Yoshida: Sony was “late” in offering “platform-level” online support for PS3

Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Computer Entertainment’s worldwide studios, has expressed his concern in the latest issue of Edge Magazine that the PlayStation 3 was “late” in offering “platform-level” online support for the console.

“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.”

Yoshida said that Sony’s continuing to make improvements such as with 3.0 (which was really a disappointment) that SCE “should really continue to look at adding and improving” the PlayStation Network. He also mentioned the possibility of social networking integration such as with Facebook: “Something like 300 million people already have accounts on Facebook. Why should we ignore that?”

Sony on PS3 online: “We were late” [CVG]