It’s easy to praise the PlayStation 3 for its crisp graphics and multimedia capabilities: pretty much every PS3 video game features some of the best-looking visuals around.
But there’s one area where Sony Corp. definitely has some catching up to do – online gaming.
The PlayStation Network is painfully behind Nintendo Co.’s Virtual Console for the Wii and Xbox Live for Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360.
Both of those services already have strong online communities for gamers and a diverse, steady flow of new content that Sony hasn’t been able to match yet.
That’s not to say the situation can’t be remedied. The fact that it is online means the service can be updated and tweaked over time, and Sony has done a good job of continually updating the PlayStation Network with new features and fixes.
But a few months since it was launched, there still isn’t much to see or play.
As a result, my online PS3 gaming has been mostly limited to interconnected battles in fast-paced first-person shooters such as “Resistance: Fall of Man.”
It’s the kind of title that’s well-suited to playing with others, who you can even shout at if you’re wearing a headset with a microphone.
It’s also the sort of gaming I’ve been doing on my PC and on Xbox Live for years now.
There are just a handful of exclusive games (for mostly $5 to $10 each), some free demos you can download from Sony’s PlayStation Store, and a paltry selection of movie and game trailers.
So far, music isn’t available, though Sony executives have said it would be possible.
Getting the content piped onto my PS3 through my home wireless Internet connection was a problem unto itself. (For those without Wi-Fi, the PS3 includes a built-in plug for a wired connection.)
Once the download process starts, you can’t back out and continue surfing around – you’re stuck waiting until the entire file arrives.
And if you happen to lose your connection at any point during the download, you’ll have to start all over again.
Considering some of these games are hundreds of megabytes in size, we’re talking about a lot of time spent waiting instead of gaming.
It’s not all bad. The games I’ve sampled so far were quite good and continue the PS3’s reputation as a visual knockout.
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