SCE’s Shuhei Yoshida has admitted they ”were late to offer” a centralised network for online services on PS3, that’s where users ”see the difference” between XBL and PSN.
Publishers including their own network stuff was ”fine at the start,” but Sony soon realised they needed ”a unified approach.” Must keep ”adding and improving”; integrate social networks?
”I think we were late to offer the platform-level support, to make the online functionality work at that level,” SCE worldwide studios’ president Yoshida told Edge magazine.
”We made the prior decision that you do not introduce the common centralised network names into every experience, so publishers made their own. That was fine at the start, but as more and more games have online functionality you need a unified approach.”
”So Microsoft took that approach in the last generation, and maybe that’s where people see the difference when they compare Xbox Live and PSN,” he commented.
Sony plan to keep centralising the PlayStation Store into the PS3, and have taken steps toward that with the latest firmware update; 3.0. Yoshida-san also said Sony Computer Entertainment ”should really continue to look at adding and improving” PSN with more features.
Integrating something like Facebook, which Microsoft will do with Xbox Live soon, is a topic the corporate giant hasn’t ruled out in the Network’s future. ”Something like 300 million people already have accounts on Facebook. Why should we ignore that?” Indeed.
Do you Facebook? Would you enjoy it on a next-gen console? Microsoft will also be adding Twitter support to the Xbox 360, alongside the inclusion of Facebook.
Source: CVG
