Comprehesive preview of the PS3 online features

Here it is

The most detailed and up to date article thusfar to hit the net.

Sweet. Looks like everything is coming together nicely.

Oh - and it\'s all free, too. The only place you\'ll be asked to fork over a penny is when you purchase something in the PlayStation Store - all of the online services, from sign-up right through to voice and video chat, are free, as is normal multiplayer gaming. There\'s no equivalent of the Xbox Live Gold account, where you\'re expected to pay extra for a further tier of services - the only things you\'ll pay money for are paid-for downloadable content, or subscriptions to premium services like massively multiplayer games.

Great, Sony knows the deal. Paying for peer-to-peer multiplayer is SHIT.

I hope they actually SHOW these features on Thursday or whenever they have the Gamers Day thingy planned.

I like the fact that it\'s free too but nothing stays free forever.

Sounds good, but not up to par with Live yet.

I\'m still curious about entitlements, rank, scoreboards.  All those things on Live are hosted by Microsoft and I\'m sure there are some enormous costs associated with it.  Is Sony going to have dedicated servers, or let the individual publishers bear the cost?  How will they recoup the loss?

There are still a great deal of questions surrounding Sony\'s Online plan, but what\'s there sounds good.

Great, Sony knows the deal. Paying for peer-to-peer multiplayer is SHIT.

As much as I would like to agree with this, especially since I come from the   pc land, for consoles I want a solid network and refined infrastructure. If Sony has to spend the time and money to build something like Xbox live believe me it ain\'t gonna be free. Microsoft has spent years, and hundreds of millions on building the Live infrastructure, with some of the best people in the business at hand. MS live and sleep online software, whereas Sony can\'t seem to make a good piece of software let alone a full online service to save their lives (SonicStage anyone?


I am just trying to put things into perspective here, Sony has lacked a real online network for all of their systems. Xbox has an established, proven system that works very well. SOny has alot of catching up to do in this area and money will not solve this problem as time is a factor. Do not expect SONY  to run a free service that can comparably measure up to xbox live, otherwise you are kidding yourself. Seriously I hope SONY creates a kick ass online service, but if they are to truly accomplish this expect to pay, cause it will be costing SONY dearly to run something of this magnitude.

Lets not kid ourselves about XBL.  As good as it is, there\'s a lot of crap we take from them that\'s pretty despicable.  In a lot of ways, XBL is nothing more than a glorified Gamespy and as fine as that sounds, I don\'t pay for Gamespy on my PC.  So what am I really paying for every month?  Downloadable demos?  If that\'s the case, why are they free for PC users?  We\'re already paying for live games and downloadable content and microtransactions and live points and all of this on *TOP* of a Live Gold fee.

The service itself is fine despite the interface being awful and it seems Sony is bringing forward all the elements that make Live great - but for free.  Paying for microtransactions is one thing, but paying just to play games online via p2p is ridiculous and we accepted it because there really was no alternative and that\'s just lame flat out.

Live\'s Marketplace is the essential heart that binds all of XBL together and that is pretty much replicated with real dollar amounts and what has the potential to be a massive backlog of PS2 and PS1 games available via the new Playstation store.

I guess for you, the glass is half empty for Sony - for me, it\'s half full.

Lets not kid ourselves about XBL.  As good as it is, there\'s a lot of crap we take from them that\'s pretty despicable.  In a lot of ways, XBL is nothing more than a glorified Gamespy and as fine as that sounds, I don\'t pay for Gamespy on my PC.  So what am I really paying for every month?  Downloadable demos?  If that\'s the case, why are they free for PC users?  We\'re already paying for live games and downloadable content and microtransactions and live points and all of this on *TOP* of a Live Gold fee.

The service itself is fine despite the interface being awful and it seems Sony is bringing forward all the elements that make Live great - but for free.  Paying for microtransactions is one thing, but paying just to play games online via p2p is ridiculous and we accepted it because there really was no alternative and that\'s just lame flat out.

Live\'s Marketplace is the essential heart that binds all of XBL together and that is pretty much replicated with real dollar amounts and what has the potential to be a massive backlog of PS2 and PS1 games available via the new Playstation store.

I guess for you, the glass is half empty for Sony - for me, it\'s half full.

I believe you\'re paying for a unified service (soon to be across multiple platforms- Xbox 360 and Vista, Live Anywhere) that includes your gamertag, gamerscore, rank, leaderboards, and whatelse that Microsoft hosts for you.  I don\'t have to tell you bandwidth isn\'t free.  You think it\'s cheap with 4 million connected gamers (read: a mix of silver and gold accounts, no less connected)?  Not to mention the moderation (cheaters, modders, glitch exploits, etc), maintenance, and upgrades.  Having to pay what comes out to be roughly $4.17 a month for such a service is a great deal.  I\'d certainly have no problems paying that instead of dealing with Sony\'s PS2 online (Socom anyone?  *shudders).  

Sony\'s online offering will be adequate for some, but won\'t match Live.

Riku I like your new avatar, it looks familiar?

Riku I like your new avatar, it looks familiar?

I snatched it from someone at TXB.

I believe you\'re paying for a unified service (soon to be across multiple platforms- Xbox 360 and Vista, Live Anywhere) that includes your gamertag, gamerscore, rank, leaderboards, and whatelse that Microsoft hosts for you.  I don\'t have to tell you bandwidth isn\'t free.  You think it\'s cheap with 4 million connected gamers (read: a mix of silver and gold accounts, no less connected)?  Not to mention the moderation (cheaters, modders, glitch exploits, etc), maintenance, and upgrades.  Having to pay what comes out to be roughly $4.17 a month for such a service is a great deal.  I\'d certainly have no problems paying that instead of dealing with Sony\'s PS2 online (Socom anyone?  *shudders).  

Sony\'s online offering will be adequate for some, but won\'t match Live.

Xfire does the unified profile thing online for free.  As for cheats, there\'s a load of ways to ban someone from being able to access servers and much of that is linked to your system as a whole, not just your gamertag.  I\'m sure there will be ways to outright ban players via your system code or some other process.  The new features that allow you to share purchased games will probably be linked with the same code.

As for referencing PS2 games online, that\'s a little harsh to compare to, no?  It\'s not like you could download an update to make the game hacker proof and have it apply to every system given the retarded distribution of the HDD units and not having it standard out of the box.  All of that\'s changed now with the PS3.  The harddrive is standard, there can be patches, there can be updates, there can be bannings.  Going off something that\'s a bit more recent and standardized, the PSP hardware goes through CONSTANT updates via firmware upgrades and Sony has had an excellent track record with that particular piece of hardware.

Also, don\'t make me laugh about Vista and Silver subscribers.  I won\'t be using vista and silver subscribers get access to content on the servers for free - you saying I\'m paying for that excess traffic with my gold membership?  You must be kidding.  

$4.17 is not a high price to pay.  Far from it.  I can afford that daily.  That\'s not the issue, however.  The issue is that the cost exists at all when it shouldn\'t.  The services offered here are things offered for free on the PC that have been offered for years.  Demos?  Trailers?  Updates?  Online play?  Consistant solid servers?  All free.  The only exception is a single gamer tag attached to your system like a login ID on a forum.  It\'s no different.  Paying for that is ludicrous, but I do it now because I want to play these games online and I lack the choice.  All things considered equal, graphics -> online play, would you pay 4.17 for xbox live or would you take it for free on the PS3?

Xfire has a unified profile with gamerscore, leaderboards, rank, voice chat, video, messaging, and so forth?  In other words, it has everything Live has, and for free?

Sony has alot to prove is all.    

Again, you\'re paying for what MS host.  It has to be hosted somewhere, bandwidth is being eaten up and someone is paying for it.  There are people who have to be paid to keep all of this up and running.  

You won\'t be using vista, but you can bet there will be plenty of people who do.  Xbox 360 gamers and PC gamers will be able to play on the same service, Shadowrun being the first game to demonstrate that feature.  Eventually, this will extend to Microsoft\'s portable devices as well with Live Anywhere.  One identity for your PC, console, and portable devices.  It\'s appealing to me.

If Sony matches Live pound for pound with not one associated cost passed on to me then I\'ll take Sony\'s online, or if they match it but cheaper.  Until then I\'m all about Xbox Live.

Actually, most of the \'premium\' features are available for free with PC aswell.  Look at Xfire, they\'re branching into in-game stats, leaderboards, etc.  

The reason the bandwidth for demos/downloads/games is free is twofold.
1) Advertising, both their own on site, and the game company wanting to get their demo out there (and paying to have it distributed through a service/advertised).
2) Distributed downloading - since consumers already pay for a reasonable amount of bandwidth (100 GB per month in my case, at 6 Mbit/1Mbit), for regular use, there is no need to create many servers.  Even if you have to, the advertising above more than covers the cost of bandwidth.

*edit*
Dang, Riku beat me to it.

Once the system is out, do a comparison early next year.  You will find the systems simmilar hopefully.  What differences there are (positive/negative) will be weighed against the pricetag (free vs XBL).  If the difference is less than very large, I don\'t think fees are justified.  XBL isn\'t a service with millions of users doing CPU intensive operations on secure company owned servers with hundreds of techs and programmers working around the clock on the program (read MMORPGs), and I don\'t think they justify the price they charge with what they offer.  It\'s basically pure profit for them.

It\'s basically pure profit for them.

Perhaps an operating profit, but they\'re probably still recouping the 2+ billion they sank in to setting up the infrastructure in the first place.  Perhaps in the future it could be a free service, but I think Microsoft will keep adding features to make it a premium service and thus charge us for it.

The thing is, you\'re excusing the cost of gold as something necessary to pay for servers and bandwidth when I\'m looking at this as a consumer who is wondering *why* I have to pay for this when it\'s free elsewhere.  I don\'t get why *I* have to pay for badwidth being used by other people who aren\'t paying a dime.  I didn\'t ask for all these extra vista/xbl/xbox compatibility, but I have to pay for it anyways?  Why?  It makes no sense to me.  When I play NBA2K7 with a friend of mine, he invites me to a game that he hosts and Microsoft connects us just like Gamespy does for free and I have to pay for that.  It\'s BS.

I do want to make something clear though: When Rainbow Six Vegas comes out later this November, I\'ll be buying it day one on 360 primarily for multiplayer on XBL.  I do like the service, I acknowledge how great it is and I\'m paying for it despite my misgivings.  I do so because there will be companies who refuse to support the PS3 network and for exclusives and I will continue to pay for it specifically for that.  I don\'t like it, but I hand over the money because I like playing games.  I still think it\'s retarded... much like the Lumines shit, thanks for nothing Q entertainment you bunch of assholes.  Even the full complete Lumines 2 will be 29.99 with a TON of content while I\'ve already paid 22 bucks for a quarter of a game and a single expansion pack on XBLA.  Ridiculous.

After thinking about it some more, and doing some research, it probably has more to do with recouping losses from infrastructure setup and from the Xbox division as a whole (you know, the 6 billion they lost so far).