The PS3′s Gamertag Sighted
During a playable PS3 demo of Unreal Tournament III at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival Games Digest caught sight of something unusual that Marc Rein of Epic said they weren’t supposed to see. It was the mention of “Gamercard” related to the player in the menu system. Is it the PS3′s answer to the Xbox Live Gamertag, or just something specific to Unreal Tournament III?
I’ve spent a lot of time in Rainbow Six Vegas and its integration with the PS3 friends list shows me that games can build very successfully on the relatively skeletal friends list available in the XMB. The Gamercard could be something Epic is building themselves, but without a franchise of games to use it across, at least no announced franchise of games, why would they want this? I remember setting up my EA Games Burnout 3 online profile on the PS2 thinking I’d use it again and again, but never did.
If it is going to be specific to the PS3 as a whole, we have two ways it could come in. First is in the firmware, and 2.0 is just around the corner. There’s lots of speculation about what will make it into 2.0 and what won’t and it’s really anybody’s guess as to what we’ll see. It could be an extra item on the friends list attached to a person.
The other way it could come in would be via PlayStation Home, which is slated to launch in October, which looks right now to be before UT3 comes out. We know from E3 that Sony wants to make Home the launching pad for all sorts of games. If Epic is integrating Home features into UT3, then that would mean the unthinkable may be coming to pass.
Sony may actually be actively engaged with developers to encourage the success of the PS3.
Via EvilAvatar who linked to GamesDigest. See also Joystiq.
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Joe (Aeropause)
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Kyle
