I am complaining about barriers in general. You can't tell me that it would not be nice to see region selection in games that can pair you with others in your region or nearby. I think it's not a bad idea. After all that would make connecting to players less laggy as well. :P
While this would be nice, it limits the amount of player that are available for your search. I live in Scotland, and best Matchmaking results are probably those were those from Europe (which has so many different languages) will have a better connection that connecting to English Speaking areas like America, Canada and Australia.
I see no reason why the PS3 could not take advantage of some of the features Live had already... So the PS4 was their answer to the fans whom wanted cross party chat and the other advanced features they have planned.
I don't know the reasoning behind the PS3 not having cross game chat, but Is that something that is changing now?
I do have a lack of Friends on my list on PSN and I aim to remedy that. You need to really work on building a community and on PSN I feel no sense of greater community like that of Live has with ease of use, the fact everyone gets a headset in w/the 360 vs PS3 with none.
That was one of the great things about the xbox in the early days. They made some great decisions in the begining of the 360's life. Unfortunately this has fallen off with a lack of interesting exclusives (Mostly due to the stagnation of the shooter genre)
Maybe its not the amount that counts but why cant I have more than 6 friends in case those six go offline for any period of time?
PS3 and Xbox 360 both have friendslist limits of 100. This is increasing in the next generation.
Why would I have picked the 360 Originally? Cause of the Games and Cause of communication reasons. The friends list I built. The Controller and So on. There are many reasons why I play games and many reasons why I picked the 360.
I chose my 360 because my brother got the PS3. There were few exclusives I were interested in shortly into the life of the 360. Had you bought a PS3 though, and built up the community there rather than on the 360, this conversation may have been different. Last console generation was 8 years long, the longest console generation. This allowed for plenty of time to have these sort of experiences over all three of the main platforms last generation. The Xbox had a leg up because of the free microphone, and the better Live service. Sony are now offering a greater service with PS+ though.
It's Not like I'm angry at everyone, I'm just disappointed with Sony overall really.
I still don't really know why though. Xbox Live had a great service, but for most this isn't enough. I haven't bought Xbox live since 2010 when the online experience wasn't as important. I lost interest in multiplayer shooter games around that sort of time. Halo Reach and Modern Warfare 2 were the only games I played online with Live, and £40 a year for a service I was never going to use again wasn't enough to keep me around.
Playstation provided all multiplayer gaming online for free during the life of the PS3, and with the introduction of their service offer discounts and free games on a monthly basis. They have now chosen this to be mandatory for PS4 in terms of PS+, but continue to offer the benifits that they provided with PS+ on the PS3. While I am unsure of Microsoft's strategey with Xbox Live on the Xbox one, if it remains the way it is, is not worth the money.