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Improved Sony PS3 Voice Chat Needed: something more like Xbox 360

By: Daniel Chubb | September 4, 2007 | 6 Comments

Sony PS3 Voice Chat

Last night I just brought a Bluetooth headset for my Sony PS3 (one of those that you use for cell phones), my brother got one as well so we could talk while playing games.

As I have owned an Xbox 360 since they came out, I am use to the 360’s chat set up and I must say I am very disappointed in the way the Playstation 3 lets you voice chat.

With the Xbox 360 you can do private chats and then move around the dashboard and into games still chatting, but on the Sony PS3 if you go to leave a chat setup it will then break the voice chat (that’s rubbish).

The same in games, you cannot enter into a private chat with a friend while playing a game.

When it comes to the looks, feel and hardware I prefer the Sony PS3 but for the software side (like voice chat) the Xbox 360 wins hands-down.

I am lucky enough to own the Nintendo Wii, Sony PS3 and Xbox 360 so I can give you a hands-on opinion of all 3 games consoles.

This should not be a big problem to fix; it’s only a firmware update which is needed to improve the Playstation 3 voice chat abilities.

Let’s hope it comes soon as its needed.

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  • Scoob101

    “This should not be a big problem to fix; it’s only a firmware update which is needed to improve the Playstation 3 voice chat abilities.”

    How on earth can you know that its only a firmware update? Depending on how voice chat is handled on the PS3, this issue could be more fundamental.

    The truth is, theres no way to tell (until they fix it – if they can)

    The 360`s voice chat is implemented at the hardware level, so that is independent of any game. It sounds like the PS3`s voice chat could be implemented in the application layer, which means that voice chat and games have to negociate for the same resources – and sometimes the game doesn`t allow voice chat what it needs to give a seamless experience.

    In summary, the PS3`s online capabilities are not built into the consoles design and therefore are at a disadvantage to Microsoft`s offering.

  • http://dude.com Phil

    Haha – Sorry but firmware will change all this, and ‘NO’ its not built at a hardware level – JUST like the 360, they are both handled by software, it’s based within the OS of the xbox (OS yes OPERATING SYSTEM = SOFTWARE) idiot, hardware means voice chat? Wtf are you smoking?

  • King Keepo

    “This should not be a big problem to fix”

    This would be true at the design stage, but alas it gets exponentially more difficult, and more expensive as the product goes through it’s life cycle. A deployed product is the most difficult to fix.

    Even Microsoft, past masters at delivering patches to an enormous number of machines, had trouble delivering some of their patches to 360s with the the same core hardware footprint.

  • Daggre

    Even though Phil is probably right that this is a software level implementation, it’s really an OS level software implementation, where the OS on 360 can yank control of any hardware away from a game without causing the game to crash. That’s also why the 360 can substitute any ripped music or music streamed from a PC for the music in any game, without the game itself being able to prevent it (even if they wanted to).

    Once you run a PS3 game, the game seems to own the hardware much more than on a 360. It’s highly likely that individual games have direct access to the bluetooth hardware (at least in the concept of being able to “lock” the device so that they application can use it). The lack of any kind of pop-up dashboard like you get when you hit the 360 button (equivalent to the PS button on PS3 controllers) would seem to indicate that Sony does not view the OS as “active” while a game is played. The only thing you can do while playing a game is quit the game or turn off the system. Even background downloads pause while you’re playing a game (which only happens on 360 while playing an online game, to help reduce lag for everyone playing).

    What’s more likely is that Sony will eventually give developers a chat API that will support shared chat across games, and with the icon bar and Home. It wouldn’t be as elegant as the 360′s solution but would work just fine and have most of the desired result (it just wouldn’t continue a live chat as a game was changed out).

  • Scoob101

    Phil,

    The 360 has one of it 6 cpu threads assigned to voice chat. Thats the fundamental reason why you can use chat regardless of what other software is running at the time. Its built into the consoles design. The point I was attempting to make was that this design approach is unique to microsoft`s console. This of course does not mean that sony cannot improve on how the PS3 handles voice chat today, but based on the fact that integration with the Playstation network was really little more than an afterthought, rather than a design goal, Sony have their work cut out for them, and whatever they achieve, the first batch of games will never offer the full online experience(the online API`s were simply not released by Sony in time)

    Like many other self confessed Internet “Experts”, you seem to like to talk with authority on things you know nothing about.

    Bloody users…

  • Drundar

    Bro. The Playstation 3 has 8 CPU's Not a hardware issue. It is a multitasking console. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 both have the ability to access your dashboard while playing. So obviously when this was posted you were a complete moron. Hardware is only to make sure the sytem turns on and runs correctly. Hardware doesnt mean doing voice chat. That is an internet thing. Now if there was a seperate plug on the console with a plug for head phones then that would indicate that it is a hardware thing. BUT THERE IS NONE. I guess some moron's need to say something to seem smart. But it is all fine. I bet you also think that ps3 will never implament data transfer with other consoles. To late they have. Sooner or later the xbox 360 will be able to download things off of thumb drives and playstation will be able to have background voicce chat. Just gonna take time to implament it.