Wednesday, November 21, 2007

XBL vs PSN

I think that Microsoft have taken a long hard look at Sony’s general arrogance and have said we can do better than that… you call that arrogance, this is arrogance.

I’m referring to the comments made by Robbie Bach of Microsoft who has recently stated the following in regard to Xbox Live and the PSN:

"It's fair to say that Xbox Live is clearly head and shoulders above anything anyone else has tried to do. We don't have competition."

He goes on to say what Sony offers shouldn't even be called a service.

Link HERE

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that XBL does offer a better service than the PSN, but to state that XBL has no competition is frankly ridiculous. Especially when you take the following into account:

* XBL has been out approximately 5 years and the PSN only 1 year. Both are evolving over time and initially XBL was a pretty stripped down version of what it is today.

* PSN is free! I cannot state this enough. If I had a Xbox I would resent having to pay to have the privilege to play online – hell I never needed to pay on my PC. What’s more, the cost mounts up over the course of a consoles life. The RRP for 1 years Live membership is £39.99, over the course of say 5 years of a consoles lifespan, this comes to £199.95. Hell you could buy yourself a whole second console with this much (a Wii of course). There is no way in hell that I would pay this to play online.

* Home is due to launch early next year and if you’re into the community aspects of online services, this does so much more than what is currently on offer on XBL.

* So far as I understand it, the majority of the PSN games run on dedicated servers, while to play XBL games, the Xbox is used as the server. The result of this is that if you are playing against someone over long distances, the game experience can suffer from lag

Anyway… rant over.

Talking of the PSN, I was pleased to not that the first DLC offering for Rock band are due to go online on the US store this Thursday. They are as follows:

Band add-on content

Metallica pack 1 ($5.49)
"...And Justice For All" ($1.99)
"Blackened" ($1.99)
"Ride The Lightning" ($1.99)

Queen's of the Stone Age pack 1 ($5.49)
"3's & 7's" ($1.99)
"Little Sister" ($1.99)
"Sick, Sick, Sick" ($1.99)

The Police pack ($5.49)
"Can't Stand Losing You" ($1.99)
"Roxanne" ($1.99)
"Synchronicity II" ($1.99)

"Bang a Gong" - T. Rex cover ($1.99)
"Cherry Bomb" - The Runaways cover ($1.99)
"Fortunate Son" - Creedance Clearwater Revival cover ($1.99)
"Joker and the Thief" - Wolfmother ($1.99)
"Juke Box Hero" - Foreigner cover ($1.99)
"My Sharona" - The Knack cover ($1.99)

This seems like a good initial selection and only hope that this continues and is similar when the game is launched next year in Europe.

Also on a side note, I completed the single player game on Call of Duty 4 last night. It may have been a short game (6-7 hours), but it was a very intense experience and I’m looking forward to playing through again on a higher difficultly level. This is always a good indicator for a good game in my opinion. Also, I’m sure that online multiplayer will keep me busy for some time…

Now I just need to get past that damn hard boss on Metroid Prime 3!

1 comment:

Sinbad said...

It's just willy-waving, to get exactly this kind of attention before the xmas period.

My impression of the difference between XBL and PSN is that XBL is more centralised and thus perhaps a bit slicker and more integrated, with cross-game friends lists and achievements etc, whilst PSN is more 'boutique' style with each game being different and separate, much like the PC used to be - which means you get benefits of more open content potentially at the expense of a less integrated feel.

I guess they'll probably try to tie that all together more in Home, but I'm wondering how well that will work in practice - I guess now that games can be patched it's easier if Home requires changes of existing games that were made before it came out.

I don't play online that much anyway but will probably get XBL 'gold' membership for the first year just to see what it's like.