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Comment by: nervuli (Aug 27, 2009 06:21)

Are they trying to flood the shells with their devices? So that nobody would notice better consoles behind them?

Comment by: bomber991 (Aug 27, 2009 07:28)

Well there was roughly 1 year between the PSP-2000 and PSP-3000, with the PSP-2000 released in September 2007, and the 3000 in October 2008.

Comment by: Oner (Aug 27, 2009 13:41)

Good ol' Super_Secret! If you want to read some more interesting inside stuff check this out ~

Quote:

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I promised you all an update on Cross-Game chat, so here it is.

And you're not going to like it.


As I told you before, Cross-game voice chat has been in the works for a while now. I mentioned last time that it was on target for 3.0 providing that we didn't hit any snags. Well guess what, we hit a snag! An all too familiar snag.

Time for a history lesson.

How many of you remember what it was like before FW 2.4? That's right - no in-game XMB. No custom soundtracks. In-game XMB was the most heavily requested feature at the time and we worked tirelessly in order to get it in (By "we", I mean Sony Japan - as I said before, FW isn't my department). It very nearly didn't happen, you have no idea how difficult it is to backport a feature like that onto a system (the game) that doesn't even know its there, but somehow we managed it. Well, for most titles. There are still the odd few titles out there that don't support in-game XMB ("black" titles).
Custom soundtracks was another one we had working in nearly every title. Obviously it was never going to work in black titles, but about 95% of the titles that worked well with the in-game XMB, had custom sountracks working as well.

So what happened? Why is it that titles HAVE to be developed specifically with custom soundtrack support when it was working more or less just fine?

Is it because Microsoft owns the patent on custom soundtracks in games?

This is something that makes me laugh every time I see one of the less educated ones spouting it off. That's an absolute fabrication. Patents don't matter, Sony as a while infringes upon thousands of patents through the whole company, both hardware and software. If you infringe a patent, you pay royalties to the owner or find a different way of doing the same thing that doesn't infringe. That's it. Microsoft infringes upon all kinds of patents we own but that's up to legal to sort out.

No, the reason we had to drop Custom soundtrack support like that has nothing to do with Microsoft. It does, however, involve a different company. A rather large company.
You see, one of their games happened to fall into the 5% that didn't support in-game custom soundtracks. And they did not like this.
When they found out that a new firmware update was going to suddenly make one of their games look inferior to just about every other game released, they protested. A lot.
They threatened everything, from legal action to dropping support for the PS3 all together.

What could we do? There was almost no way of getting it to work correctly due to the way their game was made (i.e. Poorly) and we certainly couldn't leave a broken implementation in there. That's when the hard decision was made to remove all support for older titles and instead adopt the "opt-in" approach that, to this day, most developers simply ignore. I have to hand this to Microsoft - they did their system right from the beginning and by completely separating it from the developers, they have universal support. Its very unlikely that you'll ever see mandatory support for custom soundtracks in games on our system, I'm afraid.
So yeah, lets nail this on the head: The next time someone starts blaming Microsoft for something the PS3 doesn't have, tell them they're an idiot, they don't know what they're talking about. Are we clear on this? This is a pet peeve of mine because while everyone's happy to go around blaming Microsoft, the real culprits are getting off scott-free. Of course, I can't actually name them directly or, should I get caught, I might even get done for slander (you can never be too careful), but you can figure it out - it's not Activision and they have a poor history with the PS3.

So what has this got to do with Cross-game voice chat?

Guess.

I warned you that we might hit a snag and we did. We've found a couple of titles that just don't like it. Similar to the custom soundtrack fiasco, it can cause lag, crashes, desyncronisation (very very bad when this happens), you name it. It can't be used in these games and it just so happens that some of these games are owned by the same company I've been talking about above.
So we're in a predicament: Cross-game chat is useless if only certain games support it. It's not too bad if its just the odd one that doesn't like it, but at this rate we'd have to drop support for the ENTIRE back catalogue, which would (As I said) make the whole thing useless.
Furthermore, we can't rely on developers to implement direct support for it. It didn't work with Custom Soundtracks, so why would it work here?
So right now, we're trying every little trick in the book to find a solution that works for everyone, but don't hold your breath on this one, so far it looks like the best you're going to get is a gimped implementation of it that only works with a handful of new games.

Now as I said, FW isn't actually my department and even I'm not supposed to know some of this stuff, but this is actually where we are right now. It sucks majorly, but there you have it. Depending on the end result, it could come in FW 3.1 or it could come in FW 4.0, hell it might not even come at all but rest assured they are working very hard on it. And if it doesn't come, you know who to blame.

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One word, two letters
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EA

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Comment by: kikzm33z (Aug 27, 2009 15:22)

@Oner.

I think that this cross-game chat thing has nothing to do with EA.

Personally, I think that MS and Activision are behind all this.
You know - there's been some signs from Activision that they don't really like the PS3.
And Microsoft...

Comment by: H08 (Aug 27, 2009 15:47)

Oner is this the same guy that accurtely predicted the ps3 slim launch? and as for EA it might be them, but then again activision has been saying some stupid stuff

Comment by: Oner (Aug 27, 2009 15:56)

@ H08 ~ Yes it is. Which is why I give it merit. Here's some more

Quote:

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"Some of you people could really do with learning to read. I specifically said it was NOT Activision. I thought I gave enough hints as to who it was

without directly stating it, but I guess not, so lets try this again, except we'll make it interesting. Here lies the answers, lets see who is clever

enough to figure it out?

SXQncyBub3QgQWN0aXZpc2lvbi4NCk l0J3Mgbm90IFViaXNvZnQuDQpJdCdz I G
5vdCBDYXBjb20uDQpJdCdzIG5vdCB JbnNvbW5pYWMuDQpJdCdzIG5vdCBLb 2
5hbWkuDQpJdCdzIG5vdCBUYWtlIDI uDQpJdCdzIG5vdCBNaWR3YXkuDQpJd C
dzIG5vdCBTcXVhcmVzb2Z0Lg0KDQp hcmUgd0UgQWxsIGdldHRpbmcgdGhlI H B
pY3R1cmUgeWV0Pw0KDQpPbmUgcG9p bnQgSSB3YW50IHRvIHJlaXRlcmF0ZS A
tIHRoZXJlJ3MgYSBkaWZmZXJlbmNl IGJldHdlZW4gdGhlIGdhbWVzIHRoYX Q gZGlk
bid0IHdvcmsgd2l0aCBpbi1nYW1lI FhNQiBhbmQgdGhlIGdhbWVzIHRoYXQ g RElEI
Hdvcmsgd2l0aCBpbi1nYW1lIFhNQi BidXQgRElETidUIHdvcmsgd2VsbCB3 a XRoIGN
1c3RvbSBzb3VuZHRyYWNrcywgc28g c3RvcCBwaWNraW5nIG91dCB0aGUgb2 5 lc
yB0aGF0IHNpbXBseSBkaWRuJ3QgZG 8gaW4tZ2FtZSBYTUIuDQoNCkFsc28s I Gl0I
Hdhc24ndCBqdXN0IE9ORSBnYW1lIH RoYXQgY2F1c2VkIHRoaXMsIGVpdGhl c i4gQ
Wx0aG91Z2ggb25lIHRpdGxlIGRvZX MgY29tZSB0byBtaW5kIGFuZCBpdCB3 Y XNuJ
3QgZXZlbiB3aGF0IHlvdSBvciBJIH dvdWxkIGNhbGwgYSAiQmlnIiBnYW1l L iBJJ2xsIG
dpdmUgeW91IGEgaGludDogSFBhdE9 vZlAu

As for those curious as to why I would call the whistle on this, tell me good sir, what would you do? You have a vested interest in the company you work

for and you see this other company constantly getting in the way. Oh sure, on the outside everyone's all buddy-buddy, but that's just good business. And

that's what it boils down to - business. Why fix something that doesn't need to be fixed when you can just **** over everyone else and get away with it?

You know Sony isn't going to make a huge fuss, they can't afford to alienate publishers and developers (especially HUGE ones), not when Microsoft and

Nintendo are happy to welcome them with open arms. Still, all our hard work and it just gets pissed down the drain because one company can't be bothered

doing some support? I ask you again - what would you do? Oh and I appreciate all of you guys trying to spread this around, I hope that they'll back track

and enable that feature for as many titles as"

DECODED:

It's not Activision.
It's not Ubisoft.
It's not Capcom.
It's not Insomniac.
It's not Konami.
It's not Take 2.
It's not Midway.
It's not Squaresoft.

are wE All getting the picture yet?


One point I want to reiterate - there's a difference between the games that didn't work with in-game XMB and the games that DID work with in-game XMB but

DIDN'T work well with custom soundtracks, so stop picking out the ones that simply didn't do in-game XMB.

Also, it wasn't just ONE game that caused this, either. Although one title does come to mind and it wasn't even what you or I would call a "Big" game.

I'll give you a hint: Harry Potter Order of the Pheonix.

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Comment by: H08 (Aug 27, 2009 16:04)

well the harry potter game was published by EA so i guess your right.

and oner can u please post a link of the article, or forum post

Comment by: kikzm33z (Aug 27, 2009 16:58)

Looks like my assumptions were wrong and now EA is going to take some heavy criticism, they just recovered their reputation with decent games and now they remove 2 of the most requested feature on the PS3.

Good thing that I don't like sports game because I'm now boycotting EA.

Comment by: glassd (Aug 27, 2009 17:33)

I would prefer the 4000 with UMD. I just like to have the Physical product.
As far as in-game user music, I will have to listen to the song “My Favorite Game” by the Cardigans while Playing the new Gran Turismo somehow.

Comment by: stumpied (Aug 27, 2009 17:51)

While they are interesting, I'm not really sure what most of the previous posts have to do with the topic of this artical?

That being said, I have to think it's a smart move to keep the umd drive as I think we are a way off from digital downloads and people are slow to change.

Comment by: DXR88 (Aug 27, 2009 17:55)

my PSP-1000 works just fine.

so does my DS.

notice i didn't say lite or micro.

Comment by: Morreale (Aug 27, 2009 18:49)

Originally posted by DXR88:

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my PSP-1000 works just fine.

so does my DS.

notice i didn't say lite or micro.

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Same here, though I would like a DS Lite someday if I can ever find a good deal just cause the screens are so much nicer... And maybe the PSP Go or whatever instead of an iPod Touch, 16GBs and $50 cheaper...

Comment by: Footie979 (Aug 27, 2009 20:03)

I still have my trusty black DS Lite and PSP 1000. I don't see a reason to upgrade to PSP Go or PSP 4000, especially with the Go's smaller screen. I'd like to try out the Go's layout in a store though.

Comment by: canuckerz (Aug 27, 2009 21:03)

VERY informative reads Oner. Why am I not surprised that EA did something as dickish as that. And the only really decent games they've had in the past year has been Dead Space, otherwise they were just selling shovelware or milking old formally successful franchises by making terrible new versions of them. Even their NHL games have been nothing special lately.

Originally posted by Footie979:

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I still have my trusty black DS Lite and PSP 1000. I don't see a reason to upgrade to PSP Go or PSP 4000, especially with the Go's smaller screen. I'd like to try out the Go's layout in a store though.

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Likewise minus the DS lite part though I will be picking up one in the near future. I got the pokemon cravings.

Comment by: DXR88 (Aug 27, 2009 22:01)

Battlefield series is good, although Bad Company left a bad taste, i did however like its vehicle damage textures always nice to see a piece of tank fly off.

Comment by: pphoenix (Aug 27, 2009 23:21)

i though comments were being disabled on gaming news topics, or is that just anti sony posts being disabled?

Quote:

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you are free to say what we let you, or what our advertisers/moderators employees want us to!

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Comment by: Oner (Aug 27, 2009 23:58)

Originally posted by H08:

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...oner can u please post a link of the article, or forum post

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NP H08, here ya go.

Originally posted by pphoenix:

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i though comments were being disabled on gaming news topics, or is that just anti sony posts being disabled?

Quote:

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you are free to say what we let you, or what our advertisers/moderators employees want us to!

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I'd advise you to watch your step and don't push any more buttons...but since you asked, this thread is now Closed. You can all thank pphoenix everyone.

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