Valve released Portal 2 on the PS3 yesterday to much critical and consumer fanfare. Along with a killer game, Valve’s first real foray onto Sony’s platform brought with it Steam integration. While it’s only been available to the general public for a mere handful of hours, it’s already abundantly clear that Steam on PS3 is leaps and bounds better than the actual PlayStation Network functionality in two main areas.
Sure, it’s an extra step to authenticate to Steam the first time you boot up the game, but it’s well worth the effort. Along with being able to play cross-platform, two key features with the Steam integration immediately put a smile on my face and made me say “Why can’t Sony do it like this?”. Let’s get right down to it.
Automatic syncing and quick viewing of Steam Achievements vs. Manual syncing and long downloads for Trophies
One drawback to the Trophy system on the PS3 is the manual nature to syncing that information back to the PSN. For whatever system architectural reason, Trophies are stored locally and only synced to the PlayStation Network when you either view your Trophies in the XMB (outside of a game) or try to compare to your accomplishments with friends. It can take quite a while in some cases to sync this data and then downloading comparisons takes even longer. The end result is one where checking your gaming prowess versus that of your friends is pointless. Right now, there are probably three or four new games worth of Trophies that I haven’t sent out into the world, so any of my friends looking at my data won’t have any clue what I’ve done in Mortal Kombat, Portal 2, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 12: The Masters, and parts of MLB 11: The Show. That’s a shame; especially when Steam seamlessly syncs your Steam Achievements back to the network the second they are unlocked. If you hit Select in Portal 2 to bring up the Steam UI (or fire up Steam on your PC or Mac), you can instantly see what you’ve done in the game and compare with friends in real time; no prolonged uploads or downloads required. As gaming is drastically trending more social, this is one social aspect that Sony needs to address and that Steam has shown can easily be done on the PS3.
Automatic Steam Cloud game save backup vs. Manual repeated syncing for PlayStation Plus Cloud Saves
I avoided PlayStation Plus for a bit longer than a year (Update: ok, maybe it was less — more coffee helps…), and then Sony introduced Cloud Game Saves. That got my attention. I’ve gone through my fair share of broken consoles (on my 12th Xbox 360 and 2nd PlayStation 3) and have lost more game saves than I care to count. Being able to securely back up that data offsite without having to buy yet another external hard drive was the driving force in getting me to pay for a year of PlayStation Plus. Sure, there are other great perks that I’ve since realized make the subscription worth the money, but Cloud Game Saves were the catalyst. However, the system is clunky at best. To backup save data, you must navigate to the save, hit Triangle, choose Copy and select your Online Storage. No games at this point can read or write directly to that Online Storage, so you can’t play directly from that location. If you backup a game save then play for a few more hours, you have to go in and back it up again. Nine times out of ten, you’ll forget. Trust me. But yet again, Steam steps in to show you how it’s done. In Portal 2, once you’ve logged in to Steam, whenever the game saves your data, it also sends that save up to the Steam Cloud. Ignoring the fact that the save can be used on both PC/Mac and PS3, this seamless integration is what makes this feature so useful. (Update: PS3 game saves in Portal 2 cannot be used on PC/Mac, only on other PS3′s. Thanks, Samit!) To quote one of my favorite informercials of all time, “Just set it and forget it.” Again, Steam for PS3 has done in its first day of existence what Sony has yet to do: streamline the experience for the user.
I’m not saying the PlayStation Network’s features are bad — far from it. In many cases, I prefer the PlayStation 3 to the Xbox 360. However, Sony has to do some work to bring these features up to par with other players on the market. Sync my Trophies in real time and let me view my friends’ Trophies without having to wait a few minutes for everything to download. Automatically backup my game saves to the Online Storage as soon as a save changes. Make me spend less time on mundane tasks and more time having fun gaming. I have faith in you, Sony. Make me proud.
Tweak
Magnus Canis
David
Windowlicker
I agree with what you’re saying and it makes a lot of sense. One thing bugging the heck out of me though is that you said you “avoided PS+ a bit longer than a year”. If I’m correct, its not even been a year since its launch. Its actually been 8 months. Am I missing something?
Good catch - I was thinking of the rumor dates when I wrote that. Fixing.
I was wondering if the game in the second screen shot is a real game or one to just show off trophies
It’s just one that shows off Trophies. It’s a screen we had from when Sony first unveiled Trophies and used it for press.
I agree with the Sync for trophies and as I am saving up to get Portal 2 for the steam integration which I know was gonna be huge for us on the consoles and will a great benefit. The Cloud saving part most likely can’t happen for a factor of reasons, the games save data directly to the HDD not alternate sources, this would most likely be an area for the developers to address. Could give the option to save to the HDD, Cloud or both if you do so have this option. Since only PS+ members do get it, it limits the circle for developers to address the issue as a concern, more likely be done by Valve or Rockstar as they always seem to look for new ares to experiment with at times.
Again as the network grows and grows as you said too more and more elements and change come that are good, just like the PSR program was suppose to be really cool and instead was more of a issue and waste.
Either way I found a new site to read and thank you for this post
“Automatic Steam Cloud game save backup vs. Manual repeated syncing for PlayStation Plus Cloud Saves”
As far I know this feature will integrated into future games by giving an option (with in-game interface) to save game progress locally or to the cloud.
Hopefully Sony got the message once they heard what Steam was planning and they are working on it now as to not let a 3rd party 1up them on their own service lol
Nothing a patch couldn’t fix.
humm, so PSn sucks because of trophies and cloud game saves.
sad sad world we live in, I guess.
I’ve been gaming close to 30 years and those “features” hardly rise my eyebrow let alone ruin every single game, I’ve played in over those 30 years.
Yet these days it seems the only reason why to play any sort of game is only due to having the trophies, sigh these days.
What surprises me is the fact that, 5 years on the PSN is still lacking key features that Xbox Live has had for a number of years. Things such as cross-game chat, an easy interface that allows you to see what friends are doing at a press of a button, party chat etc…all these features are what I expected to be implemented into PSN years ago.
The fact of the matter is this; Sony seem content with their current interface and Xbox Live completely eclipses PSN. Is it really that hard to implement features that the Xbox 360 with Xbox Live had from the outset?
No. They can easily implement these. They won’t. They stand to make much more money having these features in a ps4 they can sell for $859.99. I mean look @in game music. Sony finally listens and says “ok we will do it”. But what do they do? Instead of forcing the option like xbox, they say oh yeah we did it! We just don’t make our game designers do it. PASSING THE BUCK!!!! Take responsibility, and force the changes people want. Xbox does. They listen. And hell, i don’t even own and 360. Never have. But of course I know plenty who do. I am not ignorant. I see what xbox does. And what psn doesn’t. I love my ps3. But I am slowly hating my Sony.
Personally, I’ve never seen the trophy syncing as a burden. It literally takes me less than a minute to do a whole games worth of trophies. I’ve read the many complaints people have had about the constant firmware updates, forced game installs, and game updates on brand new games. These have never bothered me, my psn connection is fast and I don’t sit there watching the screen, waiting to play. It’s the ability to constantly update that enables valve to bring steam on psn and it will never happen on the xbox.
I also like how people say cross game chat is what makes live better than psn. Although I can see it being somewhat useful, I wonder how many people are using it on a consistent basis. I have an xbox and am on live and I’ve never had to use it. My cell phone and txting works much better.