Stringer: 'Actual innovation' and PSN expansion in Sony's future

I wish they would. They are sitting on mountains of cash, but their online services are put together like they gave an intern a weekend to come up with anything workable.

A drunk, stoned intern, who was extremely paranoid of getting raped by some pokemon-loving old man =P

When you look at it that way, friend-codes seem reasonable...

The friend codes are reasonable for family audiences (Nintendo's target audience), but what about the hardcore gamers? I don't see why Nintendo can't provide as much freedom with their online services as Microsoft does, while still providing parental controls that have the potential to limit the online abilities to that of the friend code.

Fernando Rocker will leave this topic for others to comment on and give everyone a break from reading his posts, but then again my name is Idiot Face :-(

@ GoldenS1104

they cant do it because they know that the parents wont take the time or interest in their kids to set up said parental controls but will sue as soon as some kid gets abducted and sodomized. face it, a lot of parents these days just dont take an interest or responsibility for their kids and are always looking to point the finger.

Why is friend-codes reasonable for families? Most kids will go looking online for people to play with if they can't find anyone local to play with. A pedofile/rapist/drunken hobo can easly find some kids code online and enter it as well as one of the childs real friends.

Nintendo acts like these type of people are confused by a string of random numbers and letters. "WTF IS THIS?! 24j2-2352-kf93-d2n3m?!?! WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!?!?!!?!?!?!!??!!?!?!?!?!?! *leaps off a cliff*" Get over it Nintendo and stop using this stupid "protection" scheme. If you really have to have some protection, atleast give us older people a way to play without having to beg for a 16 digit code.

LoL ... +1

Notice the subject of PSN's "home" still hasn't come up since the delay.

Actually, the "innovation" comment was taken out of context; Stringer was referring to the display market and OLEDs, and NOT the console market.

The quote is originally from the Financial Times article, being that there is no room for confusion I'm not sure why its being quoted this way.

FTA:
"The next cycle is actual innovation," said Sir Howard, pointing to the company’s new organic light-emitting diode (OLED) televisions, which are just 3mm thick.

"When you look at OLED, your impulse is to say 'wow'. We need that reaction from people at Sony … it's a statement of confidence, that there is a path to somewhere else," he said."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/88a70ee6-a7f0-11dc-9485-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

"If Sony actually puts some major drive behind PSN now and delivers something comparable to Xbox Live, we can finally say goodbye to the competition's yearly fee."

That's a double Hahaha! there. You've got it backward. If Sony delivers something comparable to XBox Live, you can finally say goodbye to Sony's free service.

Even before Sony figured out that making a complete online service was a lot more difficult than just promising it, they were throwing out all kinds of qualifiers about how "basic services" would be free (see XBox Live Silver).

They have never intended to invest the kind of cash that Microsoft has into their online service without charging for it.

Well, here's the thing if you look at Live, Microsoft's investment is basically on the lobby and content servers. There's no game servers and bandwidth costs associated to it since it's a peer to peer service.

Sony (And the third parties that put out multiplayer games on the PS3) have to cover the costs of the game servers and bandwidth, that means there's no unified lobby system (Which I guess is part of Home) and Sony covers the content servers.

Seeing how Sony actually own content providers they could eventually keep the gaming service free (Or ad supported if rumors of Home in-game advertisement are true) and only charge for content, wild guess of course.

At least with Sony you'll be able to play online with the free subscription.

...especially on Joystiq!

I think they may be implying that nobody has been innovative, and that they will be the first to be so. Of course, this does mean that you'd have to discount everything Nintendo has ever done, and Xbox and the 360's live service.

While the price of live may be "worth it" to you, I've had free online play since the internet with services like battle net, and then the advent of locally hosted games.

For all the adds on xbox live, all the content costs money to download (except demos), and the fact that the games are hosted by the xboxes themselves, there is absolutely no reason for Microsoft to get away with charging money for Live.

The only hope I have is for sony to somehow pull a nintendo and start kicking MS ass as far as online experience goes.

But I'm not holding my breath.

I'm fine with pay for Live at the moment. I think all the seemless integration of all the features is worth it. But if Sony or Nintendo can apply enough pressure to get them to drop the price, I certainly wouldn't be against that.

Although you bring up a good point about the ads. Why is the only pay service the one that also has ads all over the dash?

I really hope Sony can manage to pull something off. For one, it would give me a reason to finally get around to getting a PS3 (most of their exclusives thus far don't interest me enough to warrant a purchase). Secondly, it would force Nintendo to get off their asses in the online department, and it would make MS charge less or nothing for their services. It's like the old saying goes, when business compete, the consumer wins (I don't think that's an actual saying... I think I might have just ripped off LendingTree.com's slogan... w/e).

@Chrono

The games may be hosted on the xboxes but theres soo much more that go into the xbox live servers. And just to make yourself feel a little better look at the prices for WoW.

K. Im sorry, I am not sure if it is just me who's missing something, since I am using Xbox Live in Canada, where the contents maybe different. But ALL of the ads that I have ever seen on the Xbox Live dashboard have been related to new demos that are out, or prize promotions and stuff that people can get! Every Ad that I have seen on Live has been always related to a product that is also available for Live.

Its not like they are commercializing Viagra or cat food which is practically all you see on television now!

So considering the cost, Live is every bit worth it, because although I do play quite a bit of PC and PS3 games, no other platform comes close to the online experience that Live does FOR ME. I do not enjoy the hassles of having to install and uninstall 15GB games all the time and configure miniscule graphics and sound settings for every game independently on the PC and although PC has the best online service because it is free (and games actually have dedicated servers) I find myself back on the couch playing the 360.

My PS3 has been collecting dust yet again mainly because I have been soured by some recent releases. Now I usually tend to rent new multiplatform games for the PS3 and if I like the idea that the game is getting at, then I purchase it for the 360! Newer games such as the Orange Box SUCKED HARD on the PS3 especially because of the frustrating process of having a decent game in Team Fortress 2.

And this is where the PS3's online really falls short. With no unified friends lists, voice communication and flakey online games, not to mention an overall smaller userbase of people online, I find it difficult to really get into it.

And quite frankly, having to pay $50/year for the kind of service that Microsoft has put together is well worth it in contrast to people who pay insane amounts for single games such as WoW.

Besides, if you think for a second that Sony would not charge for PSN if they come out with a comparable service then, i'm sorry to say it, but ur a fool! If Nintendo, who's literally pissing gold and can burn a billion or two and still be ahead won't improve their services, I don't see why the PS3 with its tight pockets would. Its a wild money grab folks.

Regardless, the PS brand seems too busy trying to establish the new PSPs. All I see on TV r PSP commercials, and read PSP PHONE rumours on Engadget, so frankly, it is as if they are just sinking the PS3 ship behind them, and you know what they say, the Captain (Ken Kutaragi) always goes down with the ship ;)

what that means is that they've sold "almost" 200k per week in "everywhere but japan and the us" for the last two weeks. To suggest this is a trend that will survive the holidays is...hasty..

The 200k weekly statement depends on when you start your timeline. You could say they've been selling 200k per week for a full two weeks and not be wrong (that is assuming it did sell 200k last week and this week). That's PR for you.

Well...my PS3 has cobwebs, but it's cuz i'm too lazy to wipe it down and a spider moved into the cubby.

It's mostly just people jumping on the bandwagon. Just like it's "cool" to hate on Gamestop and nearly every retailer besides Best Buy, it's also "cool" to hate on the PS3. My personal opinion, the few games that the PS3 has that are worth it so far, are worth buying the console for. Besides, where else am I going to play FFXIII and the new team ico game (when both come out)?

I think the negative response comes from the fact that we've heard this song and dance before.

Remember how Sony announced they won an Emmy for Innovation for their Sixaxis? Remember how cool that sounded before it turned out they lied?

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/oops-sony-declares-sixaxis-emmy-emmys-say-uh-uh/

Remember how the next generation wouldn't start until Sony said it did? Because its bass-ackward competitors were using dated ideas like rumble controllers (later adopted by PS3) and software backward compatibility (later adopted by PS3)?

Sony is the king of calling themselves innovative, but when it comes to actually delivering something innovative (like Home) they are running a distant third.

So some of us would prefer that they stop with the yappin' and start dropping some cool shit before their ten-year cycle is almost up.

like it was "cool" to hate on nintendo for being a joke kid-toy (unreasonably) instead of the the (undoubtedly more coooool) ps2 oh but a few short years ago?

like it was "cool" to hate on nintendo for being a joke kid-toy (unreasonably) instead of the the (undoubtedly more coooool) ps2 oh but a few short years ago?

@copa

Ummm... Sony didn't lie about the Sixaxis thing. That was apparently a misunderstanding. They thought the award was for the Sixaxis when it was actually for the original Dual Shock.

>>C'mon, fanboys: competition ALWAYS benefits the >>consumer.

Fanboy != logical

This being a fanboy / semi-news site, this is the wrong place to be preaching peace and cohesiveness. I agree with you but the the people on this site seem to enjoy their jihads.

I know I do!

May your Home burn to the ground!

I find it to be very good in R&C... what didn't you like about it? It's also used very well in Blast Factor (PSN game).

Idiot Face likes to play "twing twang" (HS Reference) using sixax...axisix... yeah that... but it is actually fun

Internet explorer, xbox, zune... So how is microsoft not guilty of same crimes? If you are happy with your Xbox then why do you have to bash everything that sounds good about the PS3? If something stinks cover your nose, if something looks bad then look the other way, dont stare and scream about how ugly it is, or sniff it and cry about how poisonous it smells.

NOTE: Retards will conclued from my comment that the PS3 stinks and looks bad.

I like the motion control, but I agree I could do without it. It should be used only where it works well, instead of trying to jam it into everywhere like developers currently seem to be doing.

You have to do it each time you post. Right above the text box there's a box which has a check in it by default that says E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment. Click that box and you're e-mail free for that one comment.

Thanks I see that now. I thought that I could just turn it off completely once and for all but if I have to do it once every post it shouldnt be too annoying.