Anyone here do a lot of multiplayer on PS3?

[Lox]

A friend of mine is trying to decide between the PS3 and 360 and he's a big online gamer. He mainly wants to be playing online shooters and such. He is leaning towards the PS3 because of the free online, but I thought I'd check to get some impressions about it.

I haven't played anything except for Uncharted 2 and AC:Brotherhood online for the PS3. I've never played any CoD or any other shooters. Would you say that the network performs well for those games? Also, how are the other players? Do you find a lot of other players with headsets who are cool to talk to and work with in-game?

I know on the 360, I've had some really cool experiences playing with strangers and we had a lot of fun because we could chat and plan strategies and what not.

[Imakeholesinu]

I've not run into a bunch of problems with CoD:4, Modern Warfare 2, or Bad Company 2 over the network so I think he should be fine. I was using 768k dsl back then.

[Eric]

Network lag is the same as X-Box Live's, yes you can run into lag, same as you can on X-Box Live, it just depends on who joins the game and what their connection is like.

As for the headset, if you run into somebody with a headset on PSN, chances are they have something worthwhile to say cause they actually went out and bought it for the express purpose of communicating during games(Less annoying people that just buy headsets to spew profanity/racist bullshit).

[Julius Seeker]

Regular cellphone headsets work with PS3... That's about the extent of the input I can give since my experience with online games is usually try it once or twice and drop it.

[Zeus]

I watched my cuz play 5 hours of Black Ops online with not a single issue a couple days after release. Other than that, I've personally only played Uncharted 2 (with you) where we had a bit of issues and got disconnected about 3 times in 4 hours and Transformers, which had zero issues in the few hours I tried Escalation.

Is it better/worse than Live? How about neither? I mean, there's a reason we all got Carcassone and Undertow for free, there was TONS of issues with Live, especially early on. And who the hell can forget the debacle that was Gears 2 online for the first what, 3 or 4 months? And I was constantly getting booted from 1 vs 100, but we can chalk that up to the "beta", no? The one thing Live does better and is a huge advantage is the overriding chat (the Party system). It's really nice being able to chat it up with friends or famliy while I just fiddle around in the dashboard or even move to another game after we're done our multi. It's fucking annoying as hell to have to go to either a dedicated chatroom or stay within the game to be able to talk to others. And because the 360 has Gears, Halo, and Left 4 Dead exclusive (although I would imagine L4D isn't going to be that for much longer), that's a huge advantage with arguably the best online games around being exclusive.

In my limited experience, I personally don't see much of a dif and if someone is buying either system for the first time, it's really all about the exclusives. Don't forget, the PS3 is $100 more expensive as well and that's 2 years of Live (well, not quite up here). But it also does a few more things, like play Blu Rays (if you care about that) and I personally like the dashboard a helluva lot better than the 360's. And it seems to be a much better media server too.

What I'm tryin' to say is, there's too many variables nowadays when deciding which one you want. 90% of the games are exactly the same so you're gonna get a lot of the big titles either way. It's the other things each provide that you have to take into consideration based on your personal needs/wants that'll make that decision. But online lag/issues aren't really one of those factors.

[bovine]

You should just chalk it up to two things - what do your friends play it on and do you care if people talk?

If your friends have ps3s and you don't care that since it does not come with a headset, not so many people talk on it, it is perfectly fine. Opposite goes for the 360.

I get the majority of my games for the 360 because my friends have that system and play online. Also, it means I get to play with Tessian <3

[Lox]

That's basically what I asked him. What do your friends who play online own? That will probably make the choice for you.

He doesn't care about Bluray and he doesn't care about exclusives cuz he's more of a Call of Duty guy. He mainly wants to play with people he knows based on what he's told me.

I haven't had any issues with PSN itself recently. I've had some playing AC:Brotherhood online, but that's Ubisoft.

I told him that the PS3 is probably the right choice for him if he's going to be a single console owner.