Which Console Is Leading The Online Race?

Thanks to GameSpy for their 'Sole Food' editorial discussing which console has the lead in the online marketplace. The author says: "If you asked me a year ago which console would be the online leader, I would have said Microsoft Xbox - no doubt." But, twelve months later, he's rapidly drawing other conclusions: "I forgot the most important lesson in publishing: Content is king. And most of the killer online content is not on the Xbox, but rather the Sony PlayStation 2." And, after citing specific examples of great titles on both PS2 and Xbox, he concludes: "There's just more games for the PS2, ergo there are more online games. It doesn't matter how good and how uniform the online user interface is if the content isn't there."

Comments

Re:the moral of the story

[PainKilleR-CE]

I think you're all arguing over an almost completely different kind of consistency than what exists with XBox Live.

The consistency has to do with the features supported and the idea that you don't have to sign into different services to play different games.

The player can use their friends list to invite people to play, regardless of what game they are playing at the moment. The service can handle the exiting from one game and loading (and connecting to a game) of the next when the user decides to accept that invitation. The user doesn't have to enter a log-in and password when 95+% of the users don't have keyboards (yes, my password to bypass the parental rating on my PS2 is XXXXXXXX or however many times I have to hit that damned button). Voice communication works the same way in every game. You find games the same way.

On the other hand, if developers want people to jump through hoops and not have voice communication or be able to invite each other to play their game (or other games), yeah, this might be a problem. If I want people to perform a KI 99-hit combo to get online in my game, maybe I should be allowed to do that. If I want to sell my customers' data to keep my struggling online business afloat, maybe I should be allowed to do that.

Do it somewhere else. EA's problem has everything to do with the last sentence in the previous paragraph and nothing to do with the rest of the paragraph. Anyone else has their own reasons, though very few seem to have been all that reluctant to support Live if they support multiplayer at all on consoles.