This is the second article in a 3-part series on the PS3 online. You can find the other parts here and here.

PS3 online: The Bad
Nothing is perfect, and Sony’s PlayStation Network is no exception. Not once did I mention multiplayer games in the previous piece. In fact, if you scour the internet, you’ll find very little mention of it anywhere; there is very little real information on the multiplayer support of the launch titles available out there.

The fact is, in its quest to surpass Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, Sony may have overlooked the most fundamental reason for online connectivity: playing online games with others.

Sony has carefully avoided all discussion on this topic, save for mentioning that Resistance: Fall of Man will support 40 players. The developers themselves are the only ones to have made any comments on the service provided. Resistance will offer up a full suite of online support, including “its own buddy list, clan registry, in-game messaging and chat services”. This is unfortunately damning for Sony as none of the PlayStation Network’s functionality is integrated into the game. The game’s buddy list, and Sony’s are two completely distinct entities.

The developers explain that Sony did not deliver the online libraries in a timely fashion. However, the author suggests that Sony never planned on providing a fully featured online system. He implies that Sony has only recently realized their mistakes and attempted to correct it. As we’ll see tomorrow, this assessment is actually closer to the truth than one might expect.

The reality is that the friend’s list support that Sony have provided in their libraries is terrible. From within a game, you are notified when your friends sign on and sign off (with a nice translucent overlay)…and that’s about it. Developers have no way of interfacing with this list in any useful manner. You can’t find out if your friends are watching a movie, surfing the net or playing another game. If you send them an invite, you have to hope they sign on to the same game you’re playing before they’ll even see it. Furthermore, there is currently no functionality to even “accept” the invite. It’s just a message to come join a game; it won’t actually take you to the game. Developers have to deal with that problem themselves.

Meanwhile, online stores are also proving to be a headache for developers. Nothing except rudimentary access to the Sony Wallet has been provided. Originally, these stores were only supposed to be skinned versions of the Sony Store. Developers are now expected to write their own in-game stores from scratch. While, you can still browse for a specific game’s content in the main Sony Store, I anticipate very few games will sport an online store, at least until Sony drastically improves their libraries. Sony needs to provide a complete commerce API to the its developers.

Several other games are having trouble with the PS3 online. Sega’s Virtua Tennis and Tony Hawk Project 8 have both dropped online support for the PS3. More precisely, they announced they never intended to support an online mode on the PS3. Of course, this is just PR speak meant to minimize embarrassment to Sony. We should ignore the fact that both games will still have multiplayer support on the Xbox 360. All this just screams to users: if you want a solid online experience, buy a Xbox 360. How embarrassing for Sony.

Virtua Tennis is not even due till March 2007. Does Sega really have no confidence in the online market for Sony’s console? Or are they just minimizing their risks?

Other games are also conspicuously hushed about their online support. MotorStorm will apparently not have online support in Japan. The games F.E.A.R. And Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Las Vegas all have extensive coverage of their online modes for the Xbox 360, but nary a word is mentioned in regards to the PS3.

Currently, there is also no default headset support, no voice support on the PS3. This feature has been a TRC requirement for every online game for the Xbox. Let me rephrase that: since the launch of Xbox Live (over 4 years ago), every online game released had to support voice chat. And of course, Microsoft provided libraries. If developers want to support voice chat on the PS3 right now, they have to implement it themselves.

The following quote from the developers of Marvel Nemesis (a PS3 launch title), best illustrates the situation:

“Unfortunately for PS3 owners, there is no headset support for this game. Feel free to give Sony the stink eye if you don’t like it.”

Other problems that developers are experiencing is the lack of basic access to the GUI interface used by the Sony PS3 OS. Unlike the Xbox, developers cannot position the overlays of the Sony GUI messages themselves; they have to work around them instead.

In online services, multiplayer support is the glue that holds everything together. You can not offer all the complimentary online services without first offering the core service of multiplayer support. Furthermore, these complimentary services (like a friends list, and downloadable content) need to be well integrated with all the online games.

Several areas of the PS3 online service look extremely polished, especially the cross media bar. In stark contrast, other areas look very incomplete, and not very well thought out. I get the distinct impression that Sony plans to patch a lot of this functionality in over time. The system is not ready for prime-time now. What will consumers think in the meantime? What about the games that have to launch with these sub-par libraries?

Sony has made serious in-roads in the online market with the PS3, but still falls short in several key areas, especially in developer support. The multiplayer support is still closer to the PS2 experience than Xbox Live. Things will have to improve in the long run. Please join us tomorrow, where I will examine why things have gone so awry for Sony.

Posted by Raoul on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 9:06 am.