Rockstar Social Club registration update

The 360 already does this for every game, not only the xbox.com website but also built into the dashboard itself. Fun for PS3 gamers to see what they've been missing though, I guess

/flame bait

That's pretty much what I was going to say.. Doesn't Xbox Live do this anyway?

I suppose it may go into some more detail and allow you to compare things like amount of distance walked against other people, but this mainly seems like a feature for the Playstation users.

I guess it's Rockstar's own platform agnostic achievements system.

I'm still wrestling with the dilemma of which platform to buy this on. I've pre-ordered for the 360, but the prospect of silent running and a bunch of friends on PSN is beginning to outweigh the promise of DLC.

I don't get people with the whole noise issue, but lets not get into that again.

Personally even if I owned a PS3, the 360 is a clear purchase for me. Proper ingame achievements, DLC, better intergration online, more friends who own 360's that can play online with me etc.. (of course that last one is different for everybody)

Plus I think PSN is just too much hassle. At least with the 360 you know everybody already has a headset, for example. Playing online with the PS3, from the experiences I've had at friends houses, seems to be too similar to PC gaming - and thats frustrating. I used to be a big PC gamer but the original Xbox changed that.

If Sony just charged for the service, they could at least get on a fair playing field with Microsoft. Nothing will compare with Live as long as it's free, its just not possible - also even if Sony started charging now and caught up it would still be a mess seeing as how already-released games wont be compatible with a lot of the features.

Sorry I went into a bit of a rant but hey-ho!

@MrXBob
>At least with the 360 you know everybody already has a headset

unless they bought a core

True, but the kind of people that go out and blindly buy a core arent the kinds of people that will be online much. If they are and they could only get ahold of that system, then they'd buy the headset seperately.

I'm not trying to defend the PSN because i know it isn't amazing but i can hardly say that Xbox Live is much different. The only real difference is achievements and films and tv series downloads (which you have to pay extra for).

Home for PSN will be coming soon and i read that Rockstar have integrated features to support it so you can unlock Rockstar furniture etc for your flat which sounds pretty cool. But again i wouldn't care about Home if i suddenly had to pay for it.

And Wii's online attempt is just woeful.

Ultimately i don't think there is a service on any console (or PC) that is so good and so vastely different from the competition that it's worth paying for. Multiplayer games on PC are also generally better organised.

(P.S. When MMO games start to come to consoles, would you really want to pay a yearly subscription on top of monthly subscriptions?? It just starts to become too much)

@McLovin85

You mean like you already have to with Final Fantsy on 360?

If game developers want to charge to play their games, then thats up to them. But you can't blame Microsoft for wanting to have the best online service (which they do have) - and that comes at a (very cheap) price. I dont know why anybody could begrudge having to pay £39.99 for a whole years worth of fully integrated, standardised online gameplay. Even the PC doesnt come close to what the 360 offers in terms of an online system.

There are plenty of programs that do what the 360 does, yes, but not every PC owner has them, and they dont work with all games. It's all up in the air like PSN.

I really believe Home wont be anywhere near as good as the fans are making out. It'll get a couple of weeks extra hype when its launched but then people will go back to not caring, cause it's just a 3D social networking site minus 90% of the features. It wont come close to what Live offers, because it's not meant to - it's not their answer to Live. It's going to do nothing to join all games together so you can compare stats or achievements, it's not going to give you access to voice chat/messaging throughout everything you do on your console, and it isnt going to make everything standardised. It's a gimmick to sell consoles, and to be honest the only people who know about it are hardcore fans that already have the console. So it's going to flop big time (ALL MY OPINION please dont stab me, thanks)

"Ultimately i don't think there is a service on any console (or PC) that is so good and so vastely different from the competition that it's worth paying for. Multiplayer games on PC are also generally better organised. "

You're kidding, right? I don't want to come off as an ass here, but have you even played on Live? I've had it since the public Beta test on the original Xbox, and it is light years ahead of anything else. Tell me which of the following the PS3 allows you to do:

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Messaging system anywhere you are on the console (dashboard, every game, watching dvds, listening to music, whatever) including voice, text and pictures

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Seamless integration in every game for leaderboards, using a standardised system that lets you compare your position in different modes of every game with the whole world, people in your country, people on your friends list etc

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Global friends list that lets you view and compare achievements and see what anyone is doing from wherever you or they are at the time (dashboard, every game, watching dvds, listening to music, whatever)

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Invites across the whole system - if a person is playing Army of Two, and you're already half way through a match in CoD4, you can send them an invite. Pops up on their screen, if they choose to accept it they just pop their CoD4 disc in and seconds later appear in your game - no hassle, no server lookups, no messing about. Same if they're watching a movie, or whatever.

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Absolutely everything you can do on 360 can be done at any time, just by pressing one button in the middle of the controller. All thanks to Live. You can't honestly say that PSN or even PC's come close to that... and that isnt even the full list, they're just some of the more important/impressive ones.

It does sound like the Social Club is trying to address the lack of achievements on the PS with its own compariosn system. Burnout had a kind of game-specific achievements system, but no method for comparison with other players.

As for the platform choice, the more I use the PS3, the more aware I am of the 360's flaws. That's not to say that the PS3 is perfect - it isn't - but things like mid-game disc-read errors and noisy drives are pretty irritating. It's a feel thing. I really didn't want to like the PS3 for a number of reasons, but right now it's the machine I'm most comfortable with.

I must confess to not being that big an online gamer. I've played Gears a couple of times, occasional Halo 3 and SWOS a fair bit, but I've never ventured online with the PS3. Perhaps things will be different there...

What's more, the first ten people to get 100 percent in-game completion on GTA IV will get a key to the city.

Done within the first week then.

@MrED209

What do you mean? The game? Of course.

Or do you mean this social club? It's just a website - anyone with a Gamertag (Xbox 360) or PSN ID (PS3) can sign up and compare stats with other people who've played GTA IV.

@Yashin

I have to bring this up again, sorry. I really don't understand the 360 noise complaints. Yes, it is louder than the PS3 but it still isn't particularly noticable, once games or even DVD's start going I can't think of a single time I've thought "That thing is loud!" or even remotely bothersome. A friend of mine did have a system that was making quite a racket whenever it was turned on, but that was a problem with the system, and Microsoft had it fixed. If you have a unit that is really making such a bothersome noise, I'd recommend contacting Microsoft.

I feel I should make some kind of video just to prove this, but as soon as you put a game you can not hear any noise from the 360.

Same here. Even on quiet tension-building games like Condemned and Bioshock, there was never a point where I thought the 360 was a distraction. It's just overblown nonsense.

The only time I've had a sound issue with my 360 is Mass Effect, and that's just because the mixing in the game isnt so great. You can barely hear people talking behind you, even with a 5.1 system. I find myself spinning around to face people just so i can hear what they have to say!

Lads, give it up. I have both a PS3, and a brand new premium Xbox 360, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that the 360 is by far much noisier. Theres no question about it. This is fine for me as I can just stick on some headphones or whatever, but it definitely makes the PS3 my console of choice when streaming media and playing DVDs/Blurays. Granted I'm in a pretty small room which amplifies the problem somewhat, but the PS3 is about the same noise level as my PC when running, and the 360 is at least twice as loud.

Anecdotal evidence? Sure. But, its common knowledge, and to deny it is rather silly.

As for Rockstar Social Club, I'm sure it'll be well worth signing up for, for users of either system. I'll be getting GTA on the 360, and I'm definitely signing up, because if you think back to previous GTAs, the amount of stats that appeared on the pause menu was incredible, and I suspect they'll be tracking this.

If you wonder why people would bother with this, you should also ask why people bother with Bungie.net?

I'm not denying the fact the 360 makes more noise, infact I said that it most definitely does. I'm only stating that some people seem to be taking this a little too far. Like I said, it doesn't make so much noise that it's distracting or even noticeable. I have a game on pause right now, and the sound of the 360 is being drowned out by the dimmed music.

I do like that the PS3 is quieter, but honestly, trying to use it as reason to get the PS3 version is more than a little ridiculous, it's being used around here too often, as a very weak attack against the 360.

I have to agree my PS3 is much quieter than my 360 mainly because i never have a reason to turn the fucking thing on!
sort it out sony!

@the_dudefather

Headsets for teh 360 are ten a penny.

I've got 3:

One came with the console
one came with the Live vision camera
One came with my chatpad

There's also a deal where you buy PGR3 and get a headset with it, and I might well get the wireless headset if it gets cheap enough.

@MrXBob

XBL is great value. £50 for a year with a live vision camera, headset, two XBLA games and 200 points from Play.com

If you don't like to pay, then do what I did - set up a silver account and get a ton of 48hr trial codes by googling.

...and the 360 noise issue:

- on teh pre HDMI consoles - horrendous.

- on a new Falcon Elite bought in Dec - no problem - quieter than my PC, even quieter when playing movies due to 1x (HD)DVD playback speed.

There's no benefit at all of getting GTA IV on the PS3 unless you have a crap/launch noisy console, and that matters to you.

I'd be interested to see what the reviews say about load times on the PS3/360, and how well/badly the 360 version performs when played on a Core/Arcade without a HDD.

The PS3's benefit right now is MGS and GT for fans of those games, plus a better manufactured console when compared to the pre-falcon 360s.

Other than that - Movie buffs should grab a PS3 if they've got dough to buy Blu-Rays.

I'd like to take the rare opportunity to thank M$ for allowing me to amass a huge HD movie collection for £35 plus several £6's.

Buzzin'.

Well, I just got a new HDMI-compliant 360 - the 175W power supply one (which apparently means it's got the falcon board), and I still think it's bloody noisy.

Maybe others have been more fortunate!