Naughty Dog’s Richard Lemarchand sees big changes on the horizon for the PlayStation Network that will vault the service over Microsoft’s Xbox Live. In an interview with IGN, Lemarchand said, “there’s going to be other things coming down the pipe that’s going to give PSN as a whole a competitive advantage.” Chances are, he wasn’t referring to the latest update to the PS3 firmware.
When pressed to explain what the big changes will be, Lemarchand hinted that it would revolve around connectivity outside of downloading games and showing off Trophies.
…as a games designer I’m very excited about net connectivity. Sony is really looking to expand games as culture in the same way that pop music, literature and fine art are culture. When you couple that with ubiquitous computing, with connectivity, with locative technology like GPS and cellphones, all of that feeds into social networks and the tremendous interest and power of Facebook, I think those kinds of things are going to be completely transformative for game design.
At this point, I am thoroughly confused as to what these amazing new features could be other than social networking. Sure, I would love to reveal my GPS position on a Facebook application, but I’m not ready to say that a feature like that would kill what Microsoft has going on. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what these new crazy features are going to give us.
