With the 360′s price drop making the PS3 look like even more of an exclusive luxury, and the line of “but the online service is free!” frankly no longer cutting it when compared to the vastly superior Live experience, Sony really need to buck their ideas up to stay in the game.
We may as well jump straight into the list.
- Invite friends directly into a specific online match or game from the XMB. Yes it will be expensive, but Sony should have had the foresight to build that infrastructure from the start and have developers always integrate their games with PSN (at least we can now expect trophies for every game which is a start!)
- Cross-game private chat built in to the XMB. Chat should not be its own stand-alone application, and I should be able to chat to my friend whilst playing a game.
- Short voice messages to be sent instead of having to type everything. It’s just a chore. Stop it.
- USB headsets to be given away with the next few major releases. Yes, the market will be flooded with PS3-branded headsets within weeks after people trade in their duplicate headsets. This is a good thing, as it means even more people enjoying your online service a whole lot more. Take the financial hit, Sony.
The 360 has already taken another step forward while the PS3 is yet to catch up with the old Xbox 'experience', with private group chats.
It might sound like a big hole to throw millions down, but I would argue that Sony are the ones at fault for not building these features into their plan from the start. I suppose that’s one advantage Microsoft have – hey, their consoles melt themselves to death, but they really know what they’re doing with software.
The PS3 might be the best piece of hardware out there, but until the guy on the couch chooses to play FIFA or Madden with his friends on the shiny black beast, the Xbox 360 will always be far, far ahead.
Mysterious character and Evil Editor, Jason Evangelho, had the following to say during a rare appearance at GamesAreEvil Towers:
“oooh oooh! Give us FFVII as a PS1 Classic, and enable a friend list on the PSP.
Oh, and put some PR MUSCLE behind ALL of your PSN downloadable games
</rant>”
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