Sony's "Gamer's Day" Starts Tomorrow (10/19), Last Event for PS3 Before Launch

I'll first preface this by saying that I'm not 100% on what I'm about to say, and that I'm just guessing how things work based on what I've seen.

As mentioned, gamer scores and achievements won't be a part of the PSN, at least not in a very streamline nature (they'll be game-centric).

I'm not sure exactly how streamlined the friend lists on the PSN will be compared to Live. I'm assuming that in any game on XBL, you can manage your friends list in-game instead of going back to the main menu. I'm pretty sure there is an in-game XMB menu for PS3 games that has a "Friends" menu, but I think it might be pretty limited (at least at launch); I'm guessing that in order to manage your (universal) friends list, you'd have to exit the game and go into the XMB. Some games might allow you to manage you game-specific friends list in-game though (assuming I'm interpreting things correctly and there is a univesal friends list and a game-specific friends list). In the XMB or in the game-specific friends lists, you can see who is online and I think maybe what they're playing (not sure on that).

I would think the PSN marketplace would function similar to the XBL marketplace, if not better. Developers have the option of making game-specific stores, but with something like this, I'd actually prefer that than some giant store that offers microtransactions for 100+ games.

Communication for multiplayer games are up to the developers I believe, although text/voice/video chat are supported outside of the game. I'm guessing that developers might be able to use the same chat setups in-game if they so wish though (in one of the Resistance videos, Ted Price pulls up the XMB virtual keyboard...or a Resistance virtual keyboard that looks completely out of place). Developers also have the choice of letting you know in-game whether you have received a message. In Resistance, they've turned that off, meaning that you have to finish your game and return to the lobby before noticing that you got a message.

Let me see if I can paint out a picture of how each system might work for say COD3 and Tony Hawk's Project 8 (not sure if this is how those games really work, just using them as an example).

The XBL way:
I put in COD3, and while I'm in-game, I pull up the XBL menu to see what my friends are doing. Some are offline, some are playing NBA 2K7, and some are also playing COD3. I see that PeetahMoore360 is playing COD3, and after checking out his achievements and gamer score for THP8, decide I want to play a match against/with him. I send him a message (text/voice/video) in-game to see if he wants to start up a game. He gets it in-game and reads/listens/watches it (can you listen/watch a voice/video message in-game in Live from someone not playing with you BTW?). When his game is over, he sends me a message, and we setup a game (would this be game-specific in either case, or does XBL make this easier too?).

We play a game, both of us using text/voice/video chat as needed. I kill him 5 times in a row, and receive an achievement for the game (in-game message or whatever). He then throws a fit and cusses me out. We finish the game, and I remove him from my friends list in-game (think you can also give him bad rep too, right?). I decide that I want to play Tony Hawk's Project 8, but I don't like the regular skateboard decks. I quit COD3, and go to the XBL Marketplace. Not sure how it works (read some complaints about how it handles a lot of content), but somehow, I manage to purchase some new skateboard decks for THP8. During some multiplayer skating competition, I get 2nd place. After the competition (or even during), I check out the achievements and gamer score for the guy that got 1st, and decide I want to add him to my friends list. I send him a message, and we add each other to our friends lists (maybe even giving rep points to each other). I think this includes just about everything that XBL offers (if not, maybe someone can fix this to add in things or clarify how things work).

Now the PSN way:
I pop in COD3. Two options from here on: 1)the game has an game-specific friends list, or 2) the game uses the exact same friends list as the normal PSN friends list I have. For now, let's assume COD3 has a game-specific friends list (maybe using Xfire tech, so I could also see who is playing the PC game). I boot the game up, and check out my friends list. Some people are offline, some people are online but not playing COD3 (might say what they're playing, not sure), and some are playing COD3. I see that KazRidgeRacerHirai is playing COD3; I check out his in-game profile that shows off his "achievement" and "gamer score" that are specific to COD3. I want to send him a message so that we can play a game together. Assuming the game supports in-game messaging (hopefully it at least supports text messaging if it has a buddy list), I send him a message in-game. If that doesn't work, I'll have to go to my global friends list in the main XMB and send him a message through that (text/voice/video). Kaz either gets a notification in-game, or he finishes his game and gets notified in the lobby. He sends me a message in a similar fashion.

We setup a game (again, I'm assuming this would be game-specific for either XBL or PSN). COD3 does support voice chat, so we send voice messages during the game. I shoot him 5 times in a row; if COD3 has "achievements," I get notified on this; otherwise, I get little to no recognition on how awesome I am (). Kaz gets pissed and cusses me out. The game ends, and I decide I don't like the guy anymore. I take him off of my COD3-specific friends list and ignore/ban him; I probably then have to go to the main XMB menu to do the same.

Again, I decide I want to play THP8...but then I cry myself to sleep when I realize the PS3 version is not online.

OK, for the purpose of this post, let's assume the game is online. I boot up the game, but decide that I want some new decks. I open up the THP8 store and get a list of things I can buy specifically for THP8. I purchase and download what I want. I enter some skateboarding competition, and I get 2nd. I check out who I played against, and I see the guy who beat me. THP8 does not have achievements or a gamer score, but they do have a leaderboard that I can check out (provided by Gamespy). I decide I want to add him to my friends list. THP8 does not have an in-game friends list, so I go to the main XMB to send him a message. The guy gets the message, replies in a similar fashion, and we add each other to our universal friends lists in the XMB. If I understand things correctly, this would be how the PSN works.

If I was able to recreate the situations correctly, I'm assuming that people feel that it is worth paying $50 a year to have the XBL approach to online gaming? Or no?

Assuming I was mostly correct in representing the two services, the PSN definitely does seem to require more of a hassle to do some things, or it doesn't provide the same info that XBL offers, but I'm not sure it is all that important. Maybe I'd have to start playing games online to get an idea how significant they are, but I'd rather save the $50 a year and use it for something else (maybe 10 PSOne games, several PS Arcade games, or something like that).

 

No XBX/360. I've never played a game online. Part of the reason for that is that I never even had a broadband connection until a year ago (and even then, I only have it for maybe half the year). I also tend to play a lot of single-player games (RPGs mostly), so I didn't have much of a desire to play games online. I'm hoping that I play at least some games online this upcoming generation just to get some experience with it, although I wouldn't doubt it if I still stuck to playing games mostly offline. For example, if I were to use XBL, I'd probably have to go with a monthly subscription or something (that, or waste my money on a yearly subscription in case I don't play any games during that time). That will especially be true if I'm as busy as I have been lately (outside of a few games of Lumines on my PSP, I haven't played a game for months).

I was just trying to see if it was possible for one of you guys to explain thoroughly what might set XBL apart from the PSN (based on what we know). What makes a unified service so great if the functionality provided is nearly the same? I see people say that there are a lot of great things about XBL, but they aren't usually much more specific than that. I know there are advantages, but I'm trying to figure out if it is like having a paid account at Fileplanet that lets you download files immediately (no line) from fast servers, or if it is something far more significant.

Maybe it would be better for us to drop this until later. I do hope that we can come to the conclusion that, at least on paper, the PS3's online service is much better than the PS2's online service (probably in real-life too, but definitely on paper). How it compares to XBL is something we might have to wait another month to find out.

 

Yeah, there are a lot of assumptions based on the different ways a game can work. I would think that in practice, it might not really matter. I suppose someone could just go to the main XMB menu and manage their friend lists there (not sure if the game-specific friends lists will provide any extra functionality that would be worth the hassle when available). Unless I'm mistaken, the main XMB outside of a game seems to offer a lot of functionality (friends list, list of players you recently played, multiple forms of chat, PS Store, etc.), which are sort of game independent (more like they are used without a game in the system).

It is when you're in the middle of the game that things can start to vary...I think. The previously mentioned services no longer apply (unless, of course, you go back to the main XMB and not the in-game XMB). I can see how it would be better to have the same functionality in both cases, but I just don't know if it would be that big of a deal. Guess we'll have to wait and find out just how much of a hassle you'll have to put up with to do the things that are easily done on XBL.

I pretty much agree 100% here. I figured we'd have a pretty good idea on how things on the PSN work, but there are still a number of questions that remain unanswered. Heck, sometimes when someone tries to answer those questions, they end up creating more questions (see Ted Price comment that I alluded to earlier).

As I mentioned earlier when I was replying to Miguel, Sony can talk for hours about 4D and how awesome Cell is, but they'll say little (if anything) about the PSN, backwards-compatibility, Linux, etc. I'm hoping that's not a bad sign; it seems like they'd gloat about those things if they were in a good state. Then again, I don't think they said much about PS2 BC before it launched, with many things not being revealed until PS2s started finding their way into the homes of Japanese gamers. And PS2 BC turned out well (probably better than expected I'd guess...can't remember what the general feelings were towards it back then).

I have no idea how SOCOM and MGO did things. I wouldn't doubt it if they offered some sort of friends lists.

The way I understand things, there will be a universal friends list that you can manage. In addition to that, there appears to the option to have in-game friends lists, which may or may not differ from the universal list. So let's say I boot up the XMB, go the Friends icon, and see the following:
KrazyKen218
RIIIIIDGERacerPS3
StevieFranchise03
I can see who is online/offline (and maybe what they're playing), and I can send a message to any of them from the XMB. As I said earlier, this would not matter what game I'm playing since I'd be doing this outside of the game.

Now I boot up Resistance. I'm not exactly sure how the in-game friends lists work. I think either one of two things could happen:
1)The Resistance friends lists copies your universal friends list (so the 3 names I already mentioned are here too).
2)The Resistance friends list is empty, and you have to add your friends one-by-one (maybe a somewhat quick way of doing this).
In either case, I'm guessing you could also add friends specifically to your Resistance friends list that won't show up on your universal friends list. In this case, I guess you could have different friends for different games if you want. So I guess if one of your friends only really plays Madden and he sucks at Resistance, you could have him on your Madden and universal friends list (or just the Madden list), but he wouldn't show up on your Resistance friends list.

Maybe this would work out if you could do some things with only your Resistance friends, like maybe send a message to all your Resistance friends (if you did this on a universal list, your Madden buddy would be included). How would you do this on XBL? Is there a way to sort you friends lists based on who plays what or something? Might be something better suited for clans, but I know Resistance supports that too, so I don't know what other advantages a game-specific friends list would have (if any).

How some of the functionality mentioned earlier (as well as some others) will work in-game appears to be partly left up to the developers. If they don't want to support video chat in-game, they can "turn if off." By "turn it off," I probably really mean "don't bother using the code to implement this feature."

No doubt that Halo 3 will be huge for the 360 and XBL. I myself am curious to see what they can come up with.

That is a great point about Sony needing one (or perhaps multiple) games that provide an amazing online multiplayer experience in order to make it seem as though the PSN is a good/great service. I doubt they'll get anything like Halo either just because Halo is on a level all by itself. I'd definitely tip my hat to Sony if they could create something that can offer the exact same experience that Halo can.

That said, I believe they are trying to push for games that are a lot of fun to play online. They're pushing Resistance as the launch game to get for the PS3, and Insomniac has taken some notes from Bungie, Epic, and a few other developers on how to make a great online experience (40 player maps that are huge, multiple game modes, "achievements", 60 different rankings, etc.). If UT2K7 stays console exclusive to the PS3, that might also provide console gamers with quite an online experience. Plus, there's always next-gen SOCOM, which is the biggest online game for the PS2 (at one time, I think more people spent time playing SOCOM than people spent time playing all games on XBL...mostly due to the userbase differences I'm sure). GT:HD might be a nice game to play online if PD does it right.

I know some of those games aren't first-person shooters, but I'm not sure if that is required to get the same result you were mentioning.

If I'm not mistaken, the XBL servers rely on P2P tech. On the PSN, developers/publishers can choose to have dedicated servers for their games, or to use P2P as well. I don't know enough about the MS servers, the Sony servers, or exactly how those networking technologies work, but I'm hopeful that lag won't be a problem on the PSN (at least compared to XBL).

Of course, I'd imagine any EA game or any SE game would operate roughly the same on either network since I believe both publishers run their own servers on XBL (not sure if there are any others).

To be honest, while I'm sure the XBL online fanbase is strong, there probably aren't enough of them to make a big difference. I believe only 2M-3M people played on XBL on the Xbox, and while I'm sure XBL has continued to attract attention with the launch of the 360, I'm guessing it is still a relatively small number (only ~4M systems WW IIRC, so maybe around 5M have used XBL I'd guess). So if none of the 5M XBL users switched to use the PSN service, it wouldn't really affect things all that much.

Now, that's not to say that the number of XBL users will stay at 5M. I'm just saying that from November on, people will be able to try out both services to decide which is better. This would be different than the 5M or so that have used XBL and might not give the PSN a chance since they're already used to the way XBL works.

 

It was probably harder to create that than the PS2 box design :

Guess it kind of looks like the PSP

Maybe we can blame it on the box design if the PS3 fails.

 

They'll probably drop it sometime after launching the PS3, but probably not until next year I would think. Sony would probably like to go the holiday season without dropping the price of the PS2, especially with the limited supply of the PS3; bringing in a silver PSTwo is a good move by them to try and increase demand while keeping the price the same. Ideally, they'd sell maybe 1M-2M or so units this holiday season @ $129, and then early next year, they'll go from $129 to $99 to get another nice bump in sales to keep the PS2 going strong in 2007.

No telling what they'd do for sure, but that would be my guess. Sony has been a little conservative on their price cuts lately, probably due to the losses coming up with the PS3. The last PS2 price cut was a little while back (early 06 IIRC), but considering it was only a $20 drop, it wasn't really much of a drop. And the PSP is still at the price it launched at almost two years ago (though they were probably making a profit off of it just a few months after launch IIRC).