Yeah, looking at someones profile on PSN is pretty much worthless. All you see is there name, a short saying and how many trophies they have, that's it. And there isn't much for you to customize yourself to make yourself unique and show some personality in it. There really isn't anything else involved, and it's not very easy to compare and track games they've played or progress they've made on games. And it's not readily easy to interact with them outside of sending a text message either.

Even when you do send a message, it can often go unnoticed very easily and there's no way to instantly open the message and reply. You have to manually go to your inbox every time.

Like I said, I just feel isolated on PSN. I have a few friends I added on PSN but I've not really interacted with or played any games with any of them still. The only person i've played with is a R/L friend of mine who I had to talk to on the phone to try and setup a match and find each other etc. Even when we do find each other in game, it's difficult to try and get a voice chat going that's just between us and doesn't include every other person hearing everything we're saying and forcing me to constantly have to keep muting everyone else every time.

And the second the match is over, bamf, no more voice chat with my friend. Back to the phone to try and coordinate again.

On the flip side, on Xbox I can see my friends all the time, see a visual representation of them as their avatar to see some individuality and personality in them instead of just a text name. I can see what game they're playing, what they're doing in the game, who they're in a party with if any, and I'm presented with a multitude of options to interact with them or invite them to any game at any time, and party chat with them at any time continuously no matter what either of us are doing. And with the new update, I can now set beacons for games I want to play with friends and see what games they're looking for friends to play with currently on to. And comparing games and progress is extremely fast and simple.

I'm not playing an Xbox Vs PS3 war here or anything. Like I said, I like my PS3 a lot. It's just PSN that I'm not happy with. After so many years on XBL, I think I'm just spoiled by it. I always hear everyone going on about paying for XBL and how PSN is better because it's free. But, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

Regardless, I hope the next Xbox makes a 'Home' like thing for the avatars and actually integrate it into XBL to make it a fully functional 3d world 'dashboard' so to speak. I think that would be a lot of fun. Or if Sony manages to do that with PS4, I'd be all over them with glee just as well.


Oh and one last unrelated thing, I really dislike having to install every damn game I wanna play before being able to play it -_- Installation should be optional......

^ Install is really developer option not Sony required, I think most of them do it because it provides quicker data access and faster loads on what would otherwise be a slower load (BD's across the board take longer to load then DVD drives). Personally I also deal with the installs because I'm happier to have less wear on the lens load if it's not having to constantly spin the disc because it's pulling data from the HDD more frequently.

I only have a PS3 out of the 2 and I still agree with you all though. Aside from setting up private rooms in a small number of titles it's difficult to communicate in most items, and worst of all if you do have some technical snag online getting around it requires a lot of communication leg work because you can't just bring up a chat, you need to message to ask to the person to drop out to the XMB and then go into the chat from there to plan what you'll do next if you can't just get back into the game. Sometimes I've pulled up MSN or Skype to talk to people on there while gaming with them because it's been easier to deal with overall. :p

Sony recently stated that cross chat just won't happen on the PS3 because to get it to work takes away resources from the console that different developers will already be using in their games to different effect, and to add it would not be consistent across titles as I recall. Even basic items like ingame music selection is found only on a handful of titles because apparently it too is a real bitch to include for similar reasons. The reason this all came out is because they're trying to fix all the issues with the non-communicative platform the PSN is... but with the Vita as a future groundwork and most likely then whenever the successor to the PS3 arrives.

Yeah, basically they said that all the RAM was allocated to devs already to use with their games. No RAM was allocated for any future updates like Xbox did to allow party chats. So it's basically impossible to impliment party chats or custom music streaming because there won't be available RAM to do it without interfering with the performance of the games themselves.

If Dev A uses the full RAM to make their game run at peak speed and party chat tries to use that RAM, it now would screw up the game heavily. So party chats and music streaming won't happen on the PS3, only on the next gen of PS console. Which is a shame that Sony never planned ahead.

Xbox didn't start with party chats but they were smart enough to plan ahead for something like that so that it was able to be included like 2-3 years later.

It's not hard to see why we don't have those features; the current XMB theme you have gets defaulted to the boring gray one in-game. It can get annoying just opening the XMB while playing a game. Sometimes there's a noticeable delay just when trying to send a message, too. The PSN chat is fairly useful, but I tend to use MSN over that. It's slightly irritating that you have to back out of the chat to check messages.

I find it unnerving that I am 'required' to sit on my phone or on my computer while I game to be able to communicate. That worked fine back in the ps2 days when I played Outbreak online because online was 'new and exciting' for console games and the ps2 wasn't built with it in mind but it was an afterthought expansion. So sitting in an AIM chat with my outbreak buddies while we played was acceptable.

In this day and age though, especially with the PS3 coming out after the Xbox, the fact I still have to do that to communicate and get games going etc. is just -_-

As stated, love the PS3 itself and Home is leaps and bounds better than the avatars themselves on Xbox. I also like seeing how much I'm actually spending when I'm buying crap from the PSN Store as opposed to seeing lower denominated 'points' on xbox that make you feel like you're spending less than you really are to help try and make you spend more.

It's just PSN itself that I have issues with. It just feels like a very minor update compaired to PS2 Online. And that's the reason I originally went with an Xbox over a PS3 to begin with because I was really frustrated with PS2's online and all the crap I endured trying to play Outbreak and it getting shut down.

I love my PS3, but clearly the entire structure of the XMB is outdated, to say the least... and it looks like Sony could give a rats ass, seeing how useless their "big" 4.0 update was.

I really wish they'd just make one stupid console and let all games be on that console and let it have the best of everything on it so everyone can play together, have all the best features, and best of all save some friggin money.

But, obviously that is NEVER going to happen no matter how much you eat your veggies and pray at night.

But, still a nice thought.

I love this idea. That way moments like this...
"I have RE5, would you like to play with me ?"
"Sure! what system do you have it for ?"
"PS3"
"I have it for the 360."

won't happen.

Oh how I regret getting a game for the PS3 just to realize that when the DLC comes out I have the right amount of XBox points for it ...

Aside from that: I'm just highly anticipated for "The Last Of Us" and "MGS:Rising"

Yeah but sadly, expecting nintendo/sony/microsoft/etc. to merge and just do one console is like expecting burger king/wendy's/mcdonalds/carls jr./etc. to merge and just sell everything together, or for bank of america/wells fargo/chase/etc. to merge so we just have one bank to deal with.

Competition is what drives industry. Without it we wouldn't have half the stuff we do have because there wouldn't be any incentive because the companies would hold a monopoly over the people because there would be no other place for the consumer to go to to force their hand in creating customer satisfaction.

So as stated, it's simply a nice thought and nothing more.

I remember the 3.0 update, now that was something special. When trophy support was implemented too.