Iwata: "PSN and Live too far developed for us to catch up"

[richardhutnik]

oniyide said:

richardhutnik said:

I was saying that Microsoft, in particularly, doesn't offer a way for people to find and meet people who they share similar interests in, outside of a game.  Sony offered Home, but Microsoft offers nothing.  Why does this matter?  Well, take stuff like older XBLA stuff with leaderboards, or coop multiplayer, and it is such that, while some people do play them, they are not online when you are.  Of course, someone is going to go, "Why not just play the popular stuff?"  To this, I would answer, "So you are telling me my only option is to play a FPS like Call of Duty?:  It is a problem.  If you play a more obscure game, you don't find people for it, if they aren't on when you are.  Microsoft does NOTHING to remedy this at all.  They just want to make a buck off your network of contacts and do jack to have people expand this list.

you would have to be playing some real obscure game for NO one to be playing at the time. Im just not seeing it, no way to share similar interests outside of the game. If im on the console WHY would i want to do that? Even if you want to play something like...I dont know Streets of Rage and nobody plays that. What are your plans, go to NintyLand or Home and just ask a bunch of strangers if they happen to play that one or two strange ass games?? It makes more sense to play the actual game and see who shows up

Unless it is a FPS, I give you what I saw regarding game stuff.  Yes, even the most obscure FPS title still has people playing it.  But say go to Contra now and try to find someone.  You don't.  Same with other XBLA stuff.  This discussion shifted this way, because someone was talking about how you meet people in game.  Well, if the game doesn't have a stable pool of players, you aren't going to find anyone to play, and thus not meet anyone who has similiar interests.  And communities tend not to gather when no one gathers around them.  People give up and things become ghost towns.

Point is to have the network be a way to find people with similar interests.  And that is what I was talking about here.  At least the WiiU approach to things looks like it is geared towards finding new players into things, and similar interests.  As I said, Sony's Home is an approach to that and about the only one they have actually.  Microsoft offers nothing like that.  People you play are there not to make as friends, but human competitors.