No angry mobs allowed at Sony and the Playstation Network.

In Sonys new PSN terms and conditions, there has been a little bit of controversy about law suits, the following bit in particular:

"Any Dispute Resolution Proceeding, whether in arbitration or court, will be conducted only on an individual basis and not in a class or representative or private attorney general action."

So yes you can indeed still sue Sony but you have to sue them individually. You will not (if you accept new terms) be allowed to get together with your local angry mob and go along for a group lawsuit. As of late I have started reading terms of service, and no doubt would of picked up on this. I probably would of agreed to it anyway. If I was to sue them I would rather sue them individually anyway, as if I won the case I wouldn't have to share whatever compensation received. If something does happen that requires a mass law suit, surely a hundred small cases would be more expensive for them than one case for a hundred people, so it would be their loss anyway.

I am only writing this due to the fact that the majority of people commenting on posts/articles about this are not even bothering to actually read what has been put in the ToS, and blinding bashing Sony, with comments such as:
'So sony's servers get hacked into and gamer's who's (unnecessary apostrophes, not important but it annoys me.) personal info get compromised and spread possibly all over the net can't sue them...That um...nice i guess. way to go in covering up and fixing mistakes, Sony!!!'

There are many more like that this is one I picked at random though. I'm just going to tear apart this comment to finish off this blog post. Aside from the grammar, which I'm not going to get into (I'm trying to keep my inner grammar nazi under control), let's start with the point about the Sony hack, while this is more than likely the primary reason behind this being added to the terms of service, if you were going to sue Sony about your details being taken due to the fore mentioned Sony network hack, you would of done something about it by now. Secondly you still can sue them as I mentioned earlier in this post. As for the covering up and fixing mistakes, I am not sure what he is on about here. The problem has been rectofied and they have updated their security system, ie fixing their mistake. Still not sure what they are meant to be covering up, unless he means covering their asses from angry mobs coming along to sue them in the future. Which while I'm not sure how legal that is, as it is essentially saying they are above that law, you can, and this is going to be the last time I say it, still sue Sony if you choose to, you just have to leave the pickforks, flaming sticks and angry mob at home.

Xbla first or nothing at all.

Microsoft are being quite petty it would seem as it has come into the headlines that they can deny games having an Xbox Live Arcade release if they launch on PSN first. In a sense it's a type of bullying aimed at developers. 'You can't use our system unless we have priority' is essentially the message they are coming across with. I hope lots of developers tell them where to shove it and go promote there games on Playstation. Granted theres always going to be competition between different consoles, this is pretty much blackmail. Sony have commented on this saying "I think what [Xbox Europe Boss] Chris Lewis and the other representatives at Microsoft are doing is protecting an inferior technology". Read full article here about Sony reaction. I'm not liking all the shady business tactics that seem to be going on in the gaming world recently, hopefully it's not a sign of things to come.

Cross platform gaming with Steam for CS:GO

As we all know Valve are bringing out a new version of Counter Strike under the name Global Offensive. There is now use of cross platform being implimented between Playstation and PC, with Xbox hopefully joining suit in the near future. The PS version of CS:GO will have keyboard and mouse support, along with Playstation move (although I'm not sure how good/accurate this feature will be but fair play to Valve for using peripheral devices available to them) and of course Dual Shock Controllers, so you can play on PS however you choose.

For years there have been debates over which is better consoles or pcs. Now with Valve implimenting this we will be able to find out. While keyboard and mouse are obviously more accurate than controllers, I do think there will be some guys on PS that will give PC gamers a run for there money. Hopefully Valve can work things out with Microsoft and have Steam over on Xbox as well and we will have fully cross platform compatibility. So you can play against your buddies no matter what platform you happen to play and prefer. I do hope this is a sign of things to come and that we see more cross platform games in the future. Microsoft could (and should of IMO) have started cross platform play with GFWL and XBL. All they had to do really was put in keyboard and mouse support for Xbox, so they at least have the choice of having the same as PC guys, and just chuck a few ports of Xbox games over to Windows. While they did start porting over with the likes of Gears of War, and the first two Halos, which were all (apart from the original Halo I reckon anyway) were quite poor ports of the original Xbox games.  Hopefully Valve and MS will work something out as this would be great to see more games playable with people across all three platforms. We shall see soon enough.

I can see a lot of die hard PC gamers complaining about Valve branching out. I applaude them for forming this bridge between gamers. This imo is the first step to creating a bigger, better and greater gaming community for everyone. A chance for Xbox gamers to play with friends that only have a Playstation or PC and vice versa. And for Valve to be doing this is amazing as they do have great PR and actually listen to what customers want (except hiding away a certain Freeman but that's a completely different story. But everyone knows Valve uses Valve Time and gets things done when they get it done). I can see this making us a little more competitive and can prove once and for all who is better, Consolers or PC gamers.

Playstation get cheaper.

If you are looking to get a Playstation 3 now would be a good time to do it as the prices have just been dropped. The 160gb PS3 has been dropped from $299 (£180) to $249 (£150), and the 320gb version is dropped from $349 (£210) to $299 (£180). If I didn't have one already would the $50 discount persuade me? Yeah probably if I had the funds. It would be a good time to get one aswell actually as they does have a few new games such as Resistance 3 and Uncharted 3 on the way. There are alot other games but those 2 are the ones I look forward to the most over on the Playstation scene. Uncharted is definately number 1 on the lise.