A major point of contention between PlayStation and Xbox fans has been the quality of each console’s respective online network services. Minus DDoS attacks, it’s pretty obvious that Microsoft has been offering the better online experience.
The disparity is so great that an online movement, initiated on gaming forum NeoGAF, started demanding a better PlayStation Network. Using the hashtag #BetterPSN, fans tweeted Sony asking that the company better its network. A website was even created to help visualize all the traffic the hashtag generated.
The best selling current generation console has the worst network, and that really shouldn’t be a thing. PS deserves better #BetterPSN
— Sarobi (@Sarobi) July 9, 2015
https://twitter.com/Masked_Demon/status/619237885145956352
While all of this was going down, gamers awaited Sony’s response. A little more than two weeks into the online movement, Sony finally spoke up.
In a statement, a Sony spokesperson said, “Feedback from our community is very important to us and helps guide our ongoing commitment toward making PlayStation the best place to play.” The spokesperson went on to say, “We encourage users to submit ideas on ways to improve PlayStation products and services here: http://share.blog.us.playstation.com/. We appreciate the dialogue we have with our gamers and have built and improved features based directly on their input.”
There were number of concerns fans wanted addressed, and sadly Sony did not respond to any one specifically. On NeoGAF, these improvements included:
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Better/more CDN’s with universally consistent speeds that are competitive with Live/Steam/Origin…etc
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Free, unlimited (or at least significantly increased in size) cloud storage for saves, as well as a family account feature set for saves (no need for sub accounts), auto-sync save files as they are modified
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Username changing along with a username history system in the user’s profile page
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Behind the scenes (less disruptive) maintenance
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Cloud storage for screenshots, especially trophy screenshots (maybe recordings too if 30 sec or less?)
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Rentable servers for when official servers are taken down
In the past, the better online infrastructure of Xbox Live was attributed to the $60 yearly paywall in front of it. Now that online gameplay on the PlayStation 4 requires a PlayStation Plus account, which runs $50 a year, fans now expect the same quality of service.
H/T Venture Beat | Photo via Leon Terra/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
