Last week I took a look at the Xbox 360's Live service and went over the five items I felt that Microsoft needed to look at in order to stay relevant in the online service realm. Obviously when you start talking about consoles, people are passionate and there were a number of large comments with some great points. Now I am going to look at the PlayStation Network (PSN) and the five points they need to look at to stay competitive especially since they are new to this online space.
I will start by saying something that will probably have people screaming that I am a fanboy. When looking at the PSN I had a tough time coming up with five points they need to change/look at...seriously. Sony has been very diligent about listening to feedback and enhancing their online offering. They revamped their store, normalized pricing, offered free media and stepped up their content on a weekly basis. They are really trying to make this a very compelling and competitive online offering and still stick with a free pricing model.
Having said that, there are still a number of sticking points that Sony needs to address to pull ahead of their competitors in the online presence/launchpad offering they are providing. Since online GUIs are everywhere and you can get online and play from your cell phone, PDA, smartphone and many other handhelds like the PSP and Nintendo DS, Microsoft and Sony need to listen and adapt.
Number 5 - More Content, Both Original and Classic Titles - Sony is now starting to give us pretty hefty updates in the form of add-ons, demos and multimedia, but full games are not generally part of the updates. Over the last 12 updates we had eight titles added to the PSN (not counting demos). One was a PSOne classic, three were expansion packs and one was a cross-platform title, so that means in three months we had only four unique games on the service. Sony is finally starting to get the creation machine in full swing and we expect to see many new games arriving this year, but more is needed to compete. I don't mean diluting the quality either; they need to approach companies and get games like Rez or Ikaruga before Microsoft. They also need to get niche games like Carcassonne and Puzzle Quest on the system to broaden their audience.
Article comments
1 - COD4Champ
"All I can think of is that the in-game XMB is tied to the launch of Home"
Home open beta is confirmed to be launching this November, and I think in-game XMB was rumored to be arriving this summer. I guess we know that it will be arriving before November then.
2 - PS3Commandant
Now I disagree with the update Thursdays. It gives gamers something to look forward to, at least, imo.
3 - Orakga
Sony has seriously dropped the ball on this one. Even the IDEA to try to make something like HOME was a disastrous misjudgement on their part, and only shows how out-of-touch they are with the gaming public.
I am a Sony fan, and an AVID one at that. But to be fair, my respect for Sony was EARNED by Sony since the original Playstation, but that respect is slowly dissipating away with how they've handled the PS3 so far.
And some of the comments made by Sony last week at Playstation Day have only confirmed the worst of my doubts; corporate salesmen have taken over SCE and have (mis)guided their PS3 strategy.
You make an excellent point here; in-game XMB. This *SHOULD* have been the #1 priority for Sony as well as implementing VoIP support across all applications. Yet it is somewhat obvious that features like those never reached the first page of their priority list as "corporate salesmen" wrote them off as something "only geeks would want". And the implication was "If geeks want it, it doesn't make money."
Well, you know what? In *THIS* industry, WHAT GEEKS WANT IS WHAT SELLS.
That said, the PS3 will eventually come out of this round victorious *anyway* (thanks to the loyalists from the PS1/PS2 days). But by the time the next generation begins (between 2010-2012), their image will have been tainted to the point that any Sony loyalists that may have helped them win even this poorly-managed round will have grown tired of their arrogant attitudes.
Which is really sad because the PS3 is truly a remarkable piece of hardware. If only Sony's own sales people would stop seeing this as some "home entertainment system" and understand that it is, first and foremost, a videogaming system and that "Playstation" IS A VIDEOGAMING BRAND, then MAYBE they will avoid following Nintendo's fate of the 90s.
However, humility is not a trait generally shared by the market leader. And it won't be until after 2014 that Sony will finally realize what had hit them.
4 - kaspario
My main complaint with PSN: download speed. I can download a 800 Mb demo on Xbox Live under half an hour but it takes over two hours to download the same 800 Mb on PSN. This makes me prefer the xbox version of most demos available on both consoles so the thursday thing for me is irrelevant... If they just could fix this, it would already be a big step. In fact, in the state it is now, I'm afraid Home will be a painful experience when it's released and running at turtle speed...
5 - Rapture333
Strange for you that downloading would take that long. Maybe it's your ISP. Do you have a PS3 and 360 under different ISP'S? I use comcast and I DL at about 1mb/s on my PS3
6 - Maximiliano
I also ask, where is the Brasil Store?? Come on, we're the 5th in size, but we have no attention. So we have to go from store to store, making up addressess around the world.. :S
They could just unify all that store and put all content together =/
7 - Matt
This is all very true. It's baffling that Sony has delayed in-game XMB so long for such a seemingly easy change. I wonder if it has something to do with the security of the PS3 since it hasn't really been cracked yet.
Also, I wasn't going to say anything, but it came up again and again. You use "then" where you should be using "than" three times in the article.
8 - Michael Prince
@Matt
Blame my editor! Thanks for the keen eye though....I write free form so sometimes I get caught up and don't find all my errors...
9 - Toni
Sorry about not catching the "then/than" flubs. After spending 20 minutes fixing grammatical and spelling errors, a couple tend to slip by ;P
10 - Michael Prince
Ouch!! =-)