XFire is Sony's Answer to Xbox Live 63
1up is reporting on Sony's 'answer' to Microsoft's Xbox Live system: XFire. The PC-based game networking service is already extremely popular among FPS and MMOG players. Financial reports indicate the service will now be extended to the PlayStation 3 as well. From the article: "By incorporating an existing service into their own PlayStation Network Platform (PNP), Sony hopes to circumvent existing problems in the console space that Microsoft has had to sort out and in using Xfire -- a company with an established messaging, matchmaking and gaming client -- Sony hopes to narrow the four-year gap in online gaming services that Microsoft currently enjoys (Xfire has been around since 2002)."
Big Update: Xfire is for 1 game only (Score:5, Informative)
When I first heard of this news, I thought it was a good move by Sony. Their strengths are in hardware, not so much with software. Yes, SOE is handling EQ and Star Wars: Galaxies, but those are arguably not to be proud about (at least of late). So partnering with Xfire seems like a great idea. Maybe the start of some good news (finally) for Sony?
But upon hearing that this partnership really is limited to just one game? Huge steps backwards, once again. Does this mean we can expect every game to utilize a different network model? Will I have different friends lists and achievements with EA and Square-Enix, with some games not utilizing anything? It's also really late in development, so does that mean all of the network features Sony is claiming to be working on, are really really behind?
I was under the impression, as was many others probably, that there was going to be one network, and the reason why we weren't hearing anything about it, was because the devs were hard at work on it. (Compared to the 360, where MS spent a large amount of time showing off Live functionality at the E3 prior to launch) But news like this makes it seem like Sony doesn't really know what it's doing after all.