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PS3 online strategy outlined
- Thread starter ziran
- Start date
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Dr_Cogent said:
Exactly. Basically my most wanted information from Sony is how they will improve their online service and though this vaguely sounds like they might jump into the selling content arena, I really don't see anything solid at all. Of course, we might be more than a year from launch right now too.
Zer0 said:
Microsoft charges for the Xbox Live service. What they deliver is fair for the price. Most PC games don't create servers for you. EA is the exception, and not the rule, with Battlefield.
Most PC games require you, the user, to create a server.
Matchmaking, messaging, and everything else Live delivers is perfect.
Dr_Cogent said:
you must need to play a lot of more pc games,every pc game i play on inet is free and got a LOT of free servers where i can join games with 32 or more players
battlefield
call of duty and expansion
rome total war
half life 2 and mods
operation flashpoint
unreal tournament and mods
battlenet IS FREE
the list its interminable,almost everyone got decent servers free of cost
Dr_Cogent said:
Yeah, that's why I think people are insane for speculating and I think the thread title is misleading. I click on the thread expecting an outline of their online strategy and I get zip and a page of speculation on that zip.
Here's what I expected in an outline
Title
Sony's Online Strategy
1.)Infrastructure
a.)Connection
b.)Setup
C.)Games
d.)other crap
2.)Pricing
a.)etc.
b.)etc.
3.)Marketing
and on and on......The only thing I saw having to do with online was a passing mention of being open to third parties and a thought about pressing a button like On Demand and downloading stuff. Hey that's great, but that's not an outline or anything hard.
Zer0 said:
Who said all of those servers are created by the publisher? I'm confident the majority of servers are not being run by the publishers.
Valve runs servers for HL2? I don't think so. Users run their own free servers.
Zer0, you are mistaken. They are free for "you", but users are running the majority of these servers. Not the publishers.
Beer Monkey
Member
Yep, and people can do the same thing on Live but they choose not to. I've got enough bandwidth to easily run a 24-player Battlefront server 24/7, but why should I?
rastex said:
these ppl dont mint others using their servers,like i dont mind they use our bf2 server whe paid,thats the spirit of the pc online players
there are a LOTOF OFICIAL SERVERS of pc games,ubi soft games,battlenet,unreal,battlefield,novalogic
cant say the same about xboxlive,can you play a game of 30 vs 30 on xbox live?
FUCKhuman5892 said:
If ever there was a post I strongly agreed with, it's this one.
Back when Sony was spouting bullshit about the PS3 not having actual boxes for the games and all games being downloadable or some such BULLSHIT, I was pissed but knew it wouldn't automatically switch to that form of distribution. This, however doesn't sit well with me. For the simple reason that it's already happening with STEAM and SiN. Developers can do this if they want, but I'm staying the fuck away from it. When I buy a game I expect a worthwhile purchase...PUT those fucking 20 hours of content on the disc and then offer frivolous content for download afterward and I'll still be happy to buy the game and ignore the fluff.
That won't happen though...you'll buy the $60 game and play for a good 10 hours before you reach a Kill Bill vol. 1 style ending and a screen telling you to head to a website to order the rest of the game. At first you'll stare blankly at the screen and think it's a Sanity Effect joke and then the truth will sink in, slowly at first but after numerous games you will expect this to happen. Those of you idiotic enough to praise stuff like Steam will immediately begin to stimulate your labias at the prospect of being bent over mercilessly. There will be a few that will throw their controllers at their TV screens in disgust scream FUCK ALL WAKUNE WAS RIGHT. No clue what the rest of gamers will do...here's hoping they have sense enough to keep this practice low profile for at least the majority of next-gen
piss
hukasmokincaterpillar
Member
Mrbob said:
You should be disappointed in the topic starter not the info, like I and others stated it was simply misleading. These shrill topics with nothing to say are getting rather annoying.
I don't much care what strategy Sony comes up with. Anything is better than MS's. Each console comes with a free year of Silver, which allows you to do everything BUT play online. So they up the fee for Live to $60 a year to essentially use your own internet connection on their shitty peer to peer service. No thanks.
I'll even pay for Sony's as long as they keep getting games with dedicated servers.
I'll even pay for Sony's as long as they keep getting games with dedicated servers.
Dr_Cogent said:
when xbox live is the only legal method to play online,and at 60 $ at year..yes at least with their own games like halo2,the forced the devs to use xboxlive to play online,forcing the user to pay,there is NO ALTERNATIVE,at least put some fucking servers its not insane,its just logic
Beer Monkey
Member
Most public PC servers seem to be subsidized by the bandwidth of clueless schools and employers.
If Microsoft started running dedicated hosts for every single Live game, I think Live would cost substantially more than $50 a year, and I wouldn't blame them.
If Microsoft started running dedicated hosts for every single Live game, I think Live would cost substantially more than $50 a year, and I wouldn't blame them.
EA have nearly 1000 of their own servers for BF2 and growing fast. They added tons of EA europe servers lately and i think they will increase by 300 soon? I frequently play on EA UK servers. I am virtually guaranteed a good play. 
Best of all i dont pay a monthly fee.
Sounds more like fluff than an actual strategy. Type stuff i expect to be discussed at GDC. Also i support steam. I really like the idea because its quite flexible and well thought out.
Best of all i dont pay a monthly fee. ziran said:
Sounds more like fluff than an actual strategy. Type stuff i expect to be discussed at GDC. Also i support steam. I really like the idea because its quite flexible and well thought out.
Deg said:EA have nearly 1000 of their own servers for BF2 and growing fast. They added tons of EA europe servers lately and i think they will increase by 300 soon? I frequently play on EA UK servers. I am virtually guaranteed a good play.
Like I said, that's the exception - not the rule.
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
Andrew2 said:
This is what I hate about sony. The PS2 online experience was laughable. Anyone who thinks xbox didn't have far and away the best online console implementation is just nuts.
Meh, just got the impression that you felt the fee you were paying for was so that MS could host servers. I'm not a big fan of paying yearly so I can host a game under a single service-wide login name. As it is, XBL is just pay-to-play version of Battle.net.Dr_Cogent said:
That's not accurate though...Diablo II matches aren't even Peer-to-Peer, right?
the topic title was taken from the article i was quoting from next gen.
i agree it isn't the detailed outline strategy we were hoping for, so i apologise for any misleading.
however, i think harrison, a high up figure at sony, saying, and confirming what people were suggesting, that titles should be moving away from full content on the disc to episodic downloads is important and worrying. imo, this could point to a dramatic change in the nature of games, especially rpgs, for the worse. i wouldn't like paying $60+ for ffxiii then another $40 in episode download fees to finish the game, or play the full version.
i agree it isn't the detailed outline strategy we were hoping for, so i apologise for any misleading.
however, i think harrison, a high up figure at sony, saying, and confirming what people were suggesting, that titles should be moving away from full content on the disc to episodic downloads is important and worrying. imo, this could point to a dramatic change in the nature of games, especially rpgs, for the worse. i wouldn't like paying $60+ for ffxiii then another $40 in episode download fees to finish the game, or play the full version.
Sony SHOULD NOT clone Live. There are a number of people like myself who have been weened on free online PC gaming. I will NEVER pay for an online game. The only way I'd pay for Live is if it also let you play MMO games for free as well. That's the only way that price is justified IMO.
Now, there is no reason Sony can't have some of the functionality people desire, without charging a dime. I said it in another thread, but here goes again:
A standard GUI so everyone has the same features and functions. This would be as simple as a username and password to a set of IRC-like chat servers. Fairly simple to implement and maintain. This username has some pool of online storage to store various game stats and buddy list. No reason an EA server can't export a tiny text file containing your current BF2 rank or whatever. If Hotmail and GMail can do this, wtf can't Sony? Run banners ffs, I don't care. Anyway, the functionality you get here is the following:
chat
stat track
friends list
All that, and the cost ain't jack shit. Now from this standard GUI, the game in your PS3 will make an online portal available to you so if it's BF2 (for instance), you can hop over to EA's servers where they might or might not charge you to play. This is the way it should be, choice. I like the idea of an all-inclusive package, but Live isn't that. They *might* still charge you to play MMOs, and that's just not worth it IMO. If MMOs were free, I'd sign up in an heartbeat, b/c it would be a great bargain then. And AFAIK, Live used P2P, so you're not even paying for servers outside of the chat and marketplace. That's a complete and utter ripoff, and I will have no part of that.
But really, there's no excuse for Sony not to implement something like I suggest above. And the network scalability of Cell makes it easier to create server clients for games, as well as doing P2P, b/c there's commonality in the processors. It should all just look like a farm of SPEs. No excuses this time. If they don't deliver with it, I'll be fine sticking to my laptop for online gaming and my consoles for single-player. PEACE.
Now, there is no reason Sony can't have some of the functionality people desire, without charging a dime. I said it in another thread, but here goes again:
A standard GUI so everyone has the same features and functions. This would be as simple as a username and password to a set of IRC-like chat servers. Fairly simple to implement and maintain. This username has some pool of online storage to store various game stats and buddy list. No reason an EA server can't export a tiny text file containing your current BF2 rank or whatever. If Hotmail and GMail can do this, wtf can't Sony? Run banners ffs, I don't care. Anyway, the functionality you get here is the following:
chat
stat track
friends list
All that, and the cost ain't jack shit. Now from this standard GUI, the game in your PS3 will make an online portal available to you so if it's BF2 (for instance), you can hop over to EA's servers where they might or might not charge you to play. This is the way it should be, choice. I like the idea of an all-inclusive package, but Live isn't that. They *might* still charge you to play MMOs, and that's just not worth it IMO. If MMOs were free, I'd sign up in an heartbeat, b/c it would be a great bargain then. And AFAIK, Live used P2P, so you're not even paying for servers outside of the chat and marketplace. That's a complete and utter ripoff, and I will have no part of that.
But really, there's no excuse for Sony not to implement something like I suggest above. And the network scalability of Cell makes it easier to create server clients for games, as well as doing P2P, b/c there's commonality in the processors. It should all just look like a farm of SPEs. No excuses this time. If they don't deliver with it, I'll be fine sticking to my laptop for online gaming and my consoles for single-player. PEACE.
fortified_concept
Banned
Ummmm.... does this mean microtransactions? Cos if it does I have a huge FUCK OFF letter to send to Sony headquarters.
Beer Monkey
Member
Why not? What do you not like about the functionality?
Oh, it's not the functionality that you dislike, it's the cost.
I've been gaming 'free' online (and direct dial) on PCs for over a decade. I don't at all mind paying $50 for Live. It's a great service, and quality is worth paying for.
SuperPac
Member
beermonkey@tehbias said:
With the kinds of matchmaking and feedback options that Microsoft is offering on Live 360, Sony's going to have a long way to go to match it in style and substance. I honestly have little faith that they will, simply because of their slipshod record with PS2 online games and the fact that they've had the perfect opportunity to try a mini/test version of such a service with the PSP and don't seem to be moving in that direction with any amount of speed. Then there's the fact that Japan just doesn't care about online gaming on console. How many first-party PS2 online *games* (not singing polar bears) are there that originated in Japan?
Agent Icebeezy
Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
Their online plan doesn't seem too well thoughtout. If they had a competent online service, Xbox wouldn't have gained a foothold like they have
The thing is, what's so terribly difficult to copy about the functionality? Like I said, Myspace.com offers you all that matchmaking for free. We have AIM and IRC for free for chat, right? Marginal server loading there, and AIM supports way, way more people than Sony and MS could hope for. Buddy lists and stat tracks are storage concerns, which honestly don't need a lot of space. If I can get 2.5GB of space for GMail, I would like to think I can get maybe 20-50MB to store a list of my friends, and all my stats for the games I play. Those are simple text files.SuperPac said:
My beef has always been that you are paying for fluff. Live is like a portal. I already have a portal, it's called XP with my internet connection. I'm not making excuses for Sony's current online plan, which is garbage, but I don't need to pay to matchmake. It seems really silly, and it's no coincidence IMO that subscription bases remain relatively small. I have outlined how Sony can implement this same functionality for free. All that's really needed is a standardized gui, which is about as simple as anything. If they can't foot the bill for chat servers and a few TB of storage, then maybe they don't want people playing online, simple as that. It doesn't have to be anything as fancy as voice-chat either. You can have speech-to-text conversion handled locally on the PS3, and eliminate the need for a keyboard. And with their talkman technology, they already have a universal translator (if they didn't already have a cheap text translator available).
There is honestly no reason for the charge right now. I know how wonderful the service is, that's perfectly fine. My argument is, "wtf are you really paying for?" Is it honestly worth is when I can do all that and more for free already? If I am going to pay, I would expect to be getting a persistent online world, not a persistent online chat. We already have #ga, and we don't pay anything for it. Hell, piggyback on some free IRC server if necessary. But right now, MS is charging you for a portal. They are charging you for IM and the ability to play a game you're already paying the infrastructure costs for. It really is a double-dip, and IMO, PPV is just plain garbage. Same with the microtransactions and the silly episodic nonsense Phil was talking about. This stuff adds jack to the gaming experience. There are ways to get your Xbox online for free too, without having to use Live. I think it's just plain wrong to be charging people without a compelling reasons. But like I said, MMOs included in that package for free (meaning your money goes to MS to maintain the game servers) would definitely be worth it. But that's just not the case right now. PEACE.
Their "slipshod" record has improved over time with each wave of online enabled games, to the point where most PS2 online titles are now offering all the basic niceties that have made XBL attractive to many GAFers. Biggest omissions they have yet to address are universal player ids and universal friends lists.SuperPac said:
There are number publishers of console games in Japan who have invested in online gaming for their homeland as much as anywhere. I believe you're probably right that SCEI hasn't produced many, if any, online games themselves but they continue to be the driving force behind a PS2 that's been redesigned with built-in network hardware, the PSP with Wifi capability out of the box and the PS3 that is supposed to have Gigabit Ethernet *and* Wifi built-in. Not to mention that the other two major divisions within SCE (SCEA and SCEE) have certainly been producing online-enabled games. They know they're building a platform for worldwide consumption so their practices in their homeland are not always indicative of their global strategy.