Man, that’s a lot of acronyms.

Last night, as you all know, was the 20th Friday Night Fights. Snaileb did a good job letting everyone know what the deal was in Grim’s absence. However — and this is not anyone’s fault in particular — I feel as if the PS3 always gets shafted (and not just in terms of multiplatform games). I mean, last night, I ended up just playing CoD 4 with strangers on the PSN. I had said in the comments for the FNF posts that I would’ve been willing to host for CoD 4 or Rock Band, and though I was able to get in a few minutes of the latter game with PKN, everyone was either playing something else or missing altogether. Hell, no one even seemed to be on for Warhawk — I mean, I know a lot of PS3-owning Dtoiders don’t have the games I mentioned, but even the usual Warhawk gang was conspicuously absent, so the whole night was kind of a washout:


I was thinking of going with an “EPIC FAIL” image here, but I thought this was slightly more original

Of course, I understand that people will be busy on Friday nights a lot of the time, and that’s fine; I guess this week was just hit particularly hard in that respect. But it still seems like the 360 Dtoiders are given most of the attention in FNF posts, while PS3 users are sort of left to fend for themselves. Again, I don’t want to specifically blame anyone, and I don’t think it’s even possible. That’s mostly due to many more Dtoiders owning 360s, obviously. I mean, we’re doing alright, what with Wednesday Night Warcawks and all, but I’d like to see more focus on the PS3 side of things.

Granted, Sony’s not making it any easier. It sucks that the PS3 still doesn’t have in-game XMB access — I hate having to quit out of a game just to use the messaging system. Then, of course, it’s just annoying with the varying levels of XMB integration within games. Warhawk may not have a party system, but at least it uses the XMB friends list to allow you to see who else is playing the game at the moment. Call of Duty 4 does do the party thing, and its use of the XMB list is fantastic: when you hit ‘Party Invite’, the game only shows you your friends that are currently online playing the game; when you invite someone, they get an immediate notice of the invite that pops up the next time they’re in a game lobby. The integration in Rock Band, on the other hand, isn’t exactly ideal. You can do party invites, but nothing pops up; the person you invite has to quit out to the game’s main menu, go to “Community”, and then specifically check for party invites. Sound stupid? That’s because it kinda is. I just wish that games would use some sort of unified system — why can’t the XMB friends list be a universal list that every game uses?

Taking all of that into consideration, I was wondering if you guys would be in favor of splitting up the FNF list. This seems logical to me for a number of reasons. First of all, the FNF posts have become huge, unwieldy, and a bit long to scroll through in my opinion (kinda like my own blog posts). Secondly, the way that most FNF posts turn out is that 90% of the comments are made regarding 360 or PC games, and the comments of people who want to play on the PS3 are lost in the commotion. Finally, the PS3’s community capabilities just aren’t as good as those on the 360. You know it, I know it, and Microsoft knows it, but Sony continues to be blissfully ignorant of it. So let’s give it a little help, shall we?

It appears that most of the action takes place on the PS3, 360, and PC — so perhaps we could have one post for each of those, and a fourth one with “everything else”. Or not...with this post, I’m trying to gauge people’s opinions. I know this may seem as if I’m trying to stir things up in a bad way, but it’s all done with the end goal of more Friday night gaming with more Dtoiders. I suppose that if I have to, I’m offering to take up the weekly PS3-centric FNF post, though I’m getting it out of the way now: I may not be able to do it every week, so I’d occasionally have to pawn it off on somebody else. But yeah...what do you guys think?