nor in spilling a bit of wine on a shirt, nor in someone posting rubbish on an internet forum. But complain we do, because we want things to be better than they are, especially when things were better and have taken a step backwards. Some of us preferred it when we didn't have this complication. Accounts? Great! Online? Great! Achievements? Great! Gamertags/cards? Great! Having to log on each account for each player in multiplayer when you don't actually care about achievements? Not great! Optionally logging in to record your achievements, while also being able to just pick up a controller and play, would be great!

 

[pipo]

360ish achievements would be good...

Sure thing. They rule!