Sony Online announces Xbox Live-style centralized hub

[stlouisdl]

Monday 14 May 2007
Sony Online, publisher of massively multiplayer online time-sinks such as EverQuest series, Star Wars Galaxies, and the recently unleashed Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has announced a new service designed to help you keep track of all those online worlds many of us find so much more engrossing than the real thing.
Dubbed Station Launcher, the planned offering boasts features similar to those of publisher Valve's Steam content delivery system or Microsoft's ridiculously popular Xbox Live network. In other words, it will enable you to download games and goodies more efficiently. No word on any achievements scoring system or trophy rooms, but it does add in several other features, including some cribbed from Instant Messenger and iTunes.
Station Launcher will keep tabs on all your Sony Online products, and automatically ensure you're locked and loaded with any patches and (should you wish it) expansion packs that might strike your fancy. It will be able to import your friends lists from all SOE products, so you can keep track of your buddy's progress in PlanetSide (yep - it still exists) even as you explore the newly-announcedRise of Kunark expansion in EverQuest II. It can also port external friends lists from instant messenger clients like ICQ and AIM. Sony Online hopes to cooperate with other MMO publishers (Blizzard and NCSoft come to mind) to incorporate their products into the system as well.
Of course, this is a Sony-owned company, so Station Launcher looks to offer downloads of Sony's music and film libraries, to help occupy those moments when you aren't grinding through some fantasy wasteland in heavy armor.
With such a wide range of functions, Station Launcher seems well poised to earn itself a large collection of direct competitors, and possibly be a jack of all trades, master of none, as the saying goes. However, the PC world is in need of a good, centralized provider of all things digital, and Station Launcher seems as likely as ever to provide that solution when it arrives, hopefully later this year.

[TGO]

Ain't we head of Station Launcher before?

[Beodude123]

It's news to me...

Sounds like it could be pretty sweet. Will it just be PC based, or will they stick it on the PS3 as well? It seems like Home should do a lot of the stuff listed there.

[harrisk954]

What is the source of this article? Is this going to be part of Home? Or a completely separate system? If separate, doesn't that split the potential users of both online systems (especially if there are trophies and acheivements involved)?

[Viamp]

What is the source of this article?

It is on Games Radar so it's legit.

[Yixian]

Oh. my. god. This place gets more disorganised by the day. This is clearly only PC relevant, so why in the name of yahweh would you post it in "PS3 Discussion"?

[k0llateral]

Agreed with Yixian.

This WILL only apply to PC's, though the same ideas will probably be carried across to the PS3.