This is the final article in a 3-part series on the PS3 online. You can find the other parts here and here. A short follow-up has also been posted.
After exploring the good and bad of Sony’s PlayStation Network, it’s time to explore the ugly side of their online strategy: development support. This particular subject has not been made public except for a few rumblings here and there. It’s time to cut to the chase, and actually discuss the difficulties developers have encountered trying to work with Sony’s online libraries. These issues are important to highlight because they have had (and will continue to have) direct consequences on the quality of online/multiplayer games, and end-user’s experience.
PS3 Online: The Ugly
Unfortunately for Sony, we are no longer in the PS2 era, where everyone owned a PS2, and every developer had to create games for the console, if they hoped to turn a profit. Since Sony was so far ahead of the competition, it could provide terrible tools, and developers could do nothing about it. However, Microsoft has made significant inroads into the console market, and is now a very viable alternative to Sony for developers. Out of the three console makers, Microsoft provides by far the best development tools and support. Even Sony realizes this and has promised to provide better development tools this time around.
The problem remains that the PS3 is a difficult console to program due to the complex design of the hardware. Sony is a hardware company; its forte does not lie in software. As consequence, Sony’s development tools still lag far behind Microsoft’s.
To compound matters further, the Sony’s online support can only be described as poor to atrocious. Perhaps one day this will improve — after all, the console hasn’t even launched yet — but right now, the situation is dire. Sony seems to have taken the usual laissez-faire approach, which is to provide rudimentary online libraries and let individual developers figure out how they want to create lobbies, provide matchmaking abilities, track online scores and records. They are providing very few tools, and very little infrastructure.
The libraries seem to have been developed in a very ad-hoc way, with no clear goal in mind. For a long time, it seemed that developers were expected to implement every aspect of the online experience. Then Sony seemed to change their minds, and claim they would provide all the tools the developers would need. But then the promised features have rarely shown up. When they have appeared, it’s been in a very incomplete format, with the vague promise that things would be patched up in the future.
If the poor quality of the libraries wasn’t enough to hinder developers, then the repeated delays would definitely drive the nail in the coffin. Sony has been so slow in providing libraries and test hardware that it is surreal that it even expects developers to release launch games with online support. Even as recently as this summer, developers had still not received access to the Sony online test servers.
The development support in itself is already a serious issue, but it almost pales in comparison with the internal politics and friction that lies with the three major game divisions in Sony: Sony Japan (SCEI), Sony Europe (SCEE) and Sony America (SCEA). The creation of the worldwide games studios division was supposed to solve all the issues of internal divisiveness. Instead, it has done very little to stem the tide. No region seems to be clearly in charge of its own destiny. As a developer, you don’t produce a game for Sony, you produce it for one of the regions. If you release a game worldwide, then you must go through at least 3 separate QA processes. The worst problem is that each division has different strategies and different requirements, especially when it comes to online functionality.
Instead of working together to offer an online system and APIs to rival Xbox Live, they’ve each gone on their own developing their own systems, undercutting one another. Each region has a different idea of how important online support is, and whether or not games need to produce downloadable content, or have online support available at launch. For example, no Sony game can launch in North America without online support, whereas Sony Japan will accept games without it as long as they can be patched in later.
This disparity can be useful to cater to the different markets and peculiarities of each region. It becomes problematic for the developers who have to deal with conflicting demands. It just makes their lives more difficult.
The problems between different regions should not be understated. Sony Japan always has final say in any discussion, but different regions have trouble even communication with each other. Sony Japan rarely discusses anything with the two other divisions, let alone keeping them updated on what is in the pipeline. They just like to hand down unilateral decisions every once in a while. Sony Japan wants to continue to run the show, even though Sony America is a lot more experienced in online support.
As a relevant example, SCEA had apparently developed a complete online solution for the PS3 (to put it on par with Xbox Live for multiplayer support, ranking, achievements, etc). Sony Japan reportedly came in and cancelled the whole thing, simply saying, “no, you have to use the libraries we’ve put together”.
Perhaps what is most alarming is that several games scheduled for the US market have announced that they will be using Xfire as a middleware solution for their online support. The deal between Sony and Xfire comes at an extremely late stage in the run-up to the launch. It is clearly a move born out of desperation. It’s is a last minute decision to use middleware to ensure that games will launch with online support in the US, and it speaks volumes on Sony’s own online support (or lack thereof).
Xfire is simply a stand-in for the entire matchmaking and multiplayer side of the service Sony was supposed to offer (never mind that Xfire offers messaging as well). The following quote is most telling as to the gap in service in Sony’s offering.
The lack of a consistent system to offer multiplayer support will lead to vastly different levels of quality across different games. In comparison, Microsoft has only ever allowed one publisher to handle their own multiplayer service on Xbox Live: EA. And judging by how poorly consumers are responding to EA’s online support, EA is paying a steep price for its arrogant belief that they can always do better.
The route Sony has taken so far will only further fracture its online community into several smaller communities, unable to talk to one another, or interact with each other effectively.
When you speak to developers privately, they express a stunning level of frustration. Repeated delays in the delivery of online APIs, delays in coming-up with online testing kit, incomplete or missing libraries, promised features that are never delivered. The list goes on and on. They have to deal with the bloat of the OS, which eats up nearly 100 MB of memory (and one SPU), and provides very little functionality to the game. In comparison, the OS for the Xbox is rumored to only use up 3.5 MB. (Correction: an anonymous poster suggests that the Xbox reserves 32 MB for the OS. Please see the comments below.)
It’s surprising that the OS can take so much memory, and without being able to provide a mechanism for reading or responding to messages. Another example of bloat: if you want to draw the OS keyboard in game, it will use up a further 16 MB of memory. The OS will eat up another 16 MB of memory on top of the 100 MB it’s already using up; the amount of memory used by the OS is simply ludicrous.
I personally question Sony’s goal with their online service. It comes across as a purely money grabbing effort. Of course they are a business, and will seek to make as much money as possible. However, the only bright spot is the PlayStation Store, which is hoped to become the center for millions of micro-transactions. Every thing appears to be geared around the moneymaking side of the service. Meanwhile, the actual user online experience will suffer. It is as if Sony’s management failed to see the obvious fact that a poor multiplayer experience will not generate more sales in their online store.
As to the notion that - unlike Xbox Live with its subscription-based charges- to the fact that the service is free, the reality is that you get what you pay for. The multiplayer experience on the PS3 will pale in comparison to Xbox Live. The only games that will do well are the ones using Xfire, or those where the developer has invested a lot of their time creating a fun multiplayer experience.
It seems that Sony hasn’t actually learned their lesson from their days supporting developers on the PS2. Perhaps they will only realize their mistake once they have been knocked off their perch at the top. Let’s hope it’s not too late by then.
A short follow-up piece has been posted addressing some of the main feedback.
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Left by Inner Bits » Blog Archive » Analysis of the PS3 Online -- Changing the Games Industry, One Bit at a Time. on November 8th, 2006