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Found this topic on GameFAQs and thought it was worth discussing.
Here's the link to the thread of urgency:
Apparently, the guy who posted this over on N4G is the same guy who was posting details about the PS3 Slim before it was announced, so, he has some interwebz credibility as a true 'insider' in the industry. Apparently, he claims to work for Sony Japan. Hmm.
Prepare...this is a long post:
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.
....
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.
Very interesting stuff. But...where does EA come into play?
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?
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?
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: HPatOofP.
TL;DR: A supposed Sony employee claims that that the reason the PS3 isn't getting features such as in-game voice chat and custom soundtracks is because if Sony implemented these features, EA would have to update their games, just like everyone else. EA apparently "didn't feel like it" so the company *supposedly* made threats to stop supporting Sony's consoles if they went through with it. At least...that's the gist I'm getting out of all this.
Thoughts? Electronic Arts? Cross-game voice chat? The validity of this stuff?
Here's the link to the thread of urgency:
Apparently, the guy who posted this over on N4G is the same guy who was posting details about the PS3 Slim before it was announced, so, he has some interwebz credibility as a true 'insider' in the industry. Apparently, he claims to work for Sony Japan. Hmm.
Prepare...this is a long post:
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.
....
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.
Very interesting stuff. But...where does EA come into play?
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?
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?
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: HPatOofP.
TL;DR: A supposed Sony employee claims that that the reason the PS3 isn't getting features such as in-game voice chat and custom soundtracks is because if Sony implemented these features, EA would have to update their games, just like everyone else. EA apparently "didn't feel like it" so the company *supposedly* made threats to stop supporting Sony's consoles if they went through with it. At least...that's the gist I'm getting out of all this.
Thoughts? Electronic Arts? Cross-game voice chat? The validity of this stuff?
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