Following-up on our discussion of the last two days (parts one and two), our sources have also given us a window into what Sony has planned in the 1.60 update in regards to Friends list and cross-game features.

First, in what will surely be considered a major improvement, users will finally be able to access their PSN friends list from within the context of a game. The game will need to implement the friends list system utility to support this feature, but we expect (or at least strongly hope) that all new titles will provide such support. It is unlikely that titles available before the 1.60 update will support this feature. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that such games could be patched up to do so, but it is not clear why a developer would be motivated to do so.

In other good news, which might mean increased adoption of this feature from developers, the extra memory needed to support the friends list system utility has been cut down from 16 MB to a more manageable 9 MB.

Unfortunately, cross-game invites will still not work as of 1.60. While players will be able to message each other from within games from 1.60 (in the games that support it), the issue of booting up a different game and then passing on the invitation has not not been resolved. Sony will essentially need to create a new TRC guideline for games to support this. Sony is working on several potential solutions, but in the meantime, this new feature is unlikely to show up for quite a while, and certainly not in the 1.60 update.

To be fair, cross-game invites are not a fundamental feature required for an enjoyable online experience. They are mostly a nice touch to simplify the end-user experience and make it easier for players to interact with their friends. Xbox Live has supported this feature for a while. The issue here for Sony is that it highlights a certain lack of foresight. Features such as in-game buddy messaging can be shoe-horned in at a later time as they are doing relatively painlessly, but more complicated systems such as a cross-game invites require more planning to achieve the expected behavior. Because they require each individual game to be able to deal with them appropriately, they cannot be designed and implemented after the console has launched. Adding new TRCs throughout the lifespan of the console will create a schism between different generations of games, and will only lead to confusion for the consumer. Hopefully will find an elegant way of dealing with this, and any other future problems.

Cross-game voice chat (or game-agnostic voice chat) is another feature now in jeopardy due to lack of planning. As of now, there isn’t even a scheduled time plan for implementation, meaning this feature is unlikely to appear before the summer, and potentially never. The issue again is that it places significant requirements on both processor and memory, which would have to be requisitioned from the game currently being played.

The demands that would have to be made on games’ developers are seen to be too large to offset the benefits such a feature might add to the end-user experience. As well, it is very unlikely that developers themselves would be clamoring for such a feature as they would not want to lose any resources which could be used for their games. Perhaps if Sony were to make a chat system utility that would function equally well cross-game and in-game, while also nicely integrated with the PSN friends list, then more developers would be willing to use it.

We are not trying to belittle the PS3’s online support, but to be clear, Xbox Live does support both of these features (and of course the Wii supports none, but that discussion is for another day). The only way such functionality is going to get implemented is if Sony puts their foot down, provides the functionality and makes it a requirement for each game to support these features. Sony needs to do this because developers have no vested interest in creating a uniform experience for the end user across all the games on the platform. Sony would be the only one primarily profiting from this as the users would be sure to welcome a consistent interface of fundamental OS features across all games.

Join us once more tomorrow where we’ll cover what developers would like to see from Sony’s online system.

Posted by Raoul on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 1:08 pm.