Will Xbox Live ever be beaten? (Live Gold subs figures P2)

Doesn't sound like they'll ditch it any time soon.

No company would turn away half a billion dollars a year.

It's a great service and I think it is well worth the money. The only thing I wish they would sort out is the sluggish menus from time to time.

Modern gaming now without leaderboards and online play would simply be a backward step.

The integration of all the features is superb, with very little loss in speed during downloads, etc. Something which is a massive problem with PSN, plus finding games and even worse, trying to organise games with friends, is a major issue with a great many games.

Sarge wrote:One thing I absolutely hate about PSN/PS3, you have to download & install each patch for a game...so if a game (Super Stardust) has 5 updates/patches, you have to download & install all patches before you can play the game.

Some of the patch sizes are a joke as well.

It's infuriating isn't it?! Especially compared to the 5 second download and install of patches on 360.

I believe the reason that the patches are so big is because Sony like to have DLC downloads from PSN as small as possible, so everyone gets the content in the patch and then if they want to unlock it they buy the unlock key from the shop. This is, of course, a retarded way of doing things.

Fishfingers wrote:Look at PSN with the levels in trophies thing, they took Achievements further. There's no reason why greater strides cannot be made.

How exactly is that taking things further? There's bugger all difference between Gamerscore and levels as far as I'm concerned. If you really want to have the trophy experience on XBL then count every 1000 points as a level. I'm on level 31 right now; MASSIVE E-COCK. You could argue that the 3D representation of trophies in 'Home' is taking things further but as far as I know they haven't bothered implementing that feature yet.

I do think PSN is a great service and provides some things which XBL sorely needs like dedicated servers for first party titles. It's pretty pathetic that MS don't provide this for Gold users and they could give me every excuse under the sun but none of them will be acceptable. In terms of console/OS/online integration I think MS wins and they are constantly evolving and improving the service while Sony continue to play catch up when it comes to a lot of these features. Nintendo are headed in a different direction altogether and even though my Wii is online, I never truly feel connected so Wiiware and Virtual Console aside, I think they have a long way to go with their online services and integration.