Xbox Live and Playstation Network are two video game services that have made fan boys go to war with each other. There so many debates out there about the two services that gives you no real information about them. It’s just blind hatred for one another. I personally think Xbox live is an overall better experience then PSN at this moment. While looking at Sony and how they update PSN I can’t see them catching up for awhile. A lot of people will argue that Playstation Network is free so why bother to pay for Live.  If you’re tech enthusiasts you would know that 90% of the time what you pay for is what you get. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Live is better. Microsoft has been a software company for more than 2 decades.

Playstation network is no doubt superior to its original form on the Playstation 2, but it doesn’t compare to the ease and well laid out design of Xbox live. Playstation network features as of Version 2.80 are Friends list, Message box, Text Chat and Chat (headset), Playstation store, and Playstation Home. These sound like a standard set up for a great online service but the problem is these features are broken and almost useless. The chat feature is completely broken. Once you make the “Chat” you can’t do anything else. If you try to start up a game, play music or even try to look at someone else profile you are notified, if you continue the chat will end.

That is retarded and poorly made. If you want to do a chat with someone, it’s probably because you want to talk to a friend while you play a game without other players listening in on your conversation, not because you want to use your $400 dollar system as a phone. Xbox Live doesn’t have this problem because the operating system is completely dynamic. Anytime, anywhere, and at any moment you can do what you want. There is not one moment from the time you sign on, to the time you turn off your Xbox that you cannot chat privately with someone on your friends list. Xbox live gives you the option to have up to 4 private chats at the same time.

The second option to PSN is not broken but pointless. Text Chat is a feature where you can start a chat room with someone or up to 4 people on your friends list but the problem is if you’re in the middle of an online match you will never have time to type out an instant message. The only possible time is during the time you’re looking for a match or lobby to join. Even though it does notify you in the right upper corner, when you’re eyes are set at the battle at hand you won’t even notices it. They are better off adding a sound to make you notice. I would never advise anyone to use this to have a private text chat with your teammates because there’s no way you would be able to type out a plan before you get shot.

Text chat was Sony’s attempted at something similar to “Xbox Live” party chat. The party chat feature allows up to 8 people to be in a private room with each other without anyone else listening in unless invited or if room is open to anybody.

Playstation Home is probably the most useless feature added to the PS3. Home has been in beta testing for almost 2 years and basically being considered a release by many players. It’s a completely unoriginal and is just SIM’s in a different package. This is attempted at something similar to Nintendo Mii’s. This can only attract people who either have no social life. When making your character you’re very limited to how you want to make yourself. It’s not as robust as the SIM’s are with character creation. The mini games are boring and feel like something taken from EA pogo site. To get more clothing for your avatar you literately have to purchase clothing with real money. The prices range from 1 to 5 dollars. If you’re over the age of 18 you most likely have enough bills to pay for and you wouldn’t want to add more. My best advice is, get a girlfriend or boyfriend or even a dog. Just get out of the house.

Playstation Network isn’t horrible but it has a lot of work to do before it reaches the same potential that Xbox live has. For example: while the PSN friends list is very polished out other then the store it has some minor problems. Developers have to make an invite option within the game or design the game to work with the XMB to make an invite option. Most games I’ve seen like Metal Gear Online and Killzone have a built in friends and invite system instead of using the XMB. This makes connecting with others more difficult and slow. Small improvements can make a huge difference. Better notifications when messages, invites, and friends come on. They are to plain; a grey bubble with a white text isn’t attractive and most likely won’t catch the player’s attention. Also like I said above they should add a small sound effect to get your attention. I wouldn’t mind if they use the old PS2 sound effect .

People will complain that live has a lot of downtime. This is very false and has only been down once in its life span in 2007 because of so many new gamers signing up for it in the holiday season. With Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 coming out 2 months apart during the holiday season, it wasn’t a surprise that the service crashed. Any other downtime was announced weeks ahead and was usually for maintenance or improving the services that you paid for. There are also complaints of lag while playing online. Sorry to say both PSN and XBL have this problem and it’s because of the users. If you have DSL or anything that equals to it you will have problems. Its common sense your internet service is too slow to handle either of the services. So you got 3 options, get a better internet service provider, get a better job to get a better ISP or just don’t complain and stop blaming the console service.

Xbox Live is always growing every year adding and improving on its self. Xbox Live doesn’t have such problems like I mentioned above because of its dynamic design. With Microsoft adding such features like Facebook and twitter on Live this year it’s a force to fear. They are targeting huge social audience; it makes it harder for Sony to catch up and with it being free doesn’t make it a better choice. It actually makes it a worse choice. If a product doesn’t have the production value behind it, it will never catch up to something that does. While the complaints may be minor or small in your opinion they do make a difference in the overall experience. Live has over 35 million subscriptions compared to PSN recent total of 25 million and no matter how you try to twist it 10 million is a huge gap for something that is free.

While the complaints may be minor or small in your opinion they do make a difference in the overall experience. Live has over 35 million subscriptions compared to PSN recent total of 25 million and no matter how you try to twist it 10 million is a huge gap for something that is free.

Playstation Network Vs. Xbox Live : Part I5.053

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