Black Ops Split-Screen “Guests Only” On PS3

nofi 75 Comments

We’ve already been over the next Call of Duty’s multiplayer features, but official word this morning is that the game will support split-screen single console online multiplayer, but there’s a caveat on PS3: anyone wanting to play online split-screen multiplayer with a mate will only be able to sign in the second player as a temporary guest, not under their own PSN profile.

“You can connect a second controller and bring a guest online,” says the US Blog, which details lots of other additions to the multiplayer.  This means, for example, if you’re signed into the PSN as “nofi” then the second player must be “nofi(1)” rather than their own PSN profile.

This obviously also means that the progress of the guest will be lost when you sign out, although you can “rank up” and “earn unlocks”.

Confusingly, a lot of the earlier comments in the Blog article are celebrating the ability to sign in as two different PSN accounts, so I’m assuming the text of the article changed after a couple of hours (probably around about comment 114) as the tone of the comments certainly changed to reflect the news above as the facts started to trickle in and required an edit to the new.

Of course, you can have two players playing split-screen online on an Xbox 360, but only if they’re both paying Gold customers.  I guess you get what you pay for, as this is a PSN limitation, not something Activision or Treyarch are responsible for.

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75 Comments

  1. That’s a wee bit of a bugger… Will the ‘guest’ be on the same level as you, or start from the beginning? If it’s the latter, it’s going to be a wee bit irritating!!

    • Before the ninja edit this is what it said in the post on the blog –

      * You can connect a second controller and bring a guest online (i.e. “JD_2020” & “JD_2020(1)”).
      * Guests can rank up, earn unlocks, etc – all guest progress goes away once signed out.
      * You can bring a second, full PSN account online!
      * Both players with full PSN ID’s can rank up while playing together in split-screen, as if on two separate consoles.

      • Wait? So it does support 2 PSN accounts

      • No. They saw their mistake then edited the blog post.

  2. I suppose ps3 just doesn’t support 2 psn logins at the same time. (yet)

    • Doesn’t LittleBigPlanet let you have 4 all logged on at once on the same console?

      • That’s not split-screen is it?

      • Not AFAICR, it shows up as DJ-Katy[1], DJ-Katy[2] etc. unless I’m mistaken.

      • Yeah, LittleBigPlanet received a patch at some point which allowed users from the console to sign in – when they launched it in a fanfare it was a new dawn for the much requested feature – but as we can see it must be implemented in such a way that 3rd party devs need to spend too much time and or effort to bother

      • Devs can’t be bothered ….sounds bout right CC! Same old story for the ps3 when a multi plat game comes to town.

      • RESISTANCE 2 CAN DO IT.

      • What kivi95 said, but not so shouty.

    • It’s worked its way into a few games, but it seems to be far from standard.

      Sony are probably leaving it up to the devs to support it as opposed to making things mandatory and providing the necessary libraries

      • kind of like every other feature they added after launch, which is why something like only one out of every hundred games supports custom soundtracks.

      • Exactly… unless they do something, nothing will change – It’s easy to point the finger at 3rd parties, but its Sony’s eco-system to support not the other way around, and unless do things which make it easy for devs, or even provide them with the necessary libraries/api’s or whatever like Microsoft do, then the platform is always going to get a raw deal.

    • Resistance 2 handles 2 player split screen online, and enables you to rank up.
      With LBP it’s only to play under your own PSN, as you don’t progress through any online rankings

    • On resistance 2 you could sign in with 2 accounts, so it can be done!

      • Sorry, I was chatting as I replied and several people beat me to the point!

    • Resistance 2 can do it, u can have 2 people on the same screen with different PSN accounts and rank up, however when 1 person pauses it pauses for the other.

  3. So 2 player split screen will be used for head shot boosting then :-/

    Will be easier to find your mates now …. dumb idea!!

    • and glitching and getting out of maps. and after all that, only 1 of the 2 players will be able to get banned because the second wont even be logged into a psn account.

    • This is where Warhawk worked – you couldn’t play ranked games split screen. You could still have fun playing with your mate on the same sofa, but your XP wouldn’t go up.
      Because of boosting, I think that setup was more than fair.

      On the other hand, it’ll mean that the boosting fools will just keep taking out their second player and leave us the frick alone!

  4. So let’s see how quick Sony are at combatting this little problem, when it comes to firware patches for hacks and inserting virtually useless functions they are great, but they generally seem to lack in areas where fans actually want something… everyone is still waiting for x game chat are they not? Hopefully the former will not take as long to remedy as the latter, eh Sony?

    • They won’t fix this. It’s a limitation of their network/server architecture.

      • I agree. I’d take split screen over online multiplayer any day.

    • I wish people would stop talking about this x game chat business, seriously i thought that had gone away. I’m really not bothered that i can’t have 2 profiles running at the same time as i never game with anyone at my place anyway, though i can see that kids probably do. But then this game’s an 18, so kids shouldn’t be playing it, right?

      • Well as long as you’re alright, everyone must be?

      • Huh?

      • Split-screen is way more fun than online. You remember playing against your friends in person, not so much online. More competitive and fun.

      • The x game chat won’t go away because it’s a basic ANC useful feature that the competition had at launch. It’s fine that you don’t want it but it’s clear that a lot of people do. And that talk about only kids using it is silly. I’m almost 30 and I use it on my 360 a lot. It’s so much easier than the god awful chat room shit Sony gave us a while back. As far as split screen logins, this is one of the main reasons that I’m getting this on 360. A buddy of mine comes over most weekend and we hand out, drink beer and mess with video games. It’s the same reason we got Guardian of Light of 360 as well.

        So don’t knock the features, or lack there of, because you have no interest in them. These are the kind of things that I’d hoped to get from PS+. actuall features, not just paying for discounts.

  5. can’t complain, I’m still just happy its in there at all as most games leave it out altogether.

    • Agreed
      Im just glad split screen online is included in Black Op’s, it would be ideal to be able to use 2 sign on’s but at least its there.
      Although “dpb135” raises a good point about boosting.

    • Good point, a lot of games just don’t bother with the split screen multiplayer at all

  6. Didn’t Resistance 2 support 2 logins at once for online?

    • Yep, Resistance 2 solved this issue ages ago so it is Treyarch’s fault for not including it rather than a PSN limitation.

      • yup, PSN issue my bum. Unless they say that because the PS3 needs the logins on their own PS3 user, and the 360 handles ant login, without extra system accounts

      • No only 1 person is actually signed in to PSN, but I think the other persons stats are tracked on the Resistance servers. So, yes Treyarch could have done a better job, but they can’t get both persons signed in to PSN no matter how much they try.

      • No both definitely sign on I’ve done it loads of times.

      • Pretty sure that both players could sign into their own account, level up and it would save it.

      • Only the person signed in to PSN gets trophies, right?
        The second (or third and fourth in LBP) player never gets any trophies.

  7. “I guess you get what you pay for, as this is a PSN limitation, not something Activision or Treyarch are responsible for.”

    And yet somehow this is possible in LBP local multiplayer. So I guess it’s down to Activision/Treyarch, they’re just too lazy to implement the tech properly.

    Not that I care really though, gonna stick to Battlefied, leaving CoD to swearing teenagers with ADHD.

  8. The blog article/post/whatever was changed after some time. I read it right after it was published (thank you, RSS) and it mentioned both a guest joining you for split-screen MP and also signing in with a second account so both players could rank up, unlock stuff and progress would be saved.

    Just changing the text of the blog without any reasons why is just bad. Okay, so someone made a mistake in the first publish, at least they should admit to it.

  9. Not a problem at all for me. I play split screen for fun, not for some ranking up system. The game is offering a lot of features with co-op, online split screen, 3D, Zombies, AI bots so I really dont know why people would complain about such a trivial thing.

    • And I don’t understand why you’re complaining about people complaining about something they want to complain about. You don’t care about multiple account logins, cool. Some people do. Unfortunaley complaining on Internet forums and blogs seems to be the only way to get people to take notice and do something about it.

      • I wasnt complaining, I just said I dont know why people are complaining. :)

  10. It’s not a PSN limitation but was introduced with one of the firmware updates in the past year. Borderlands’ first patch updated thegame to allow two local PSN users to sign in simultaneously on splitscreen, originally it was Guest only. So I guess it’s down to Treyarch deciding not to commit resources to coding this PS3 optional feature, as opposed to it being built-in for the 360.
    To be honest, this is the worst aspect of the PS3, Sony have made almost everything optional an up to the developers, rather than mandating what they should do.
    I guess it’s the difference between developing a console around an existing online service, to making it up as you go along after launch.

    • Couldn’t agree more, everytime Sony tweak stuff it seems to be an optional feature unless it’s combating piracy. I think they’ll have learnt a lot when the PS4 comes out.

      • No they won’t, this is Sony after all!

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