Yesterday was the official day that Social Networking and game consoles have been integrated together on the core system level. With the latest Xbox Dashboard Update gamers now have access to their Facebook and Twitter accounts right from their consoles. In a move to possibly steal some of Microsoft’s thunder Sony released a video preview of its upcoming Playstation 3.10 update that will also include Facebook integration on a console level.
Both companies seem to be taking a different path on how they are integrating social networks into their consoles. One one hand you have Microsoft merely creating nice user interfaced apps for both Facebook and Twitter. Through the apps you can view and post current status information, and the door is open for game developers to add certain features to their games that tie to Facebook. The entire Facebook and Twitter experience on the Xbox 360 is only manual, your XBox won’t automatically send any type of information. One the other hand Sony isn’t jumping head first into a standalone user interface with Facebook, yet since the PS3 has a web browser gamers can access Facebook in its full glory, not the striped down version found on the Xbox 360. Sony’s approach is to allow the PS3 to automatically update your Facebook friends with your latest trophies, PS store purchases, and also allowing game developers access to the Facebook API for in-game events. I could also see this same route taken towards twitter, in the near future.
As you can see both are working under very different ideas. So the question is who is on the right path, and what should they be doing? Lets first look at what we all expect from Social Networks. Social Networking is supposed to be a way for people to easily communicate with a large group of people or friends. Social Networking is also set-up to allow as near to real time information to be broadcasted to ones social network. But what do gamers want from social networks? With online gaming growing each year, gamers want to be able to connect with friends as easy as possible. Unfortunately both consoles won’t be automatically pumping out live status information, yet they could be. Look at sites like Xboxtweet.com, they pull a gamers gamercard info and then tweet what your currently playing. Which is the perfect use of twitter and Xbox gaming. Now my friends can see what I’m playing and they can join in if they want. The next thing gamers want is another avenue to brag. Achievements and trophies were created so we can brag, and the PS3 will be helping make that easier with its auto Facebook updates.
So who’s doing it right, as of now Sony, and the Xbox community (not Microsoft). Microsoft should have taken out the middlemen, they already stream our info to gamercards, so why isn’t it also going to our Facebooks and Twitters? Its obvious it can be done as fans have proved and even Sony is going to prove. Recent battles between the two consoles have been around media, who offers the most and the best movies and music, but now the battle front is moving toward social networks. Hopefully this push into social networks for the PS3 will quickly move to Twitter as well. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft responds to the PS3’s next update, we can only hope the folks at Redmond are taking note, cause otherwise I see their lead quickly slipping away.
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Neither will do it right, I’m a PS3 user but Sony’s firmware/design team have no vision anymore, they’re just tacking stuff on to the XMB, the XMB is a great interface with so much potential but now it just has multiple personalities, the experience is broken up, they seem to be incapable of unification, integration and simplification. And they have too much pride as a company, they stick by their bad decisions and don’t let them go.
Microsoft have less potential in their interface but they do have one thing, a vision of unification and they’re a lot faster at feature development, sadly for them they fail at the implication stage.
Sadly, both these companies have lost vision of GUI design and neither possess all of its key aspects: unification, integration, simplification, minimal interaction, seamless transitioning and an aim at perfection.
Very good points, though I still think there is no reason for a GUI of facebook or twitter, we all have computers, and its much easier to just use a browser. However the automatic posting of proper information is key, and Microsoft fails drastically at that. There was so much potential for the xbox to stream vital up to date gaming details to both Facebook and Twitter, and they failed to harness it. If Sony can add twitter integration like Facebook quick that would be good for them, granted the SOny Facebook attempt is young and rather limited, but its still the right step. However in both cases its obvious the people coming up with the ideas aren’t the ones using Facebook and Twitter actively, and are more then likely older gentleman who are well out of the current gaming/technology demographic.