This is how I feel as well, but since it's free - as long as you don't have Plus - I think that's ok. Sony will have to fix a lot of things next gen, but it might not be as easy selling Live in the future. The headstart made it possible, but competitors are everywere these days(Steam, iOS, PSN). Unless they start charging as well, how long will consumers be fine paying for what is free elsewhere?
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Why is XBL still the superior online service...
- Thread starter Speedymanic
- Start date
This is how I feel as well, but since it's free - as long as you don't have Plus - I think that's ok. Sony will have to fix a lot of things next gen, but it might not be as easy selling Live in the future. The headstart made it possible, but competitors are everywere these days(Steam, iOS, PSN). Unless they start charging as well, how long will consumers be fine paying for what is free elsewhere?
H_Prestige
Banned
LOL, what are they missing besides more ways to make you pay them money? They pair you up with other players and have ways to message and talk with other people. What else is there when it comes to online play?
statham
Member
I'm a old timer and 14.4 was broadband for me. . besides that in my opinion, XBL had nailed it. I've had a ps3 for close to three years, the updates when I start a game that takes 20-30 minutes suck. first it downloads, slowly, then installs, then installs again and it finishes with a reboot.
Infamous Chris
Banned
No, it did not. Just because SOME people had prolonged issues, most didn't. I remember that time, and IIRC it was due to Halo 3 and CoD4 creating an influx of online players at once. For me there was two days of issues where I sometimes couldn't connect, for some others, more.
To compare that, something that happened early this gen, to the PSN hack fiasco where users couldn't log into PSN for almost a month (longer in asia), something that happened late this gen and compromised the entirety of the service, is terribly grasping for straws. Terribly.
Anyway, let's not shit up this topic more than it already is, lol.
On the topic of trophies vs cheevos, I agree with what's been said. That's why I have about 7000 achievements and not even 500 trophies; MS swings dat banhammer by checking timestamps, and I even knew a mod (XBL BigBrother) who bans people for this on a daily basis.
pelicansurf
Needs a Holiday on Gallifrey
I buy most games on PS3 unless it is known to be much, much better on the 360 or it's a 360 exclusive because I'm still on a 1st gen 360 and it's only a matter of time before it breaks. Sighigh. I don't pay for Gold either. Eff that.
Obviously, because most of their friends buy their games on XBL. Microsoft has established a brand strength and image that has lead to a self fulfilling prophecy for consumers. PSN Plus offers more robust options for gamers, but as far as attracting online multiplayer games goes, Sony's going to have to wait until next generation. Microsoft has simply won this one.
Boss Man
Member
Isn't the cross-game chat thing more of a legal issue than it is a technical thing? Or am I wrong about that?
Either way, yeah XBL is a more coherent and...careful(?) experience. It makes sense, since XBL has been around longer and it's always been a paid service. You can throw PS+ into the equation but that's a bit disingenuous IMO. If you're playing online, you pay for XBL. PS+ is more of a luxury thing and I can't imagine the percent of people paying to be very high at all. There's also the fact that Microsoft has had a lot more experience with this sort of thing.
XBL is better than PSN, but it's definitely not $60 a year better IMHO. As PSN closes the gap (which I'm sure it will definitely be on par next gen), I'm curious to see if that will make PSN more expensive (i.e. not free) or XBL cheaper.
Either way, yeah XBL is a more coherent and...careful(?) experience. It makes sense, since XBL has been around longer and it's always been a paid service. You can throw PS+ into the equation but that's a bit disingenuous IMO. If you're playing online, you pay for XBL. PS+ is more of a luxury thing and I can't imagine the percent of people paying to be very high at all. There's also the fact that Microsoft has had a lot more experience with this sort of thing.
XBL is better than PSN, but it's definitely not $60 a year better IMHO. As PSN closes the gap (which I'm sure it will definitely be on par next gen), I'm curious to see if that will make PSN more expensive (i.e. not free) or XBL cheaper.
Metalmurphy
Member
It is believed that the update required to add CGC would break some games, and the company behind those games did not allow it. Nothing confirmed though.
Yep. PSN has improved though.
Also, I will never understand the metro UI hate. I guess I'm one of the few who likes it.
metro looks fine, but i think the 360 version has alot of unused space.
Infamous Chris
Banned
I definitely get why they're doing it, I just have a problem with how they're doing it.
There's nothing wrong with them wanting to conserve battery life. However, they know that someone who uses the PS Vita on a regular basis will connect (and disconnect) from networks frequently. I do it multiple times a day because the handheld 'forces' me to do so. It should be Sony's main goal to make this process (connecting) as seemless as possible. That's something they haven't done. My PS Vita is the only device I own that can't connect to my home network in the background – instead, I have to look at a 'please wait' screen (or various waiting screens that pop up in a row).
There's also no reason to not give me a choice. Maybe I don't need good battery life and want to give up precious energy to talk to my friends while playing Uncharted. There's no need to make that decision for me. There's no need to conserve energy when the handheld is plugged in either. Sony should have thought about that. A little option in the settings menu 'Do you want to save battery by powering off certain feautres (3G/WiFi) while playing (certain) games?' would have been enough to greatly improve the user experience.
------
What I still don't get about XBL is why people say downloads are super fast. It's pretty slow for me and doesn't max out my connection (should be about 12.5MB/s) at all.
Auto_aim1
MeisaMcCaffrey
Xbox 360 was designed with robust online features in mind and it shouldn't be a surprise to see them leading in that department on consoles. What happens next-gen is anybody's guess, but at least Sony and Nintendo have a basic idea as to how to go about it.
There are a lot of things that makes XBL the better service: demos, optimal speeds and it's properly integrated with the console providing a cohesive experience. CPC and other things are OS features and again, MS managed to include them without bloating the OS size too much.
Things will be better next-gen, though. With Vita you can see Sony dedicated 256 MB for the OS itself and made it really zippy. The only thing they need to do now is to improve their infrastructure and add more features. I really have no idea what Nintendo is going to do.
There are a lot of things that makes XBL the better service: demos, optimal speeds and it's properly integrated with the console providing a cohesive experience. CPC and other things are OS features and again, MS managed to include them without bloating the OS size too much.
Things will be better next-gen, though. With Vita you can see Sony dedicated 256 MB for the OS itself and made it really zippy. The only thing they need to do now is to improve their infrastructure and add more features. I really have no idea what Nintendo is going to do.
Yeah I guess I can understand that.
The only problems I have with it is that the "games" menu should be the first thing beside "home" in my opinion but that isn't a big deal. It takes only 1-2 seconds to get to it via the controller's bumper buttons.
To find game content I use the bing search, and to play XBLA games I just downloaded, I go to quickplay from the home menu. Overall, I find it faster to use than the previous dashboards. I also like the way it looks. Ads seem the same to me as they were previously, and in some cases some of the ads seem smaller than they were before. So I also don't get the "bombarded with ad's" feeling that people are getting in comparison to how they felt with previous XBL dashboards.
Boss Man
Member
I usually don't mind Microsoft's UI's as much as other people tend to. As a matter of fact, the Zune HD has one of my favorite interfaces (I prefer it to the iPod, actually). There's something about the interface on the Xbox that I'm really not a fan of though. It may just be that I don't own an Xbox so I don't use it every single day, but it feels cluttered or something. It's like there are too many things and not enough (or not proper) emphasis on their priority.
James Sawyer Ford
Member
It's not. Steam and Vita are better, and free.
PSN on the PS3 isn't there probably due to memory limitations or else we'd see it.
PSN on the PS3 isn't there probably due to memory limitations or else we'd see it.
OldJadedGamer
Banned
Here are my experiences on both PSN and XBL for the same multiplayer game:
PSN:
Game round starts
Pause to go to menu
Mute heavy breather
Mute signing kid
Mute dude talking on cell phone
Unpause menu and go back to game where I've died three times already and finish the round
Next game round starts
Pause to go to menu
Mute Heavy breather #2
Mute guy with microphone up his ass or blowing in a fan
Mute singer #2
Mute signer #3
Unpause menu and go back to game where I've already died 4 times.
Rinse and repeat for every new round.
XBL:
Set up option to automute everyone by default unless they are on my friends list.
Play games with no distractions.
PSN:
Game round starts
Pause to go to menu
Mute heavy breather
Mute signing kid
Mute dude talking on cell phone
Unpause menu and go back to game where I've died three times already and finish the round
Next game round starts
Pause to go to menu
Mute Heavy breather #2
Mute guy with microphone up his ass or blowing in a fan
Mute singer #2
Mute signer #3
Unpause menu and go back to game where I've already died 4 times.
Rinse and repeat for every new round.
XBL:
Set up option to automute everyone by default unless they are on my friends list.
Play games with no distractions.
Which game?
woo and indeed hoo
Banned
No, he is not.
Which console service is Xbl inferior to? I understand that a lot of Gaf is prO Sony, but these claims are ridiculous lol
OldJadedGamer
Banned
You name it. XBL's automute feature is on an OS level. Some games for PSN don't even have the ability to mute players from within the game.
Yeah, I know. I've been playing a lot on the 360 recently and really appreciate that feature.
Though I'd like to know what game you were having the problem with? Muting people in CoD, for example, takes me two seconds. I'd rather not have to do it but it's not that bad. There's also absolutely no way you got in a lobby where three people + you and your friends are using mics. Your story is made up!
Boss Man
Member
Eh, I really don't think it's fair to use price in the comparison.
I don't know about PSN on Vita, but it's my opinion that XBL is definitely better than PSN on PS3. Again, I don't think it's $60/year better (at all), but it's still better. I wouldn't even pay $20/year for the upgrade, but it's still an upgrade.
I don't know about PSN on Vita, but it's my opinion that XBL is definitely better than PSN on PS3. Again, I don't think it's $60/year better (at all), but it's still better. I wouldn't even pay $20/year for the upgrade, but it's still an upgrade.
Infamous Chris
Banned
OP mentions consoles in his first sentence, and to say Vita is better than XBL is laughable and -- wait, James Sawyer Ford? Never mind, there is no point in logic.
It's 8 player chat, not 4.
RukusProvider
Banned
One of the biggest issue on PSN is that it's often left to the developer on how they choose to implement a feature. This provide the end user with an inconsistent experience.
MS, through software, is doing what Sony has wanted to do for so many years now, take over the living room.
MS, through software, is doing what Sony has wanted to do for so many years now, take over the living room.
I agree. I think the open nature of Sony's platform has actually hindered the feeling of connectivity. It feels like less of a "platform." And while I agree that PSN has improved in the last few years (Nintendo's just something else entirely, sigh), they haven't done nearly enough. Look at what Valve has done with Steam in just the last two or three years. There's really no (valid) excuse.
Nintendo's and Sony's soon, inferiority to Steam also isn't acceptable.
Conflict NZ
Member
The media made that out to be soo much worse than it actually was. For the entire time people were complaining the only issues I had that holiday were every now and then I couldn't connect to games for a couple of attempts, otherwise it was fine. There may have been one three hour period where I couldn't sign in and that was about it. It was a perfect example of the "vocal minority".
I hate people talking to me when they're right next to me in person while i'm playing a game. I can't stand all the casual chatter going into one ear in party chat , I always cringe when I get a request from a friend on Xbox Live to party chat but I don't want to look like an asshole if I decline it.
Infamous Chris
Banned
Um, you did? Here:
Lmao, you edited your last post into an even worse post.
set yourself to invisible? Your friends dont have to always know you are online.
HigherLevel
Member
I'm pretty sure anyone who doesn't think XBL is superior to PSN either doesn't play online, or doesn't own an Xbox.
I have both and I prefer PSN since it has better sales. I like to play games online but i don't care about the social aspect of it unless its a game i'm really into. Most of my real life friends aren't into the same games i'm into anyway.
Yeah Sony and Nintendo are on par, yeah...
I'm glad to be the only one without lag in games like FIFA, RE:ORC, SFxT or SSFIV:AE on PS3.
If have to worry something about Sony is SCEE one or two weeks delay release dates for some products.
And voice chat ps3 it's RAM issue so never gonna happen.
Love those amount of Sony hating posts these days. It's happening something I missed? or just PS3 good sales?
I'm glad to be the only one without lag in games like FIFA, RE:ORC, SFxT or SSFIV:AE on PS3.
If have to worry something about Sony is SCEE one or two weeks delay release dates for some products.
And voice chat ps3 it's RAM issue so never gonna happen.
Love those amount of Sony hating posts these days. It's happening something I missed? or just PS3 good sales?
I prefer PSN. It's free and does all I want. I own an Xbox and used to play online a lot, but I never renewed my Gold because I didn't feel I was getting value for money.
Schobeleth
Member
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/03/xbox-live-outage-day-13-still-up-and-down-still-preventing-fu/
So maybe it was only 13 days or so but it's the same thing really. Still, that's a service you were paying for and it went down for almost two weeks. That's half the time the PSN was down, albeit it being free, and people blew it into a gigantic clusterf*ck of hate. I was upset too, those definitely were dark days for a Playstation gamer but it's back and hey - it's still free and reliable.
So the people who were complaining about a free service going down because hackers compromised their security faults are pretty annoying IMO. I can understand being upset, I think all of us PS3 gamers were, but after analyzing the whole picture it's kind of hard to put the blame on one person or group. They're probably the same kind of people who complain about what kind of beer they can get at an open bar. Really? Just get a damn beer and enjoy it - it's free.
Stop making assumptions about how many people I know and how many of them still believe the PSN is as bare bones now as it was then. It's like night and day. A lot of my friends solely play on XBL and I've noticed a common thread: after paying for it for x amount of years, many either still believe PSN is trash compared to it or just don't want to invest in a free alternative, or a bit of both.
Other common arguments are "all my friends are on xbox live" or "I have x amount of achievements, I don't want to lose them", and those are the only arguments that I'll respect. Aside from only having cross game chat on the VITA, I feel the PSN is a reliable, free alternative to XBL. If only they could have added cross game chat to the PS3, the services would be pretty damn close.
One last thing I'll reiterate - the PSN is quite a few years younger than XBL, four to be exact. XBL had four years to get it off the ground and eventually prepared for the 360. Sony went into the PS3 era and stumbled really hard, made some big mistakes, but I feel like they've come a long way since then in improving the PSN and it's features. The price drop was expected, although they should've done it sooner.
In terms of interface, it's just the least mediocre, and changes at the whim of the Windows marketing department. Shit, at least on the Wii your games are still considered the top tier. On the 360 now you have to go like.. 6 button presses to get to your entire game library? On the Wii you can play a game within 2.
In functionality, it just has a couple of components over the other guys, but lacks in areas that even Nintendo has implemented now (groups/clans, which MS still refuses to implement)
In networking, the latency is going to be the same because there isn't anything magical about the 360's UDP/TCP that makes it better than the PS3 and the Wii.
In functionality, it just has a couple of components over the other guys, but lacks in areas that even Nintendo has implemented now (groups/clans, which MS still refuses to implement)
In networking, the latency is going to be the same because there isn't anything magical about the 360's UDP/TCP that makes it better than the PS3 and the Wii.
I would not say that, but there is some truth to your comment. Often I get the impression that some are regurgitating misconceptions and/or quoting stuff they have heard from third parties.
So how does someone that gets trophies by hacking affect this at all? You can't complete games anymore because of that?
The only thing that is affected are trophy leaderboards. And those can blacklist people by themselves. Also most of the time those hacks are obvious, so anyone that checks other people's trophy lists will notice. And as soon as it's known - best example duck360 - the one hacking trophies will lose any respect to anyone else - so for him it's actually completely useless to continue on that account. Duck360 still continues (and it's even multiple people playing). I don't see the point, but if he is happy about that, why should anyone bother.
Even that isn't a real problem - i mean come on, as if the top #1 on YGC would be worth anything. And for local trophy leaderboards like here on NeoGAF - anyone that is seen cheating will lose all respect from the fellow gamers - so only an idiot would do so.
Using glitches in games (best examples Uncharted 2+3 multiplayer) - well, the proper way to handle this is to fix the glitches. Banning glitchers won't really solve the problem. They can just create another PSN account in case of a banning - that's a given on a free network. Also you can't be really sure, if the one doing the glitching really did it on purpose or if it was just an accident. I for example spawned into a wall during an Uncharted 3 match. Other people could have thought that I was glitching on purpose, fact was that I wanted to spawn near my buddy and the game spawned me inside a wall.
How does this affect you at all? It's obvious which people hacked the platinum (timestamps right after each other) and who did not.
I would even prefer trophy hackers instead of having people not play the game properly because of some freaking trophy (example: Driver: San Francisco - one game mode is actually almost unplayable because of trophy whores) or even worse: trophy boosters that give a shit about people playing the game properly. I have nothing against boosting, IF you do it in a separate room and don't bother people playing the game properly. But I got issues with people boosting AND ruining the game for other people at the same time. That's 10000x worse than anyone hacking trophies by saved games.
And I experienced something similar to yours. I got 100% Space Channel 5 Part 2 and uploaded my save to gamefaqs. Some morons hacked it to get the quite difficult trophies. Got informed via PSN message by someone. I removed the save because of that. But besides using my save, it didn't really bother me that much. It was pretty obvious who hacked and who did not.
Conflict NZ
Member
It wasn't down, there were connection issues. The majority of users could still play online with little to no issues. Read your own links junior.
The whole thing about Achievements and Trophies was stupid to me too because I cared about getting them all for each game. I realized that it was slowing me down and I just wanted to move on to the next game since my achievement and trophy list wasn't gonna impress anyone anyway.
funkystudent
Member
Microsoft had a greater vision of what they wanted XBL to be from day 1.
PSN was probably sonys first successful online thing while MS had been doing online stuff for years. MS had more experience and just knew where things where heading.
I will say I am interested in seeing what Next gen Live is going to be.
Once ps4 PSN has OS level parties which seems to be the only feature really lacking I wonder how Microsoft can continue to demand that yearly sub.
Putting streaming services behind the GOLD pay wall seemed silly when they are freely available everywhere else.
PSN was probably sonys first successful online thing while MS had been doing online stuff for years. MS had more experience and just knew where things where heading.
I will say I am interested in seeing what Next gen Live is going to be.
Once ps4 PSN has OS level parties which seems to be the only feature really lacking I wonder how Microsoft can continue to demand that yearly sub.
Putting streaming services behind the GOLD pay wall seemed silly when they are freely available everywhere else.
complete bullshit, 4 people with mics in one game on psn? make it believable next time.
read it more carefully.
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