Sony and MS Split on Online Strategies

Despite Live's success, Sony wants to continue down its chosen path.

Many people point to Live as one of Microsoft's biggest successes for Xbox, but Sony isn't convinced that such a "controlled environment" is the way to go.

Sony's Phil Harrison, speaking at this week's Game Developers Conference Europe in London, as reported by Next Generation, said that Sony will be extending the strategy used for PlayStation 2 for its next-gen PlayStation 3 console, allowing publishers to decide for themselves how to take their games and gamers online.

"We want to provide an open platform wherever possible," said Harrison. "We want to create a platform on which publishers can exploit their services. We are happy for publishers to form their own commercial relationships directly with the consumer."

Microsoft's strategy for Xbox 360 is decidedly more hands-on, and all transactions with Xbox live players will flow through the Xbox Live Marketplace. Harrison's vision is more reminiscent of what's available now on PlayStation 2 than anything Microsoft has or will have on offer.

But Harrison looked further, too, to a future where downloadable content will become an integral component of the gameplay experience, which would in turn allow these experiences to become more malleable:

"We should begin to move away from putting 20 hours of content onto a disc and move towards a more episodic model. Games should become more like a soap opera, not in terms of plot but in terms of how the experience changes dynamically over time."

As it stands, there's little evidence that Sony is seriously moving down these possible avenues and most of the distributed footage points to prettier versions of current gameplay ideas. But the company has committed itself to bringing out more "esoteric" content on PlayStation 3

The company's next major showcase will be at September's Tokyo Game Show in Japan where PlayStation 3 will appear in some form, with playable games also a possibility.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games