PS3 online service titled "Playstation HUB"--Japan/US launch in September!

[VictimOfScience]

Source.

Now while this info is not set in stone, its the closest thing to fact we have seen to date. The Live service sounds very interesting. I can't wait for the downloadable demos like the 360 has been offering and hopefully a service that can link gamers together in a similar fashion. Very exciting news indeed! And I was figuring it would probably be about September before we saw it, so that is pretty good news too--I'll have enough saved up by then!

 

[Loke]

I'll just drop dead into coma for the time being...

 

[smwScott]

This actually disappoints me. I never liked the idea of a Live type service, having to play to play games online. With my PS2 I've always been able to play online whenever I wanted, no problems. Now I'm going to have to pay a monthly fee to get online access, with the only difference being a bunch of bells and whistles. I hope it'll still be feasible to connect to private servers and play that way.

 

[The Mullinator]

With the cost of the Xbox 360 and PS3 combined with online fees for each I suspect the old saying that "True gamers get all the new systems" can no longer be used. Just too much money involved.

I also laugh at this statement:

Sony boss Howard Stringer is pushing for all media content to be available for distribution over PlayStation HUB, such as music and movies, thus opening up a powerful iTunes-like distribution network for Sony.

Sony, Jack of all trades, master of none.

 

[VictimOfScience]

Yeah, a lot of it is going to depend on all of the DRM issues still outstanding. Whether it regards PS3 games, Blu-Ray movies, or movies and music downloaded from their new service, I don't want them dictating when/how I consume this media. Hopefully they'll do the right thing for the consumer in the end since it is the consumer has the power to not buy the system or any media for it!

 

[Cole]

Yeah, a lot of it is going to depend on all of the DRM issues still outstanding. Whether it regards PS3 games, Blu-Ray movies, or movies and music downloaded from their new service, I don't want them dictating when/how I consume this media. Hopefully they'll do the right thing for the consumer in the end since it is the consumer has the power to not buy the system or any media for it!

What DRM issues? Sony had a patent on some DRM things so only a cd would work on one system but those were old and most likely never even though of touching the PS3.

Sony put some stupid software on their Cd's for computers..yeah....so this is Sony's Console Department..you know the smart ones.

Sony, Jack of all trades, master of none.

Actually I had posted something similair to this about a month ago. They plan on topping every feature Live has.

 

[Asuka]

Online service for ps3 is the shit. It was the only thing i really wanted in the ps3. Now a Harddrive will make it perfect.

 

[destrukt]

xbox live is has been around for a very long time and the people behind it have a large amount of 'real' experience, i highly doubt sony will be able to create a service as good, and especially not better.

about freaking time though.

 

[Cole]

xbox live is has been around for a very long time and the people behind it have a large amount of 'real' experience, i highly doubt sony will be able to create a service as good, and especially not better.

It isn't terribely difficult. Look at Battle.net for instance. Right away in 1996 when it hit with the game "Diablo", it just rocked with tons of users and it still does today.
Blizzard a company that had no experince with making an extremely large online service managed to pull it off very nice. Battle.net to this day is one of the most played networks in the world and only consisiting of: Wc2 B.net, Diablo, Sc+Exp, D2+Exp, Wc3+Exp and has no real mod support.


Trust me, the major factor is the interface and price. They already know what features they have to top. They have many months to figure out how there going to do it and set it up. They have more than enough funds, the main thing will be the interface. Sony and Microsoft will be responding to eachothers update for their service so much that one will get one feature then the other will get the same feature plus a new one. The main part will be the interface and navigiation that will set them apart from one another.

 

[destrukt]

battle.net is 'small' compared to live.

look @ the ipod, excellent case of a product 'done right' and other companies are trying to rival it, but they're all failing, mostly because most of them are simply trying to create copies and expand upon what is there, which happens to be sony's approach to their new online service.

i'm not saying it won't be good, just not as good as live.

 

[Cole]

battle.net is 'small' compared to live.

Still very big, 200,000 - 250,000 users about average, usually topping around 400,000 some.

World of Warcraft had some tuff times, but Blizzard still pulled threw, they have about 6 million subscribers now. Thats with also the loss of alot of the experts that crafted Battle.net

look @ the ipod, excellent case of a product 'done right' and other companies are trying to rival it, but they're all failing, mostly because most of them are simply trying to create copies and expand upon what is there, which happens to be sony's approach to their new online service.

i'm not saying it won't be good, just not as good as live.

What companies are trying to copy the Ipod? I fail to see one. The closest being my IRiver, which btw the name similiarity with the "I" means nothing, IRiver is a Korean company dating back to 1998.

IRiver H10 kicks ass, $200, replacable battery, color, SRS WOW, 12 hours of battery life, true universal mass storage so compatibility with Linux and Mac, rechargable battery, compatibility with a quite a few subsciption services, easy navigation, most pre-set EQ options, custom EQ, custom SRS Wow, and etc.. The closestthing it has with the Ipod is that it plays music and it has a Touchpad.(Most people confuse it with an Ipod at first actually)

Few companies have copied Apple, and if so how have they? The only reason Apples Ipod has grown is because when they first introduced it was the best out there. It's name flew around like a forestfire in a 2 foot radius. Once everybody heard that the IPod was so good that it was the only real one they remembered, so when ones come out that are just as good will they get noticed? No, the Ipod name is already to big and they will just buy the Ipod and say "Buy an Ipod" to there friends. It was just perfect timing by apple.

Think about it, most of the Mp3 players I see look clunky(I seen a horrible samsung one), they have a bunch of buttons and don't look to good(Minus the IRiver H10), or they ship with a bunch of problems, or arn't advertised, the rest are the smaller based ones that cost about $50 and have removable storage devices.

The only reason I even bought the H10 was because the Ipod was out of stock, which now I realized that the Ipod isn't that good, it's just the only one people know of. It was the only real one I knew of or actually seen and used. Now this means nothing in the Ps3 and Xbox 360 market. You think Sony isn't going to advertise their online service? Price it just as good if not lower, start setting up servers all across the world very early, test there servers under heavy stress runs many times before Ps3 ships?, create an easy to navigate interface?, create a friends system?, get developers to intergrate it with their games?,
There isn't a ton of competition here, it's just Nintendo Sony and Microsoft. Thats all. Nintendo has taken on the stance of "Buy a Ps3 or 360 and the Revolution", so there competeing in a different manner. So it's just the 360 vs Ps3. Now your going to tell me that Sony isn't going to put as much money as possible, as much time as possible, in order to create a service that is the equivilent of Live. That Sony is willing to settle for less? What console kicked both the Xbox and Gamecubes ass? The Ps2. You think Sony is going to give their stance up as number one?

 

[AiM]

To be honest I don't think the PS3 HUB network will be as good as Xbox Live at launch, Sony has a history of promising the world but ends up delivering short. However, in the long run it'll be anybody's game, and if I were to guess I'd give Sony the nod.

 

[destrukt]

by small, i wasn't really getting at the amount of players (even though live has a few million people) i was getting at the services it provides, live is alot more robust and dynamic -- hehe.

few companies have copied apple ? i remember an article i found on digg where the author/site had grabbed images of around 15 mp3 players that were almost direct copies of the ipod (in appearance), alot of these were in 'dodgy markets' but some were more mainstream (an lg mp3 player that was very similar to the shuffle iirc and others).

the ps2 didn't 'kick the ass' of the xbox and gamecube, we've all heard the different arguments from the different sides, like that the gamecube is the most succesful because they lost the least, the xbox because of the comparison between how many sold and how late they entered the market and so on.

sony isn't #1, and if you continue to say it is, a few little facts goes a long way.

it doesn't matter how much money you poor into it, some things can't be bought like real world experience, especially that of developers integrating it, because of excellent documentation and so on.

stress tests are great, but blizzard did how many stress test betas of wow before it was officially released, and they are still plagued by problems ?

.. and there is the age old argument of sony promising much, delivering much less which i'll throw in for fun -- just read aim's post, right on, except for sony having an advantage in the long run.

 

[torso boy]

BOOOOO, I want free service, not a pay service that I will never take advantage of.

 

[Cole]

the ps2 didn't 'kick the ass' of the xbox and gamecube, we've all heard the different arguments from the different sides, like that the gamecube is the most succesful because they lost the least, the xbox because of the comparison between how many sold and how late they entered the market and so on.

By week\month to week\month sales basically all last year, what console was selling the most? The PS2. What console has sold the most so far? The PS2.

If you want I'll go dig up the sales and prove it.

it doesn't matter how much money you poor into it, some things can't be bought like real world experience, especially that of developers integrating it, because of excellent documentation and so on.

You havn't seen any documentation on the Hub so you can't really use that as anything. Epic so far said the Ps3's Dev Kits weren't anywhere near as hard as everyone thought it would be..

stress tests are great, but blizzard did how many stress test betas of wow before it was officially released, and they are still plagued by problems ?

Most of the problems are because Blizzard screwed up subscriptions fees.

by small, i wasn't really getting at the amount of players (even though live has a few million people) i was getting at the services it provides, live is alot more robust and dynamic -- hehe.

In how many people Battle.net has about 18 million.
Anyway, thats because it needs to be more Robust and Dynamic for the average console gamer. Most Console-Only gamers get turned off by the littlest complex thing.


But still:
Now your going to tell me that Sony isn't going to put as much money as possible, as much time as possible, in order to create a service that is the equivilent of Live. That Sony is willing to settle for less? You think Sony is going to give their stance up as number one?

 

[The Mullinator]

The PS2 had the highest sales but Nintendo still beat them in profits. The profits Nintendo makes are almost equal with the profits of the entire Sony corporation, not just the games division.

PS2 won in sales, but Nintendo as a corporation won in what really matters for a business, making money.

Anyway, Sony has "planned" on the PS3 being double the power of the 360, recent hands on reports though have shown it will really be only very slightly more powerful and that it won't even be noticable to us. Sony "planned" on the system outputting every game at 1080p as a standard, it now looks likely however that almost every game will be at 720p and then scaled up, maybe only later in it's life would any game output at 1080p. Sony has "planned" on the PS3 being capable of outputting on dual 1080p screens, that now sounds virtually impossible for the PS3. Sony has "planned" on the PS3 being released in the spring, now however on the main PS3 website they are claiming a September release meanwhile a Sony exec has claimed that there is no release date yet. Sony has "planned" on the PS3 comming with a hard drive but it now seems it will be an optional purchase. After all that with the PS3 alone you will forgive me if I laugh at the thought of Sony claiming they will beat LIVE. Maybe they will but Sony really does make all the promises in the world and delivers on very few of them.

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/10265/Sony-Still-Not-Ready-to-Roll-Out-PlayStation-3/
Sony exec saying the PS3 is not ready to be rolled out.

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/02/15/official-sony-specs-ps3-hdd-sold-separately/
Sony hard drive being sold seperately.

http://games.kikizo.com/news/200602/065_p1.asp
Report saying that the PS3 won't be much more powerful than the 360, and that 1080p is unlikely for most games.

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/02/15/ps3-live-killer-titled-playstation-hub-ps3-in-september/
Talks about the PS3 release date being in September.

EDIT: By the looks of it Sony has only just started on this new online system. It hasn't been in the works for long at all:
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3148104

As for the "HUB" name, research hasn't turned up any trademarks registered by Sony for that name, so it's likely that the designation is an internal, descriptive codename. The most recent trademark application that references online gaming is "The Connection," filed by Sony Europe in May 2004.

It seems, from speaking to a variety of development sources, that Sony has not yet decided on a name for the service, or at least one that they've decided to share with developers. We also find no confirmation for a price point, or whether Sony will decide to follow a subscription model. It's likely that these are still being worked out internally.

What struck us most during the course of speaking to our sources was actually the disparity of information that developers seemed to have regarding Sony's PS3 and the new online strategy. Their information was all over the map. Some developers, even second-party developers, said they were investing in online infrastructure themselves because they did not know what Sony's plan was. Other developers, without going into specifics, hinted that they knew the outlines of the plan and were counting on it moving forward, and expressed full confidence in Sony's ability to pull off an online service. Still others speculated that the online strategy would not be available at launch.

 

[Cole]

The PS2 had the highest sales but Nintendo still beat them in profits. The profits Nintendo makes are almost equal with the profits of the entire Sony corporation, not just the games division.

True, nintendo was the only one to make profits.
This is why I'm not comparing Sony and Nintendo but Sony and Microsoft.

Anyway, Sony has "planned" on the PS3 being double the power of the 360, recent hands on reports though have shown it will really be only very slightly more powerful and that it won't even be noticable to us.

Sony had no idea what Microsoft was doing. They couldn't of planned it being double the power. It just turned out that the Ps3's processor has the ability to do double the amount of float point operations than the 360. Of course both the Ps3 and 360's numbers will never be reached because thats all in theory.

Sony "planned" on the system outputting every game at 1080p as a standard, it now looks likely however that almost every game will be at 720p and then scaled up, maybe only later in it's life would any game output at 1080p. Sony has "planned" on the PS3 being capable of outputting on dual 1080p screens, that now sounds virtually impossible for the PS3.

Which can only mean a price drop. Sony could then use the same type of memory that the 360 uses for outputting AA\AF. This memory is cheaper, sony oringally needed a different type of memory to output for 2.

Plus even if it could handle that(mind you this is also not the the completely dev kid):
the tiny (projected) proportion of players lucky enough to own Full HD 1080p sets will see little difference; both 720p and 1080i are already visually stunning, and PS3 competently upscales. Even if it couldn't, most 1080p screens will supposedly upscale pretty well by themselves. Some developers even see this situation as a positive one: "It's not going to be a big deal for players, but it helps conserve CPU cycles so it's certainly a big deal to us."
Developers still wouldn't use it.

After all that with the PS3 alone you will forgive me if I laugh at the thought of Sony claiming they will beat LIVE. Maybe they will but Sony really does make all the promises in the world and delivers on very few of them.

No, they need to lower the price so Sony dosn't loose to much money. Microsoft makes money off of live. Sony is willing to take less income(as long as there not loosing to much money), in order to make their service better than the competition.

Sony plans to make money off of the Ps3, not the Ps3 Console but rather the games. This is how both Microsoft and Sony do it. Microsoft also makes money off of Live. Sony dosn't want to loose to much money off of the Console and need it competitvely priced. Thats why they have to take all these things out.
As long as HUB makes them money they will do all in there power to beat Live.

Who cares if Ps3 wont come with an HD. It's optional for the 360. They may of said it does, but Sony needs to be competitive with prices so they have to make revisions.
Sony is working with 2 other companies with Cell, if something happens to lets say IBM, and they don't want to run into shortages like oh lets say the 360 they need to take the extra time.


Anyway about that article(http://games.kikizo.com/news/200602/065_p1.asp):
"Realistically, as libraries and experience with both machines grow, I think the PS3 will start showing things the 360 will choke at," offers the source. "But Sony will have to make available to us libraries and new routines for that to happen - something they've been severely lacking at so far."

Also heres a biggy:
"Sure, there's still some framerate optimisation to go in this particular game build, but generally, framerate shouldn't be an issue for long. SCEI's Masa Chatani describes PS3 architecture as elegantly simple with outstanding performance, and developers say they love the streamlined Open GL environment. But our guide adds: "Cell is weird and difficult to work with... coding has progressed with high speeds and paper specs in mind, it's one of the reasons framerate specs aren't met yet. We've been anti-aliasing through software which also means a performance hit, although the 720p upscaling minimises that problem a bit."[/I]
To Summarize:
+Programming for the Ps3 is simple and elegeant
-The Ps3 is somewhat wierd and difficult to work with because of Paper Specs and well it's multi-core processing which also smacks the 360 to.

Ohh and what else...ohh yeahh THE ANTI-ALIASING IS DONE IN SOFTWARE. Yeah, like the 360 and the older gen consoles, they are going to be doing all AA\AF with dedicated memory. Anti-Aliasing is a bitch, now do Software AA for 1080p, no friggen wonder frame rates arn't being met at that resolution. Anti-Aliasing is power hungry. If the Ps3 can pull 360 graphics while doing software AA, then I can only imagine how well it would do with dedicated AA.


What that article told me:
Ps3 will beat 360 in long run in terms of graphics.
Ps3 with unfinished hardware, software AA, software that is no where near optimized or complete, can come close to the 360's graphics.
Ps3 will have better graphics but not be a total graphical leap from the 360
Ps3 an 360 will be able to do the same effects, but the Ps3 will be able to do more of them at once.

Ps3 being released in september? Lets take text from the article that article got it's information from:
"Some in the industry have taken this as a lead to speculate that September 16 would be a launch date in Japan (a Saturday before a national holiday) followed by September 21 in the U.S. These dates are not confirmed and, as always, launch dates are subject to constant revision."


Also:
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/01/31/sony-declares-full-on-assault-on-xbox-live/
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/02/03/sonys-full-on-assault-on-xbox-live-continued/

 

[AiM]

The PS2 had the highest sales but Nintendo still beat them in profits. The profits Nintendo makes are almost equal with the profits of the entire Sony corporation, not just the games division.

Interesting claim, where did you get that information from? Sony as a whole makes about triple that of Nintendo. Not to mention, Sony's asset worth is ~8 times greater than Nintendo and more than Microsoft.
---------------------------------------------------------
Sales
Microsoft: $38.47 billion
Nintendo: $4.93 billion
Sony: $71.82 billion
Electronic Arts: $3.17 billion

Profits
Microsoft: $10.00 billion
Nintendo: $0.32 billion
Sony: $0.85 billion
Electronic Arts: $0.59 billion

Assets
Microsoft: $64.94 billion
Nintendo: $9.59 billion
Sony: $85.14 billion
Electronic Arts: $4.44 billion

Market Value
Microsoft: $273.75 billion
Nintendo: $14.47 billion
Sony: $35.40 billion
Electronic Arts: $19.86 billion

Data from the Forbes 2000 (February 28, 2005)
http://www.forbes.com
-------------------------------
To put into perspective, EA is roughly the equivilent of Nintendo.

To be fair, it's very impressive a company the size of Nintendo is within the profit range of Sony. However, it's not true that Nintedo pulls in equal / more profit than Sony as whole, not even close.

 

[The Mullinator]

Interesting claim, where did you get that information from? Sony as a whole makes about triple that of Nintendo. Not to mention, Sony's asset worth is ~8 times greater than Nintendo and more than Microsoft.
---------------------------------------------------------
Sales
Microsoft: $38.47 billion
Nintendo: $4.93 billion
Sony: $71.82 billion
Electronic Arts: $3.17 billion

Profits
Microsoft: $10.00 billion
Nintendo: $0.32 billion
Sony: $0.85 billion
Electronic Arts: $0.59 billion

Assets
Microsoft: $64.94 billion
Nintendo: $9.59 billion
Sony: $85.14 billion
Electronic Arts: $4.44 billion

Market Value
Microsoft: $273.75 billion
Nintendo: $14.47 billion
Sony: $35.40 billion
Electronic Arts: $19.86 billion

Data from the Forbes 2000 (February 28, 2005)
http://www.forbes.com
-------------------------------
To put into perspective, EA is roughly the equivilent of Nintendo.

To be fair, it's very impressive a company the size of Nintendo is within the profit range of Sony. However, it's not true that Nintedo pulls in equal / more profit than Sony as whole, not even close.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6143174.html
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6143188.html?q=nintendo profit

Nintendo today reported its consolidated results for the nine-month period ended December 31, 2005. For the time frame, the company's bottom line improved considerably, as its net income increased to 92.2 billion yen ($792 million) over the 67.8 billion yen ($583 million) it reported for the same period a year beforep

as the company has today released its generally positive third-quarter results, which included a revised projection on its bottom line for the year. Instead of losing 10 billion yen (almost $86 million) for the year ending March 31, 2006, the company now looks to make 70 billion yen ($601 million) in net profits.