28th May 2008, 7:02 AM
I've recently been thinking about the steady improvements in the online experience courtesy of MS, Sony, Valve, and the etcetera. The one thing I note is while they are great, the one fundamental weakness of these systems is their utter dependance on an existing architecture owned and operated by one company. That's in contrast to the internet as a whole, which is standardized by agreement and just sorta works with everything because everyone works to keep it that way.
This same issue comes up with all the currently used chat programs by the way. All of them are dependant on one specific architecture.
The one thing unifying all net experience is IP address right now, however I think that should be improved upon.
I've been thinking that the next big jump in the online arena is to unify all the architecture. All the current game servers will still, as with any website or other service, all operate on respective company servers and major server farms. The difference is it'll be standardized and interoperable. That is, Sony's service and MS's service will be totally invisible to the player. One would just plug in their game and all those lists would all talk to each other. This would also force Nintendo to play catch-up as a side effect :D. It would mean that I would be able to see such meta data as all my friends, what system they are currently logged into, what game they are playing, and if they are designed for it, I would be able to take my 360 copy and their PC copy and play a vs match cross-platform with no issue at all.
Basically, the creation of a "user name" would be universal. I imagine it would be akin to creating a web site address, a currently universal thing as well, which is added to a database shared across all companies. There may be a fee involved depending on how the companies go about doing this.
Thoughts on this?
This same issue comes up with all the currently used chat programs by the way. All of them are dependant on one specific architecture.
The one thing unifying all net experience is IP address right now, however I think that should be improved upon.
I've been thinking that the next big jump in the online arena is to unify all the architecture. All the current game servers will still, as with any website or other service, all operate on respective company servers and major server farms. The difference is it'll be standardized and interoperable. That is, Sony's service and MS's service will be totally invisible to the player. One would just plug in their game and all those lists would all talk to each other. This would also force Nintendo to play catch-up as a side effect :D. It would mean that I would be able to see such meta data as all my friends, what system they are currently logged into, what game they are playing, and if they are designed for it, I would be able to take my 360 copy and their PC copy and play a vs match cross-platform with no issue at all.
Basically, the creation of a "user name" would be universal. I imagine it would be akin to creating a web site address, a currently universal thing as well, which is added to a database shared across all companies. There may be a fee involved depending on how the companies go about doing this.
Thoughts on this?
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)