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Wireless multiplayer gaming sounds great, but when you discover that you all need to be in close proximity to one another you soon realise that those 12 player sessions you dream of are unlikely to happen. This has been the case with almost all PSP launch titles, with only a handful supporting online play. This looks set to change after an announcement that GameSpy tools will now be available to PSP developers.
Already used in many PlayStation 2 and PC titles, GameSpy will allow developers to add online gaming features to their games, without the need to develop proprietary software. Using GameSpy, PSP gamers will be able to play online games via wireless hotspots and home wireless access points.
GameSpy can bring features to online PSP gaming that we take for granted on the PC, such as player tracking, leader boards ranking a player’s achievements in the game, and team based competitions and tournaments. GameSpy promises that all this will be as easy to implement on PSP titles as with PC games.
“Now we are able to help add functions such as persistence and team play to the online game titles for “PSP”. Plus, developers are familiar with our technology already, having used it to create more than 300 PC and “PlayStation2 games, so they should be able to adapt quickly to this new tool,” said Mark Stieglitz, Vice President and General Manager of IGN Entertainment’s Publisher Services.
“Over time, GameSpy’s new infrastructure may change the way portable games are played. Developers can create games that span platforms; for example, a player can use a “PlayStation2” while in the dorm and a portable system like a “PSP” at the library, with both systems contributing to the same game and the player’s results,” added Stieglitz.
We are all for online enabled PSP gaming so can’t wait until developers begin to use GameSpy technology.
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