Sony on PS3 online: "We were late"

Sony Computer Entertainment's president of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida says he thinks the platform holder was "late" in offering "platform-level" online support for the PS3.

Speaking in the latest issue of Edge magazine, which has a big cover feature on the new PS3 Slim, Yoshida said: "I think we were late to offer the platform-level support, to make the online functionality work at that level.

"We made the prior decision that you do not introduce the common centralised network names into every experience, so publishers made their own. That was fine at the start, but as more and more games have online functionality you need a unified approach.

"So Microsoft took that approach in the last generation, and maybe that's where people see the difference when they compare Xbox Live and PSN."

Commenting further on the state of Sony's online offerings, Yoshida said the company's making improvements with the new 3.0 firmware and further centralising the PlayStation Store into the PS3 experience.

On social networking, Yoshida said that SCE "should really continue to look at adding and improving" features on PSN, but didn't rule out looking at integrating existing sites like Facebook. "Something like 300 million people already have accounts on Facebook. Why should we ignore that?"

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