In The News: PSN issues

I'm sure by now the whole Sony PSN/Privacy issue has been beaten to death. I'm not here to talk about that. Yes, private info went missing, you can rage all you want about it. Go blame Sony, blame Anon, or anyone else that's not you. Sadly, it's the new reality that this kind of stuff will happen. Life goes on.

More interestingly, was the amount of people who were bitching and whining about where PSN was when it's down. My stance on PSN has always been "sure it's there, but what's the point". It was a half-assed implementation (which makes Nintendo's a "full-ass" implementation), with incomplete features that just doesn't match up with MS' XBox Live. Sure, there's a friends list, but it's awkward to use; yes, Trophies are nice, but nowhere as standardized as Achievements; Online gaming works, but it's per game and matchmaking is inconsistent.

Interestingly, the week that PSN went down came with the arrival of the two significant multi platform games with PS3 the better value choice: Portal 2's inclusion of Steam integration/Cross Platform Play/Free Portal 2 on PC and Mortal Kombat's exclusive Kratos. Many others and I all jumped on to the PS3, expecting things to go great...

Well then. I guess the PS3's online service does have some merit. People do miss the feature, no matter how lacklustre they were. Sure, they weren't the best, but then again, MS has been working on XBox Live since the early days of XBox 1. Network infrastructure doesn't happen overnight; and good, user friendly infrastructure is even harder to come by.