In a recent interview, president of Sony Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida has stated that cross-game chat will never make its way to the PlayStation 3. According to Yoshida the console’s RAM is consumed almost entirely by running software, without a sufficient remainder to power cross-game sessions, an online function PS3 owners have been asking for since the emergence of Xbox Live Party.
Once a game gets RAM we never give it back, it’s not possible to retrofit something like that after the fact…Â The game has to use its own memory to do [in-game voice chat]. There’s always voice chat in the game. But it’s a part of a game feature. It’s not a part of an OS feature. That’s the reason in terms of the ability to have voice chat across different games.
PlayStation Vita on the other hand will support cross-game chat, carrying a hefty RAM of 516MB, doubling that of its home console counterpart.
Source: Eurogamer
Guyers94
Lots of people don’t seem bothered by this but I have to say I’m very disappointed. People seem to forget it’s not just for when you’re playing a single player game and feel like a chat. I’d love to use it for FIFA in particular, if you’re waiting for someone to finish a game it’s a pain for them to have to pause their online game to send you a message. If you could just be in a party chat and then talk to eachother all the way through to the invites it would be a lot easier.
All in all it’s a great feature with a lot of potential uses and I’m sad we won’t be getting it on PS3.
DeathByNumbers
Hold on, I’m confused, didn’t they say this ages ago before you were able to use the ps button to access the XMB? They had to free up some RAM to make that possible? So they DID give some back! Never say never.
Erroneus
They have optimized the OS multiple times, so it uses less RAM freeing up more for games and new features. One of them was ingame XMB. Some of the freed up RAM could have been used for cross-game chat, but it looks like they decided it would be better if games got the extra RAM, which I personally think was a good move.
The problem is properly, they are having a hard time optimizing even further now, you hit a limit for how much you can tweak and optimize it.
And with PS4 a couple of years away, I don’t see them working on a complete rewrite.
TSBonyman
I’ve never seen the need for it but it’s nice that they’ve put it to rest early in the PS3’s lifecycle.. :/
Barumaru
I also have never seen the need for this – its a way overrated feature
Belazor
Nobody else reacts to the fact that 516 MB makes no sense? What is that, a 512mb stick and a 4mb stick? :P
wick15
Thought it would be a RAM limitation. To be honest, this doesn’t even bother me that much. I have an Xbox and I rarely ever use the party system on that. If I do want to chat I just use my PC. What annoys me about this is Sony took so long to announce something they have most likely known all along.
I do wonder though. If they did actually decide to make the in-game XMB a bit more streamline by cutting out all the crap you can’t use, would that free up some RAM?
GTRsannin
Maybe they were trying to make it work and that is why it took them this long
wick15
Possibly. Still it has taken them a very long time.
moshi
That’s that dead and buried finally.
aerobes
That’s what I thought. Then I remembered the PS4 rumours.
GTRsannin
Good maybe now people will shut up about this
Foxhound_Solid
Day one simples.
grogy86
It’s not a feature I would ever use so I don’t mind