14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft and Sony aren't very friendly to each other, and that's a fact. The two rival companies have in their separate consoles, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 respectively, the most powerful products of this generation of gaming. Although pros and cons can be found for any of these two systems, the executives of the companies always find something to mock the opposition with.
We've seen Microsoft gloat because of the big sales of the Xbox 360 in front of the PS3 and we've seen Sony officials mock the processing power of the North American console, which is inferior to the Cell processor in the Japanese one. But now, it seems that another subject has appeared on the agenda of the Microsoft executives, namely the new online service from Sony, Home.
Aaron Greenberg, group product manager for Xbox 360, recently talked about the Home service and compared it to Microsoft's own Xbox Live online platform, which is currently the most popular one around the world. He went on to say that, although Home might look attractive at first glance, it was nothing more than a “Second Life clone”, referring to the fact that the online service from Sony was similar to the popular Internet game Second Life.
“When [customers] compare Live, even to Home, there is still a huge gap. What Home to me feels like is Second Life for hardcore gamers,” he said, “it doesn’t feel like it broadens the experience and invites people in. When they unveiled it, it seemed innovative. I think what's happened is now here we are a couple of years later and we feel beyond that. It feels like 2005 tech in 2008. I'm not sure that’s what people want.”
Although these might seem like strong words, coming from Sony's Arch rival, the fact of the matter is that the Japanese company did take quite a lot of time to make the Home service complete. Let's just hope that Sony will deliver a great platform to all of the PS3 users out there.