EDIT: Stryk nästan, PSN med Playstation Store är tillbaka!

Läs mer om PSN på Kotaku.

Edit: Senast den 31 maj ska PSN vara tillbaka enligt en chef på Sony. Det kan dock komma on-line tidigare, i alla fall vissa tjänster. Vi får vänta och se.

Vi får väl hoppas på att tjänsten kommer upp till helgen, jag gissar att det är ett mål Sony själva har satt. Det ska också bli intressant att se vilka spel som Sony hade tänkt erbjuda som kompensation till alla PS3-ägare.

Nu säger Sony att de snart är redo att starta PSN igen, denna gång med högre säkerhet än tidigare. Som plåster på såren till alla som inte kunnat spela sina spel har nu Sony via sin blogg i USA tillkännagivit att de avser att ge ut lite kompensation.

Enligt Sonys blogg ska alla få ett “Välkommen tillbaka-paket” i form av:

• gratis nedladdning av utvalda spel (beroende på vilken region man tillhör)
• 30 dagars gratis Playstation Plus (för de som inte har Plus betyder det alltså att man får 30 dagar gratis, för de som redan har plus får man sin prenumeration förlängd med 30 dagar)
• 30 dagars gratis Qriocity (musiktjänst som endast är tillgänglig i USA)

Så passa på när PSN kommer tillbaka! Testa Playstation Plus om ni inte har det och ladda ner vad det nu är som Sony erbjuder gratis som plåster på såren!

First off all, the largest dissapointment for me is the lack of backward compatibility. I have very large library of PS1 and PS2 games that I albeit rarely play but without a machine up that can play them will move that “rarely” to “never”. This is the greatest drawback of this machine to me, and most previous models could at least play the old games but had many bugs (or so I’ve heard).

After this dissapointmet, that I acctually learned off in the shop just before buying it, everything else have been a pleasent suprise. The included hand controller was wireless, but unlike the Wii remotes this one came with a cord that you could use to charge the thing. Very easy and nice unlike Nintendos constant changing of batteries.

The Playstation Network (PSN) worked very well, the PS3 directly identified my wireless network and asked the proper questions (encryption, password etc) and I was on my way out to download games from PSN. The PSN is very nice and have much more content than for example Wii (can’t say anything about X-box LIVE since I dont own an X-box), many games both full “normal” games, PSN exclusive games and demos for most of them! I’ve bought many consoles in my days and mostly I’ve gotten used to this kind of anti-climax of coming home with a new expensive console and the one or two games you bought with it. You want to try out it’s potential but you only have two games to try, well with PSN that problem is solved! I downloaded some four five demos the first day and tried what different kinds of excitement the machine had to offer!

Downloading very large games from the PSN isn’t that bad, granted I have a very high speed Internet access but still. First off all you can choose to download in the background while you play some other game, when the download is complete a notification will come up and you can switch to the new game. Furthermore you can queue up alot of downloads and then turn off the console, the PS3 will then ask if it should first finish the downloads and then power off, perfect!

I said earlier that there only was one dissapointment, well there acctually are two. After all these pleasent features I came to play the “Bad Company” demo, a first-person shooter, and I kept being reminded of how slugish it is to aim in a FPS with an analog joystick controler. I really missed a mouse or even better, a Wii remote to aim with! This made me think of how blessed the Wii is to have such versatile standard controllers.

All in all I like my PS3 very much, allthough the price still is a bit steep, though it really includes more than I first thought it would.

What Gamespot wrote…

First sign of trouble is the amount of money being invested in Xbox360 and Playstation 3 by Microsoft and Sony respectivly. The length of time these machines have to be on the market to become profitible are much longer than their predecessors.

The new trend of downloaded content will have an impact on local stores carrying games, why should they keep selling games when games are bought on-line and consoles often sold at a loss? Also games will be played “on-line” much like the MMO games of today, with the bulk of the processing being done on a central server.

Technology is making new games even more realistic and the need to keep up with technology will favour PCs over consoles. While we wait for the next leap in techonology the game developers must focus on other characteristics of the game in order to win an advantage.

And now for my take on it…

This is what they said… but let’s reflect a little. They seem to predict the future of the gaming market by pure extrapolation of our current situation. Did any of them glance at Nintendo? Did anyone notice that Nintendo acctually put up a much “lesser machine” but still beats the crap out of the two others (in units sold at least)?

I have no figures at all but my guess is Nintendo is winning this battle easily while Sony and Microsoft are pouring in money to get second place. Why? Because Nintendo did not just extrapolate, they innovated! One thing did the articles at Gamespot get right, advanced graphics technology makes developers have to look to other solutions to set them apart and that’s just what Nintendo did. Is that a bad thing? As I remember we had the same situation back in the 8-bit days, only then we only had crappy graphics and the price went to whoever could invent something cool to do with it.

As I’ve said before the game market probably needs to be re-evaluated because new techonology and better graphics isn’t the only thing we want… honestly for myself I’d much rather have a great game than great graphics.

The argument about downloaded content carries some weight, game retailers might fear this one… but why stop selling consoles? People would need them to download the content and the retailers make money on selling the consoles, it’s the manufacturer that often subsidies them.

Playing games on-line through a service is currently almost only being done on PCs (mostly MMOs). This is however an advantage that might become a turningpoint for consoles if used correctly. As I remember one of the great advantages of the old Nintendo cartridges was that the cartridges where upgraded as time went by but the console stayed the same, by allowing games to “upgrade” the console the Nintendo probably lasted much longer than it would have with a non-evolving media. Having the whole Internet as media must mean that, if used correctly, you only need to have a machine capable of displaying the graphics and handling input and leave the rest up to the “super computer” at the other end!

The days of consoles might still be numbered, maybe some hybrid “home entetrainment machine” of some sort will take it’s place. Call it a PC if you’d like (because it will much likely have better resemblance to a PC than a console), however I do not believe any of the given arguments are enough to pursuade me of this change in the future.