MS is a software giant and unified platforms and standardizing them is something that is their specialty. Sony is not a software company and it shows when you use PSN. The best part about PSN is its free to play online. And lets not kid ourselves, its only free as a marketable feature.. the only one they have against MS. Sony would do anything to get $250 million/yr from subscriptions like MS does. Don't pretend for a second they are giving you free online play because they are nice people. Other than that its painfully obvious how far behind their software team is when compared to MS. Just look at the Sony catalog of media they have stashed, yet here were are in 2012 and they still cannot figure out a way to just stomp the competition by delivering up those goods to consumers. Sony could completely own the living room if they wanted ... which I'm sure they do. They just lack the know how to make something like that happen. Its like a second world country trying to get to the Moon.
Live is the best because it simply just 'works'. It was designed from the ground up, from the first line of code to now with easy and usability in mind. Its efficient and standard, and as a consumer you rarely if even ever see a hiccup with that experience.
Sony unfortunately doesn't have enough talent on board to go toe to toe when it comes to these kinds of architected platforms. Nintendo? Nintendo refused to go big with online not because they see little value in it.
They refuse because unlike Sony, they know they cannot play that game with MS. They continue riding that Mario/Zelda fanbase, and leveraging that innovative creative hive mind in the Wonka factory to appear cutting edge at each generation. All 3 bring something unique to the table, and all 3 have a place in this industry. Each company has its strengths and its weaknesses... but when talking about software development, and online infrastructure its Microsoft's back yard.
Live as it is today held back by 7 year old restraints on the 360. Expect to see features blow open next gen. Expect to see unified products and services between all MS products. True cross platform functionality between Xbox "Durango", Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and other devices. The Xbox brand is big business now and MS has built an entire campus in Redmond for this Xbox 'team'. Some of the original brains behind WindowsNT code are now working on cloud services for the next Xbox. (
http://www.bgr.com/2012/01/19/father-of-microsoft-windows-nt-joins-xbox-team/) They are treating the brand with as much respect as they do Windows and have big expectations for it over the next few years. There will be features on Live that are not possible on other platforms, mark my words.
This is something neither Sony nor Nintendo have the ability to produce or compete against. All they can do is try to keep up and they will always be doing so.
