While these days XBL has done less and less to justify its price and while Sony has caught up significantly with PSN, it's still a service that falls behind the brand name of Microsoft's product. All throughout this generation Microsoft has established itself as the dominant online service and Sony has lived in its shadow, playing catch up to XBL.
The most recent release of Cloud storage has helped Sony begin to take a more independent road towards the future of its network, and while this is something I'm hopeful Sony continues to do, there are a few suggestions I'd like to make that are either borrowed in part from XBL or are things I think that can help improve PSN
I think XBL mastered three factors that are important for online services on consoles: Community, Investment, and Accessibility. PSN has either had to catch up to XBL or needs to improve in these areas
What exactly are these three factors and what do they mean?
Community-- the sense of identifying yourself as an established online player within the network of the service as a member of a larger community. You have a name, a career of tracked accomplishments, and are involved within the network's universe in some shape.
Investment-- the features in the network that keep gamers coming back and showing loyalty to the service. These include the need to accumulate trophies/achievements, partake in events, etc.
Accessibility-- the ability of the service to make things as simple to use and effortless for the consumer. This includes features such as cross chat or ease of navigating the service's interface
All these help establish a Brand Name, which is crucial in establishing popularity. The online service is just as important as the name behind the hardware itself these days. By establishing a good brand name for your service you help identify it with consumers, and in order to do this, those three factors need to be worked on
I have a list of things I think PSN can improve to help master these three factors. And here they are:
Unlockable Avatars (Investment)
Xbox LIVE does this with their avatars via unlocking clothing to a system similar to achievements. And Sony should too. They could even tie this in with Trophies: if I get a platinum I should unlock exclusive clothing for my Home avatar and get a free avatar to use on my PSN Card.
A Revamped, Unique Trophy System (Investment)
While the Trophy System has a nice 4-split system to rank trophy unlocks, it's still a copy of Achievements in practice. And, like Achievements, it's not exactly a definition of skill but more a definition of hording. I think Sony can improve this in this way:
Though drastic, Sony should have a dynamic system that pushes gamers to improve a Trophy challenge. In other words, all trophies in a game do not have a locked rank of bronze, silver, or gold. Instead, all trophies have a 3-set requirement: say your challenge is to reach the end of the Corinth Highway level in Killzone. There are three ways you can do this:
a) Complete Corinth Highway with under 10 deaths on Hard difficulty (bronze)
b) Complete Corinth Highway with 5 deaths on Hard difficulty (silver)
c) Complete Corinth Highway with no deaths on Elite difficulty (gold)
Getting a bronze means you can improve that trophy to a gold, which is a better indicator of skill than the typical system
Focusing on Marketing PSN as a Brand Name (Community)
When you think “Xbox LIVE” you know what it contains. But PSN? It's hardly associated the same way XBL is. When you think XBL you think Achievements, Gamercards, Gamertags, Gamerscore, etc. Notice the focus on the word GAMER. This is what made Xbox Live so successful-- it was the focus of making online a community for gamers. There was an association with the terms, and it helped define the brand name of Xbox LIVE. Sony doesn't do that. We have a generic “PSN ID”, “PSN Card”, etc. A simple fix:
Why not focus the PLAY in PLAYStation? Instead of “PSN ID” call it “PlayerTag”, instead of “PSN Card/Profule” name it “PlayerCard”. I know it sounds a bit silly, but I think it makes the network more presentable and marketable, something Microsoft does much better than Sony
A Focus on Presentation (Community)
Speaking of which, why does Sony have such a terrible Facebook app compared to XBL? Why does it have a frankly helpless “What's New” section compared to MS's “Spotlight” that seems to showcase not just their games but a community of content associated with games (IGN's video plug in for example). It's what I feel Sony needs to do. The XMB just feels disconnected from the PSN in various ways. What's New, the News Ticker, and the ways Sony stuffs the PSN Store under certain tabs are ways in which they've tried to push the PlayStation network's content into the XMB, but it just doesn't work as effectively. For one, the news ticker lacks any descriptive information. It's largely ignored because of this. If Sony bothered spotlighting it a bit more and adding useful information, it'd be very useful. Then there's the Friends List. How about more character space? More backgrounds for PlayerCards? Such as, game themes instead of just solid colours? I like the trophy level that is included, but how about giving gamers a worthwhile profile? When clicking on their name I want to open up a wealth of information associated with that person: their name, a page that displays their trophies, their bio, their favourite game, their most recently played, their favourite genre, etc.
All we have is a profile page depicting a very brief “about me” bar with a list of our spoken languages... how is this useful to anyone, especially when tucked away in an obscure section of the network?
How about a way to organize friends into groups?
A Focus on Networking/Social Media (Community)
Adding Trophy levels on PlayerCards made them something we show off to our friends. Before this. Trophies were largely personal achievements that only we cared about. Sony attempted to glorify Trophies via Home's Trophy Room, but I don't know what became of that.
Why not give us a Twitter-like feed that updates our friend's latest collected trophies? Or how about a trophy leaderboard? OnLive has a great “Brag Clip” feature that allows gamers to actually record their game moments. How cool is that?
Such a system adds to the idea of establishing a profile for Players as well as giving incentive to play on the PSN. This is what Achievements did for Xbox; by establishing a community and building online profiles gamers get attached to the brand and this makes it harder for people to switch over. I know when I got my PS3 I swore to get all my multiplats for my PS3 solely because I had a Trophy collection I wanted to keep growing.
How about giving us an actual Facebook app? The one on XBL rocks. The service is actually streamlined right into the Xbox UI. On Sony, all you can do is upload Trophy Notifications. It's pretty weak. Why not give us a Youtube app? Allow us to log in to Youtube via an app, leave comments, favorite videos, rate, etc. Give us a Youtube app that is streamlined with the XMB interface, allowing us to search for videos and watch them in proper quality.
Simplifying and Enhancing the Small Things (Accessibility)
Cross Chat: It's a natural evolution of sending text messages, and supporting one without the other seems to make Sony look like they are stuck behind Microsoft. This is simply out of convenience, and that is something else Sony needs to work on. Give us the ability to instantly open messages when they appear, give us a different in-game XMB that is faster and easier to use, have a database for networking errors that helps users identify/troubleshoot problems instead of giving us some long list of numbers and letters that only leaves users in frustration, etc. There are so many things that seem small, yet can go a long way in making PSN a better service.
Conclusion:
In my opinion, Xbox Live has managed to become a brand name that associates with itself a sense of communal identity for gamers. PSN on the other hand has either played catch up or has done things in a manner that hasn't been as effective. I like that we are seeing Sony include their own unique features like Cloud storage. While Home was something Sony put all their eggs in, it's not exactly a feature that is as accessible as the features we find on the UI that all gamers use. I'd like to see Sony push more things for PSN. I think these things are steps in the right direction and can help establish the PSN as a brand name
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