PlayStation 2 Celebrates One Year Online

Thanks to Yahoo! for hosting the Sony press release celebrating the first anniversary of the PlayStation 2 online adaptor, as well as new figures showing "more than 780,000 gamers with online connectivity." By comparison, a recent Taipei Times article says that Microsoft has 500,000 Xbox Live subscribers worldwide. The release stresses the differences between the PS2's 'open' philosophy and Xbox Live's more managed attitude, pointing out: "...the results of the open model approach include more than 20 publishers developing more than 50 titles for the PlayStation 2 platform by the year-end." Sony also trails the PS2 hard drive with regard to Final Fantasy XI, but hint at other uses, saying it "...further demonstrates the company's focus on extending the functionalities and capabilities of the PlayStation 2 for a total living room experience including games, movies and music."

Comments

"Online Connectivity"

[dafoomie]

"more than 780,000 gamers with online connectivity."

What does this mean? Is it that 780,000 people have signed up, or that 780,000 people own PS2 online adaptors? I could say that 100% of Xbox's have "online connectivity" because every Xbox has an ethernet port built in. I think these numbers are very deceptive.

Take this with a gigantic grain of salt. This is a press release written by Sony. Of course the numbers are skewed in Sony's favor. Just like how Microsoft press releases say that Windows is a stable and secure operating system.

Re:xbox live

[Yaztromo]

I own an Xbox and I used to own a ps2. I broke it and took it back to best buy under my service plan and got an xbox. It is sooooo much better as a gaming platform and the online gaming is superb. On the ps2 you get to pay a monthly fee for each game you play unless the publisher is nice enough to give you a flat rate for all the games from that publisher/cartel(sony).

Feel glad I just used up the rest of my modpoints. Otherwise, I would have rated this -1: Troll.

It's blatently false. Out of the (quoted) 50 PS2 titles that will support online gaming by the end of the year, only TWO will charge any sort of fee: FFXI, and Everquest Online Adventures. This is as opposed to the Xbox, where you can't play _any_ games without paying a monthly fee to Microsoft.

Oh and just to add...the ps2 only supports 5.1 in cutscenes whereas the xbox supports it ingame

This is also false. A number of PS2 titles support 5.1 surround via DTS encoding, wheras the Xbox only supports Dolby Digital encoding. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, SSX: Tricky, and NHL 2003 are three titles that support in-game DTS surround.

For someone who "used to own a PS2", you certainly don't know much about it, do you?

Yaz.