PS3 Does Not Have “A Rich Online System Like Xbox Live” Says Yamauchi

Polyphony Digital Boss, Kazunori Yamauchi has been making the rounds on various media outlets lately, in an effort to promote his upcoming PS3 exclusive title Gran Turismo 5. In the interviews, Yamauchi has uttered many things: Like saying GT5 will use up about 80% of the PS3’s power, he also said the game’s about 90 percent complete and that they’re up to this day adding more content. All good information of course, and his latest comments made in an interview with PlayStation: The Official Magazine might also be of interest to you.

PTOM: Speaking of Prologue, what did you learn about online racing that you applied to GT5?

“I already had the image of the online features that would go into the game back in 2001,” he said, “and of course not everything in that image is completed yet. Prologue was basically everything we could release by the time it came out, and we’re still working on it.”

He added: “On the PS3, we don’t have a rich online system like an Xbox Live, and each title has to create its own online system features. But because we build from scratch, there are a lot of possibilities that are not in the other online games out there right now.”

Yamauchi continued on many different topics, from damage modeling in the game, to his favorite car of all time.

PTOM: Was damage modeling something you always wanted to be a part of the gameplay experience?

“There are two answers to that. One is that we are trying to match the expectations of our audience. The other: We had a technical curiosity about what would happen if we tried to do it. It creates an added bit of tension to the game because players can’t make as many mistakes,” he said.

About his favorite ride of all time the:

“Ford GT. It’s the most beautiful car, I think,” Yaumachi replied when asked if he could drive one car for the rest of his life what would it be. Good choice I reckon.

The February issue of PlayStation: The Official Magazine is out now, you should really go pick up a copy, a lot of juicy details in that magazine.

Interesting I wonder why he would say this?

traitor

How would he know? I call fake..

its true he is just saying the obvious no but really psn is still a little behind

Well it's obviously true but I don't see why he said that ahah

He was speaking from a developers point of view mainly I think, not as an end user. He's right that Live has a very strict and good infrastructure but the downside is that games are more limited in their implementation unless they have close ties to Microsoft so they can bend the rules. Id not worry either way, seems just is personal opinion not some dramatic assessment by PD of PSN and Live. Perhaps if they had to produce game using Live they might be less complementary too.

While Live is the superior service (IMO), PSN offers a wealth of content (free of charge) to it's customers.

I give him props for commenting (honestly) concerning his thoughts regarding Live and what it offers. I have a lot of respect for that.

"On the PS3, we don’t have a rich online system like an Xbox Live, and each title has to create its own online system features. But because we build from scratch, there are a lot of possibilities that are not in the other online games out there right now.”

This part is more interesting IMO. It only means that the PS3 is not an easy machine to program for, at least not developer-easy. We've seen what it can do with Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2 though, once handled well...!

Do you think he's lying? I wouldn't be surprised if he had or least played a 360.