MidgarBlowedUp said:
PSN+ = Best Online Service Idea Yet For Consoles.
I still don't get why people say LIVE is the best service out there. Since when is paying money to get the same service I get on my PC a deal?
Xbox Live is a rip to be sure compared to the PC side. It's a shitty version of modern Steam for 40-50 dollars a year. It was especially obnoxious to me as I don't play many online console titles, and in the rare occasion I'd get some new co-op title, come home and then it'd sink in that I needed to subscribe.
However, for most people, the way it's done accents their services pretty naturally. MS has their OS and services and network structure rigged up *very* well, to the point where paying for the few things you get with Gold almost seems pretty paltry. That and despite P2P, they do have a good backbone, even for that. Getting Gamespy in too many PC and PS3 titles lately can still make you sigh a little.
PSN+ just seems like a bit of a mess to me, it will probably be good value for some folks, but it to me it looks like like they didn't really know what to add, or how they could add it on a live console on their OS, so they took some random deals and parsed it together as some subscription plan. It looks lazy and a bit sad, it's like one of those big books of coupons that comes in the mail. Like they have no intentions of really fixing or adding anything to PSN or the PS3 XMB.
That aside, for the future, I just really hope the PS4 makes some stupidly massive leaps with it's setup. Like matching parity with 360 all it's nice things, then beef up their own often dormant hooks like Youtube uploads, iffy download speeds, even Home integration (and I HATE Home and avatars and Miis and all that shit, I just figure if it's going to be around, why not splice it in so you can actually turn better profit on it)
In general, I really want next-gen for consoles to be more about getting out machines with good build quality, at good prices, with incredible OS and software support. There still isn't a need for much more horsepower. Maybe some DX10 effects, more ram, etc, but making another huge leap isn't going to do anyone much good.