PSP to Launch with Five Online Titles

When the PSP launches in the states, it will be accompanied by five online enabled titles, according to GamesIndustry.biz. Gamers will be able to challenge friends in short range ad-hoc games, but will also be able to compete against other PSP owners via an 'infrastructure' mode. From the article: "What this means, in effect, is that players will be able to connect to wireless hot spots - either at home or in wi-fi enabled public locations - and play games across the net in this manner."

Comments

5 titles = about what you'd expect

[MBraynard]

My guess before RTFA was racing games and sports titles. Then I read the story - confirming my suspicions.

Don't new systems require a killer app at launch?

The key to online is doing it right

[CrazyJim1]

Sure you can play against thousands online, but how does it rate skill to match you in a game. Starcraft did it right with the chess rating system, nothing else comes close. With a chess rating system, you're matched with people of your skill level and you're ranked accordingly. The good rise to the top, while the unskilled strain to get better. Warcraft 3 failed to have a good rating system, but instead had one where you constantly 'leveled' and had less to do with how skilled you are, and more to do with how many games you played. Halo 2 has a leveling system much the same way, but its arguably harder to rate fragfest because you could encourage campers who don't want to die in order to preserve their rating. But with straight up head to head competitive games, I haven't seen anything close to the plain old chess rating system... well tournament systems are good too.

Without a good rating system, random punks think they're the best at a game when they really haven't experienced playing against the best. Strategies don't evolve as fast as they do in a good chess rated system. Some games aren't deep and don't have a lot of strategies so they don't want to see their shallowness come to bare. But games that have deep strategies or try to have deep strategy should use a good rating system. As you advance in your rating, you come to witness new strategies which you can learn to beat or assimilate into your own bag of tricks. When you play an online game that doesn't have a good ladder/tournament mode, you never get to see the fully evolved version of combat. You may see someone do something strong here or there, but you don't get to experience strong play consistantly to know what is competitive and what is plain cheese(cheese being a strategy thats really powerful, but easily countered by a good player).