Size of PSN Online Community?

[RedConverse]

I know that XBOX Live probably has a lot more people online, but for people who've been playing RB on PSN, does there ever seem to be a lack of people online, or is it always pretty packed?

[Magnet]

I can have trouble finding people online between 2-4am EST sometimes. Other than that I'll find people to play with fairly quickly.

[Senkoy]

I wish you could see that lowest score on the leaderboards so you could see how many people have scores up and get an idea of how many people are on there. From what i can tell it should be no more than 15,000 for the PS3, which seems very meager. Best way to find out i guess is to start a new band the check out the leader boards before getting any points.

Now, if you're talking about people to play with, i gave up playing online cause i can never find anyone.

[borsdy]

Next week(or maybe even tomorrow) the NPD chart with console software sales for last month will be out and it should give you an idea. It will only show the first week and a half of sales, though.

[toelessfoot]

I wish you could see that lowest score on the leaderboards so you could see how many people have scores up and get an idea of how many people are on there. From what i can tell it should be no more than 15,000 for the PS3, which seems very meager. Best way to find out i guess is to start a new band the check out the leader boards before getting any points.

Now, if you're talking about people to play with, i gave up playing online cause i can never find anyone.

Wow 15000? Based on this board I thought there would be tons of PS3 buyers, good thing my preorder is already for the 360 version (canada).

[DesiredFX]

I have never had trouble finding someone to play with.

However.

I haven't always found a full band of four to play with--in fact, lately, it seems much harder to find singers.

For the most part, though, I can always find a three-piece group. That may improve when all the guitar issues are fixed.

The other question is how many versions--PS3 and 360 both--are wrapped and waiting to be given as Christmas presents. The numbers for both platforms could take a big leap during the last week of 2007.

[RedConverse]

Since I have a PS3 and a 360 (I've been wanting the PS3 version), would the size of online community make or break that decision? Is it that big a deal, or am I just worrying too much? Any help is appreciated, thanks.

[borsdy]

So what is holding you back for the 360 version? I don't mean to conveye an ms viral marketing post here but there's achievements, voice chat, early dlc and more compatible guitar controllers...

[DesiredFX]

Well, of course, no one can make that decision but you, and I'd say it depends how you intend to play it.

If you're mostly going to be by yourself, the online community will probably play a huge role.

If you're playing with one other person, you can get to pretty much the whole meat of the game, but you still may want to play online to get that whole "four-piece" thing going on.

If you're fortunate enough to have two or three other people to play with locally on a regular basis, you will probably not care as much about the online aspects of gameplay.

[lo5th0pe]

Personally, I like going with the PS3 whenever possible, like here where the experience is pretty much exactly the same on both (unlike anything else someone tries to port from 360 to PS3. It's a different system top to bottom. You can't just port it and expect good results, although from what I'm hearing about Burnout, it's pretty easy to go from PS3 to 360. Just have to dumb it down. Anyway. . .) I'm a PC gamer from way back in the days of Doom on through the UTs, BF 1942 and the like, and I support free online whenever I can. I pay big bucks every month to have my fast internet connection, and then I have to pay MS on top of that to play what I used to do for free? That's frustrating to me, especially when Warhawk and Resistance and now Rock Band have all the online tracking I could want, and I don't have to pay extra. Xbox (and now Vista) will never EVER sell me on paying to play, but like I said, I've been doing the online thing since back in the beginning of the shooters. PSN all the way. There are plenty of us on there.

[Senkoy]

Yeah there are plenty of us. And like Desired said, once Xmas goes by there will be many more people to play with. Also when they get more bundles out there as well. I hope this game sells millions and millions on both consoles. Great game.

[RedConverse]

Awesomeness, thanks for all the input guys!

[Ventura]

I'm a PC gamer from way back in the days of Doom on through the UTs, BF 1942 and the like, and I support free online whenever I can. I pay big bucks every month to have my fast internet connection, and then I have to pay MS on top of that to play what I used to do for free? That's frustrating to me, especially when Warhawk and Resistance and now Rock Band have all the online tracking I could want, and I don't have to pay extra. Xbox (and now Vista) will never EVER sell me on paying to play, but like I said, I've been doing the online thing since back in the beginning of the shooters. PSN all the way. There are plenty of us on there.

That's a very good point. Despite having bought a 360 shortly after it's release out here in Australia I've never subscribed to the live gold account they make you pay for. I don't like the thought of having to pay to be able to play online when us pc gamers have been doing it for free for years.

All the PS3 community really needs, other than more users, is respect. We don't have compatibility with ANY of the other available guitar controllers out of the box, and despite the support for voice chat being there, we don't have that either.

It's not helping though that the PS3 is apparently so much more difficult to develop for than the 360 is. I have a bad feeling that, when Rock Band is released locally out here in Australia, all of my mates that are interested will pick it up for the 360, and if I wanna be able to play with them I'll have to switch sides.

[Nate Finch]

It's not helping though that the PS3 is apparently so much more difficult to develop for than the 360 is.

It's not more difficult, it's just different. People who write code for the PS3 first and port to the 360 are having no problems. I believe this is because the PS3 requires you to structure your code in a more distributed fashion, which actually works better on both consoles. On the 360 you can get by with brute force and pushing everything down a single pathway, even though it's wasting a lot of the 360's potential. On the PS3, that waste is just magnified, so sometimes ports from the 360 turn out worse on the PS3 unless the devs do a lot of work restructuring the code (which is really hard to do after the fact).


I do think you have to get Rock Band on whatever platform your friends get, it just makes sense. But there's certainly no lack of people online on PSN, so don't let that factor into your decision.

[Ventura]

But there's certainly no lack of people online on PSN, so don't let that factor into your decision.

If there weren't quite so many people posting about how they can't seem to get a game nomatter how long they hang around, it'd make it easier to believe that.

[FakeNBake]

with the guitar compatibility patch coming any minute now:p there should be more people on too! I havent played online yet because my guitar broke, but my new guitar should be here today...I imagine there are already a lot of guitar players though

can you hear the person singing the vocals online or do you just hear the track?

[KurttBaine]

I chose the PS3 over the 360 for a few reasons.

1) PSN is free.
2) My 360 ALWAYS forgets my network settings whenever it is turned off or reset. I always have to go back and test the network.
3) I'm not paying an EXTRA $50 a year or whatever for an online service that belongs to a console that forgets its Network Settings.
4) My 360 carved its initials into my Guitar Hero II disc. Actually it etched like 6 or 7 rings in the disc making it practically unreadable. When I got the disc "buffed/fixed" it got worse.

So on games I know I want to play.. and keep.. and play online, it's the PS3. I don't do console shooters, that's what my PC, my GeForce 8800 GTX and Copperhead mouse are for. So the Xbox isn't as appealing to me for many many reasons.

[lo5th0pe]

Like has been said, not difficult, just different, and going the other way seems to work great. Just look at the new Burnout. It was created first on PS3, and then taken down to the 360. From everything I'm reading, the PS3 version runs at 60 fps at all times at 1080p, and the 360 port has real issues other than some specialized effects that can't run without all the processors. It's not out yet, so we will see, but the demo comes out tomorrow and damned if I aint just a bit excited for it. Anyway, both systems have their plusses, but PS3 is my choice and I agree, just needs some more respect and more people to get on there and realize it's pretty kick ass. Go play Warhawk or Resistance and try to tell me that's not as good or better than anything that you're paying to play online on the 360.

[AVC808]

i contribute to the lack of ps3 online rock band players. i currently have no desire to play in an online band. maybe later when i get better. usually i'll stick to playing in a band at a friends house, or solo tour to practice. when it gets late or tiring, i switch to COD4 online :)

[LZ_Reborn]

I can have trouble finding people online between 2-4am EST sometimes. Other than that I'll find people to play with fairly quickly.

Why are you playing at 4 in the morning?! get some rest man!:p


Oh and about the topic, nope never a shortage of players (at normal hours that is!)

[AVC808]

Why are you playing at 4 a.m. in the morning?! get some rest man!:p

i need insomniacs like that. resistance was sorta dead at times until they joined all the regions together for online multiplayer. cod4 is ok, but could be better. living in hawaii and logging most of my gaming hours at night can be tough

[jq715861]

i need insomniacs like that. resistance was sorta dead at times until they joined all the regions together for online multiplayer. cod4 is ok, but could be better. living in hawaii and logging most of my gaming hours at night can be tough

Oh, boo hoo. Let me cry a river for you. :p


I live in Massachusetts and we are supposed to get a foot of snow this weekend. But at least I'll have players to play online with. East coast bias. Muhahaha. :D

[DesiredFX]

It's not more difficult, it's just different.

Kinda true, kinda not.

Since the original XBox and now the 360 are more-or-less specialized PCs, it's actually easy to create development tools for them: you simply adapt tools that were created nearly 20 years ago and have been evolving ever since.

Tools on the PS3 side are a different creature entirely and are somewhat hampered by the fact that the PS2 was such a huge hit that everyone wanted to be on it in spite of the lack of tools: everyone was perfectly happy reinventing the wheel because they knew they could reach an enormous audience once they had it out there.

With a total of 5M PS3s in the field (2M in North America), developers are a bit more reluctant to invest the time to learn the real nuts and bolts of exploiting the power of the system. In the past year, Sony has done a much better job of getting their first-party developer tools out into the field, which is why the more recent ports of 360 games are looking and performing better.

As always, though, without a major conversion effort, a game will run better on the platform it was originally designed for.