PSN Network Director of Operations Talks Service’s Future

While Xbox Live is still the best online service you’ll find on consoles, it’s not without fault – and certainly not without challengers in WiiConnect24 and PlayStation Network. While Nintendo hasn’t really pushed its online initiative, Sony has made large strides to catch up to Xbox Live.

“I think Xbox Live is a solid service with a lot of good features,” Eric Lempel, PSN’s director of operations told Next Gen. “But I don’t think anyone at Microsoft would disagree that there is still room for improvement.”

And within that statement lies much of PlayStation Network’s future – through downloadable content, user created content, and Home.

“Let’s take a look at what we have today. Right now our users have a single account and user ID that they can use across our titles that have online functionality. In addition, utilizing the same account they can build and add friends to a friends list, they can send and receive messages from their friends, they can have audio and video chats with their friends.” Lempel also mentioned the ability to download demos, trailers, add-on content, PS one games and more through the service.

“Everything I mentioned short of purchasing new content is available to every PlayStation 3 purchaser right out of the box at no additional cost. I would add that we don’t put limits on the size or scope of the content we deliver through our service. We released WarHawk a few months ago through PlayStation Network, and on Blu-ray through retail.”

He goes on to talk about how Home is coming along, and while he didn’t want to go into specifics on things like PSP connectivity, he did mention that Sony’s “goal is to have PlayStation devices connected to all of our services across PlayStation Network to provide the user with a seamless PlayStation experience they can access at anytime, from anywhere.”

Live Anywhere, anyone?

Read the full interview at Next Gen.