Krunal's blog

Trophies for the Playstation 3 has been incredibly successful, and has helped them to a small extent gain some ground on Microsoft's XBOX360. However, I don't believe that games a lone will help Sony become the market leader like they did with the PS2.

They unlike Microsoft, have an advantage in the market which they've not sapped into fully, and that advantage is obviously the Playstation Portable. So how exactly can Sony use the Playstation Portable to help it out? Simple, at the moment trophies/achievements are restricted STRICTLY to the two next-gen consoles: PS3 and XBOX360 respectively.

So what better a move would it be for Sony to take the next step, and make it so that PSP games also have Trophies? That's right, I'm suggesting getting Trophies for PSP games.

Not just that, but make people create accounts like with the PS3 (not sure if it can be done already or not... still a few more months till I get my PSP), and link it to a PSN Account. Then the player can earn trophies in games by doing whatever task is necessary, and then they can either go online to resync it with the network, or connect the PSP to the PS3 and have it resync with the PS3 (which if connected online, will resync with the network).

That's not all... best of all I think that the trophies you gain should be attached to the same account. So if I have say, Resistance 2 trophies on my PS3, and Resistance: Retribution Trophies on my PSP, when sync'd with the server, I should be able to attach them to my Playstation Network account.

At the moment Microsoft doesn't have a hand-held system, and Nintendo wont be doing anything like this, so why not make the first move and make trophies go over two platforms. I'm sure Microsoft will do it eventually (and far sooner than Sony) with the next XBOX, so why don't Sony beat them to the punch and make their hand-held system allow trophies?

There are absolutely no problems with this that I can think off besides the high piracy issue, in which case they can maybe add some form of check to make sure that you only get the trophies as long as you've actually got the game and aren't running it off the memory card (unless it's a game downloaded from the PSN Store).

Then all the games that are multi-platform on the PSN store (I mean PS3/PSP compatible), you can essentially play as the game for trophies at home, then when going out, resync the PSP, transfer the save and carry on getting the trophies when your out.

So guys and girls, what do you think?
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Hey All,

Being on holiday has meant that I'm more able to make use of my £400 investment, i.e. the Playstation 3, and with it I've learnt one thing, and that is that even though there exists, a feature on the Playstation 3 known as Text Chat, people still insist on sending Messages with the message in the title, and the actual message box being blank.

The reason for this is simple, when someone sends a message, the person that is receiving it will be notified that he's just got a message, with the subject of the message appearing at the top right hand corner. This means that they have 'essentially' instantly read the message. A great way to do it... but there are problems, and the biggest being the word limit for the subject, which is far too small to be able to say anything major... and if you still want to say something major, you'll have to send multiple messages, and believe me, a lot of people do just that.

This is where I believe that Text Chat, a feature which was introduced in the 2.70 update is quite underused. And I'm here to try and get more people to use that, rather than sending messages in the subject line, with 'blank' messages.

How will I do that? Well, lets see... firstly how to set up a Text Chat:

1. Press Triangle on Friends Name
2. Press to Start New Chat
3. Select Text Chat
4. Enter Name of 'Chat Room' (Optional)

Now that you're set up, your friend will be notified that you've invited them for a Text Chat. They then just go to Chats in the main menu (above Messages) and join in on the chat.

However, lets say they don't immediately go to the chat to view the actual chat... what you don't know is that any message that you type into the Chat, will be displayed to the person receiving it, in the same way, as if you were to send them a message, with the message being in the subject box. I.e. they'd get a pop-up telling them that you've sent them a message and what the message is. And the best thing is that the Character Limit is slightly higher (though not by much).

Now say you want to organise something between yourself and a friend, now all you need to do is just start the chat, go into the chat, and then press the PS button to get back to your game as normal. Now any message he types will appear on your screen and vice versa, and if you want to reply, you need only press the PS button and start typing. Much faster than finding the friend on your friends list, pressing triangle and then selecting Start New Message, followed by editing the Subject....

So as you can see, Text Chats have far more uses than ordinary Message Sending, so start using the Text Chat and enjoy the benefits that it brings. Oh and before I go, I think I should also say that, unlike messages, you can have multiple participants in a Text Chat, making it easier as a group or clan to talk to each other whilst playing a game, till Audio Chat whilst in game is released.

Hope this little tutorial/awakening has been helpful, be sure to leave feedback below.
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