I was speaking to a collegue of mine a few weeks ago who is an XBox360 owner, who recently purchased a PS3 on my recommendation. Of course we go back and forth all day long about which system is superior, etc. I have always defended the PS3, however one area that the machine is severely lacking is with the music playback options. The two of us spoke on this topic for a long time about what is wrong with it and what needs to be fixed, etc.
The main thing is obviously the lack of in-game music in every game. Now, from what I understand, Microsoft owns some patent that doesn't allow Sony to simply let the PS3 play in-game music on any game across the system. At least this is what I have read, so pardon me if I am incorrect (this is also a part of the corporate evil behavior that Microsoft is known for and is why I will never buy an XBox). Well, I know Sony has fixed the firmware to allow developers to implement this feature into games, but the big problem with this is that it seems like nobody is supporting it. This needs to be just as important as trophy implimentation, perhaps mandatory. At surface value, it might not seem like such a big deal, but gaming to your own music is HUGE, especially for the types of gamers that play first person shooters online all day long, or people like me that simply hate the music in Puzzle Quest. In the conversation I had with my friend about the topic, he made a great point, he said "I can't even play Puzzle Quest on my PS3, one of the best things about that game on the XBox 360 was the fact that you could play it for hours and listen to your music on random." People are always saying that Microsoft delivers a better gaming experience - listening to your own music while game is a part of that. In short, he'd rather pay for the XBox online experience than play Sony's free one.
I understand that there are probably some developers that want to keep the "integrity" of their wizardry-and-elfen-magic RPG and don't want the sounds of 50 Cent playing during a battle with a druid, or whatever. Hey, with the XBox, they don't have a choice, so why should they with the PS3? Again, it should be a mandatory - even as much as patching the old games. Sounds extreme, but really, what would it take to do this? perhaps add-in a few lines of pre-written Sony code? We're not talking a massive overhaul here. I mean at this point, I own over 40 games and I think maybe 4 support the feature. I realize the music playback options might not be shouted as loudly as something like cross-game invites, but I have actually passed up titles like "Pure" - a game where you drive in circles - that absurdly does not support the custom soundtrack feature.
Finally, the organization of the music is also bad and in need of a revamp. Why can't I search for a song like I can with ITunes on home computer? I mean if this machine is/was being marketed as a "computer", having the option to search for a song or album should be requisite. I have a 120 gig harddrive on my PS3 with 15000 songs - scrolling endlessly is not where it's at.
To wrap all of this up, it's good to know that Sony listens to feedback from the customers and are implementing requested features like in-game XMB, etc, that's great. But first and foremost this is a GAMING machine. We appreciate the new photo album features, Life With Playstation, Home, etc, but at the end of the day, I'm still scratching my head why these features were given precedence when there is so much to be done with the music playback options.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
I don't think it is a patent.
I think that would be a slightly ridiculous patent anyway; even if it is true there WILL be ways around it because I mean it's simply multitasking - my computer can do it, and so can various other makes of OS other than windows. The PS3 can even do it in some games so that's not an issue either.
I think the main reason it isn't implemented is because it wasn't from the start. Just think - the 360 had this feature from the start so adequate system resources could be put aside for the feature. Games would be tested so that they still work whilst in-game music is playing. If the PS3 suddenly got in-game music for all games, it wouldn't have the spare processing power available, so games would run more slowly which isn't what you want. The way it works NOW is to latch onto the EXISTING sound system within the game itself, thereby not needing nearly so many resources, but this requires a patch to the game. It simply can't get any better because it wasn't designed that way from the start. Hence why in-game XMB is so slow.
Patching old games requires the developers' support, testing, QA, classification, admin, beaurocracy in general. This is why it's not generally done. Plus, the developers have moved onto their next game and have stopped supporting old ones - what do they have to gain by patching a game for custom soundtracks? No more sales, certainly. Just an administrative headache.
dude i totaly agree with you sony is stupid for not implementing this feature in every game
Im not an expert on developing but I know it wouldn't take much to implement in-game music compatibility into a game. I think Dev's are being a little lazy
Sony should implement everything necessary to make it easy to do in the phyre engine.