Ever notice how there are a ton of things that are asked for over and over again in the gaming world, but it seems the pleas fall on deaf ears?
Since the early days of PSN, every firmware revision that is announced, there seems to be this faction of the user base that hangs on the edge of their seats waiting for this one item. You know the one. Cross game voice chat. Part of me believes that that faction only asks for this so it brings PSN one step closer to being exactly like XBL. The other part of me believes that they actually want it, because they'd use it.
I'm torn on it to be perfectly honest. On the one hand, any feature that's added to PSN is winner as far as I'm concerned, whether I use the content or not. (Facebook comes to mind) On the other hand, I feel cross game voice chat is a gross intrusion on single player games. You don't throw in a single player game with the intent to start talking to other people, you toss it in so you can play the damn game. If I had wanted to chat, I wouldn't have turned on a SINGLE player game. Adding cross game voice chat just brings one way I could be drawn away from the game. There are already plenty of ways to be drawn out of the game as it is what with messages, video chat invites, phone calls, text messages, wives, kids, ect...... do we really need to add one more?
I think I'm in agreement with a number of people I talk to on this very subject, I'd like to see Sony bring cross game chat to PSN, mostly so the people bitching around about it would finally STFU. I'd use it on a limited base, but I really believe it would become just one more pain in the ass when I wanted to just be left alone.
-BroodFather
Having it as an option is 100% strictly better than not having it at all. If you dont want to use it, dont. If you want to, go for it. Theres absolutely no reason to not have it as an option.
ReplyDeleteCross game chat is only a hot topic because there have been so many comparisons done between Live and PSN. I agree with both of you when you say that any additional feature is a good thing whether you would use it or not, but when the discussion is driven on a point by point comparison by the media, the 'cross game chat' bullet point item is always center stage on why Live is worth paying for.
ReplyDeleteThat's the rub for most people on the issue, especially those that wouldn't use the feature anyways. It's also one of the longest lasting additional bonuses of Live, so the closer they get to the 'same' service, cross game chat becomes hotter and hotter and apparently more and more valuable.