Sony's Answer to Xbox Live Revealed...OK, Not Really

Basically any social networking service (Myspace, Facebook, Friendster, etc.). Plus other sites that are starting to offer similar services. I just checked out Youtube, it looks like it has a Myspace-type feel to it (personal profiles, friends, comments/messaging, groups, favorites, etc.), and they do offer a "transfer of data" that is probably somewhat similar to online gaming (if I'm understanding you right). I think some other sites like Youtube offer similar services (thinking Grouper does...think they even provide video blogging). Actually, Youtube isn't a bad comparison. They host a ton of videos, which probably takes up more bandwidth than most features, and they do so with high traffic (think 20M visitors go there per month...things would be going good if MS/Sony could get that much activity in their lifespans I would think). Xfire I guess is still a nice comparison too, and I'm guessing there are some other, better alternatives considering some of the responses to it...guess Steam can count too, but it is limited in some way (at least from what I can tell). I guess there's also other examples of services that seem to require a large amount of bandwidth and maintenance, but the services are still free (EX: file hosting).

Now I guess those aren't quite as seamless or as sophisticated as XBL, but then again, things aren't very seamless on the PC period thanks to its design.

Back to transfer of data...depending on what you meant by transfer of data, that probably wouldn't be much of a problem for Sony in this case. I'm assuming you mean things like demos, trailers, and other downloads. Those things probably do require extra maintenance and expenses, but I'm guessing that they kind of tie-in with the ads idea (companies paying to have their stuff hosted on servers). There might even be a way to go P2P with this type of service as well. XBL does have to worry about hosting games on their own servers as well, but that doesn't seem to be apart of the PNP (FYI, if I'm not mistaken, you could even use a PS3 as a dedicated server for some games).

If there is anything else involving transfer of data in gaming, go ahead and correct me where needed.

Just out of curiosity, can you expand on this? Or anyone else? Again, I'm not familiar with this stuff. How does playing a PC game online (say via Xfire...or maybe something like Steam...or the best software for doing this, whatever it is) compare to playing games online via XBL?

In any case, unless I'm misunderstanding something, it seems like that would just require some good designing by MS and cooperation with the various publishers. I wouldn't think there would be any sort of reoccurring maintenance costs for doing that (outside of hosting all games on the same servers...although I think there are exceptions on XBL, so it must not be too big of a deal?). This is something Sony will have to work on, possibly by themselves (not sure if Xfire could have helped since they seem to just help on the account management and communication side of things). Unless of course they get help from outside for this too (if I'm not mistaken, they did hire one of the guys that worked on XBL). Whether Sony charged for online play or kept it free, I don't know if that would have really played a factor in this.

The communication and networking stuff is something I would think could possibly bring about reoccurring costs (and thus, require a fee to pay for those costs), although I think it has been shown that you could avoid charging for them by using ads (MS actually kind of does this already through XBL Silver anyway AFAIK...unless I'm missing something).

Good point. A few games that looked like crap around E3 (Genji, Untold Legends, Fatal Inertia, etc.) are starting to look somewhat next-gen, at least IMO. Still VERY far from the best-looking games, but I think there has been a noticeable improvement in some of those games in a short amount of time (3-4 months). Resistance and MotorStorm are showing some decent improvements too (MotorStorm has gotten some much better mud/dirt particle effects in the last batch of screens from what I could tell).

FWIW, while I am unsure about how the actual graphics will differ between the 2 systems, I'm almost certain that, if used correctly, PS3 games will have the advantage in other areas that affect overall visuals in a game. I expect the GPUs to be roughly the same in power (and features for that matter), but Cell is considerably more powerful than the Xenon processor in the 360 (and the 360's processor might end up wasting a lot of power due to the limitations of DVD). So maybe the overall polygon counts and the graphical effects (normal/parallax mapping, DOF, HDR, AA/AF, etc) will be similar, but the PS3 might be able to have much better physics, animation, AI, and other things that are CPU-related rather than GPU-related. I think this has been somewhat apparent already actually; some of the best physics and animation I've seen have come from PS3 games (Heavenly Sword, MGS4, Naughty Dog's Jungle game, etc.). Part of that may be due to the talents of those developers though.