After PSN launch in 2006, many gamers saw a massive wave of possible features for it. Some of it has been heard by the people at Sony, while others have yet not made it to the surface. Jon Webb from SCEA Developer Support Group says Sony has made strides to deliver what we have asked for, but it is now up to the developers to capitalize.
This year at GDC, Webb spoke about the past, present, and future of the PSN. This talk gathered some of the improvements Sony added to PSN last year - most of it being the Trophies and in-game cross media bar. Luckily, Webb also talked about many things the PSN supports, some of them being the support of voting system, integration of external media sources from the web (Webb mentioned pulling Twitter photos into a game.), location-specific information based on your IP, group functions such as clubs and club challenges, and in-game ads, and also the ability to drop "socially based commerce recommendations" into games. This is so if you have a friend that has bought something in Burnout Paradise, the game would tell you that your friend has just bought the product, and you could follow a link to pick up it up as well.
One of the biggest mentions that Webb made was the potential of PSN being able to do a sub-sign in. LittleBigPlanet currently uses this feature, but not the full potential of it. Webb says that "a couple of high profile titles" will be patched to support this ability. The double sign-in feature will let the uses pull their saved data for personal saves - this has to be supported by the game though. Unfortunately at this point in the development, this feature doesn't allow the second player to earn Trophies while playing.
When Webb was asked about the PSP supporting Trophies anytime soon, he responded with the fact that with many older PSP systems hacked and modded there is big concern about what it would mean to the Trophy playing field. Webb was also asked about avatars, and he replied: "We're looking to expand avatar functionality," around this year. "I don't have any details on that." He did made it clear that when and if the update comes, don't expect a PS Eye support - mainly because it opens up too many monitoring issues. Hopefully we will see the use of these and other PSN features soon. One day PSN will be like it was first showcased in E3 back a couple of years ago - you know, your friend playing a game, and you chatting with him with your PS Eye as he could see you in the corner of his screen.
http://www.ps3center.net/news/2556/gdc-09-psn-under-the-hood/
It would definately be nice to have trophies for the PSP!
