PS3 in the US press...

i think is a bit silly right now to compare Live and PSN since not many are connected to PSN yet compare to Live which was in existence more than a year ago. Time will tell my friends.

 

We already have a Premium Gears bundle here in Finland and it's 399e

http://www.netanttila.com/webapp/wc...yId=22156&catalogId=1444&ddkey=ProductDisplay

 

Another thing is that voice chat works in all games without any extra effort on the developer's part. There's also the achievements which are one of those things that doesn't seem that big a deal until you try it and then you start to really miss it on other platforms. It's certainly added a lot of replay value to my 360 games. Achievements tie in to the whole gamertag / gamercard thing - if you look around at how many people have their gamercard in their forum sigs or as their avatars on sites that allow it you can see how popular that feature has become.

These are the kinds of thing that are much harder to add in later software updates. Things like background downloading are relatively easy to add down the road but things like achievements, gamerscores, seamless voice chat and in game friends lists and messaging really need to be in place in the SDK well before launch in order for all games to support them. Even if Sony manage to add that kind of thing in later it will never be supported in all the games that ship before the functionality is established in the SDK.

MS have put a lot of work into the Live SDKs to make it much easier for developers to easily add support for things like matchmaking, ranking, lobbies, etc. in a consistent way. This kind of behind the scenes support has to be available long before games ship in order for developers to support it and MS has been working on the plumbing since the days of G5 dev kits and before while Sony has barely got anything in devs hands for launch (witness launch titles like Tony Hawk's dropping online support for the PS3 due to not having the necessary libraries in time to integrate them).

People underestimate how much of a lead MS have over Sony on the infrastructure side of things when it comes to online. While Sony is playing catch up to features that MS has had since day one MS is pushing ahead with the SDK and infrastructure support for features that Sony hasn't even got round to thinking about yet. Dig around in presentations from Gamefest and you can get a glimpse behind the NDAs and see what kinds of things they're working on.

 

It seems that Microsoft is taking the bundle way, instead of lowering the price of the consoles, they will just ship killer bundles to make people come over.

 

Exactly, Scooby gets what I've meant 100%.

 

Better late than never

If these features are proven to be valuable, they may be copied by Playstation Network over time (for free). These guys already have single sign-on for a start. Sony may need to distribute source code for Achievement management to all PS3 developers and Playstation Network platform partners to attain basic "sharing" effect.

In fact, this (source code sharing model, like in the Open Source world) may well be a way to catch up with MS's advanced dev libraries and environment. Collectively, it will still take time to build up a rich library of source. Sony really needs to exploit their Linux angle fast.

Some posts on another forum mentioned that voice chat on XBL has lowered in quality. Is this true ? If so, does developer has control over this ? Or is it applied universally to all games ? In any case, Sony has promised voice chat. We'll just have to wait and see.

Based on what we see lately, MS has started to integrate its MSN and Windows side of business and offer them through XBL as a different business model. In this regard, yes Sony is very far behind.

Assuming that Sony's open network platform is real, let's see if Playstation Network platform partners can come up with anything innovative at all. Also Sony has its own R&D such as game streaming. People need to realize that XBL is not the only way to do an online game community platform. Take a look at Mii.

The main problem about Sony lately is they s*ck. I don't know where their collective mind is right now

 

Well there is a choice to buy the service for a period that is less than a year, You can e.g. buy for a month and the price for that is reasonable, that is good for people that mostly play single player games, but on occasion might go online when a good multiplayer game is released, like now with Gears of War. Some games also come with free Live time and occasionally there are free weekends. In essence many players don't need to have the gold membership for the whole year and thus don't need to pay for it. I always feel uneasy when the 12 month Live fee is included in cost comparisons.

 

You really believe that will be the situation for the life of the PS3?

Or is this a temporary situation because the launch titles couldn't get online support in for whatever reasons?

 

Achievements can be implemented per-game on PS3. Resistance has 'achievements', for example.

Not true of all the things you've mentioned. "in game friends lists and messaging" exposed via an in-game XMB would apply retroactively to all applications without patches on the part of the games

As for the rest - a universal template for achievements, or gamerscores - it could be provided later for all games developed henceforth. Although I don't think you will see an equivalent to 'gamerscore', as they've expressed their explicit disinterest in that and provided a reasonable explanation as to why.

 

It was pretty bad, but they've upgraded it with the latest Dashboard version.

I don't think devs have control over the quality.

It's a shame really. It's a really nice system, and I think things like unified feedback / rep / complaints are mandatory for an online platform. Is there anything like that on the PS3 by the way (e.g. complaints)?

 

You can complain about a user here:

http://np.us.playstation.com/complaint/pc/ComplaintFormPage1.aspx

 

agreed.

The online features are obvious differences between the systems. It's no contest at the moment.

360's offering of gamerscores and achievements as well as having total control of your online experience including adding people to your preferred/avoid lists for all matchmaking across all games. Complete interaction with voice in-game across all games. Having a universal MUTE for a player across all games that you may come into contact with as well as the ability to file complaints immediately in game (every game) from the dashboard. Seeing details of each friend's activity across all games at all times and interacting at will as well as seeing all the previous players (not yet friends) who you met from matchmaking over several sessions, regardless of what game you met them....

it's as good as it gets and that's just a few of the outstanding features.

 

Great.

I have never owned a game console of any sort, but now I just had to make a purchase. I don't even have a HDTV set yet. I blame you if my spousal unit is not happy.

 

Great!, the next thing you have to do is, start saving for that HDTV!
and of course come up with good explantion that it is needed.

 

To that I would add the ability to see what all my friends are doing/playing from xbox.com and being able to add gamertags of co-workers from xbox.com also makes it "worth it". Turned on the 360 yesterday, Gold had expired, two or three button presses later, I'm gold again...of course I also dropped 62.50 on 5000 points also, to get ready for all the TV show downloads we plan on taking advantage of.

 

Well since the signals are getting an upgrade here in Finland, starting early next year, no? It would be perfect way to explain and justify the purchase. "But baby, you can watch that hot news reporter in 720p!"

 

That misses the whole point of achievements. What you're talking about is nothing more than what games have had for years - in game recognition of certain achievements. The Live style of achievements where you have a universal gamerscore and can compare achievements with other players either from your 360 or from the web adds a whole new dimension. It's not the same thing at all.

Some aspects of this on the 360 require some integration with the game code. Things like in game invites that work across games for example. MS also had SDK support for an in game overlay since the early days - again some integration is required by devs in order to play nicely with the overlay, things like auto-pausing the game when the overlay comes up and hooks to tell the overlay when to update and render. On a console where games take full control over the hardware and control things like buffer flips explicitly it's difficult to support arbitrary pop ups and overlays without some hooks in the game code.

It's possible something like this could be added later but it would never apply to all the games that release before its added. Due to the lag time involved in developing a title you wouldn't start to see it appear until at least 6 months after SDK support was added either so it's not something that can possibly be 'just around the corner'. If it comes at all it will not come soon.

Do you have a link to Sony's explanation for why they aren't interested in a gamerscore type system? I must have missed that.

 

Yap ! The open network way of doing this is to define a standard HTTP protocol and format to retrieve Achievements from different games based on the Playstation Network ID (even though they are implemented differently by developers or Playstation Network partners). Perhaps some sample source code to allow these people to implement said features in their game/infrastructure. The actual viewing and presenting of consolidated achievements can be done on their PS3 official site, or by the user community clan sites, and PS3 fansites. PS3's web browser should be a boon for such things.

Agree with the lag time in implementation. A free feature is a free feature. But I wouldn't be so sure to say that it would never apply to all the games that release before its added. PS3 games can be patched thanks to its online capability.

 

No it doesn't. You go on to talk about gamerscore which is really something subtly different, if related. And yes, comparing achievements is nice (and even still can be done per-game, as you'll see via myresistance etc.) but the fundamental idea of providing something to achieve in a game does not require a universal framework.

I can see where you're coming from with in-game invites, but without knowing much about PS3's OS and how it operates I think it's difficult to say for sure re. overlay management.

I didn't put any timeline on it..

In short, the argument is that using a universal gamerscore in matchmaking is not desireable, since how well you do in one game doesn't reflect on how well you might play in another. You can probably google for an exact quote..

 

Gamerscore = combined points value of all your achievements. It's all part and parcel of the overall appeal of the gamerscore / gamercard / gamertag / achievements system on the 360 which I've been referring to as 'achievement's' for the sake of reduced verbiage. When I'm talking about Xbox Live achievements I'm referring to the complete integrated package, not just the idea of a game recognising when you achieve something. Of course that doesn't require a universal framework - games have been doing that for years. Maybe the reason the distinction is lost on some people is that they haven't had experience with the system on the 360 - once you've used it for a while I find it hard to imagine how you could say it's not a very different thing from individual games simply giving you awards for certain accomplishments.

That might be a valid argument, if it was actually how matchmaking worked on the 360 which of course it's not.