The idea that the PlayStation 3 “only does everything” is pretty accurate, minus high quality voice chat available in all titles. The lack of cross-game voice chat is typically the biggest complaint among PS3 owners, followed closely by the less than stellar performance of some game’s online voice chat. It should come as no surprise that going into 2010, producers, game peripheral developers, and gamers in general will look for enhanced voice chat in the PS3.
We recently spoke with Astro Gaming co-founders, Brett Lovelady and Jordan Reiss about the PS3’s voice chat potential. If you are at all interested in competitive gaming, you are probably familiar with Astro Gaming as the official licensed headset of Major League Gaming. The company makes arguably the best headsets for competitive LAN style gaming competitions, and its MixAmp is one of the best options to allow gamers to create a private voice LAN independent of any other gaming hardware or software. Even if you aren’t into competitive gaming, the company’s high quality Dolby Digital surround sound headsets are easily our current favorite option for PS3 voice chat.
With big multiplayer games launching in 2010, like MAG, it will become increasingly important for gamers to easily chat with one another. Even current hits like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 could use stronger voice chat options.
When asked about the future of voice chat on the PS3, Lovelady said, “We absolutely see the potential. The PlayStation Network has some great features and being able to play online multiplayer games for no additional cost makes it an attractive solution to many gamers. The PS3 is a great platform with an ever-increasing stable of chat games. If you look at really innovative titles like MAG, for instance, supporting 256 player online battles, it seems like voice chat is going to be central if not critical to the experience of playing this title.”
Reiss says Astro believes the PS3 installed base will continue to grow rapidly, especially as more games start to utilize more advanced voice chat features. “We believe social, networked gaming is the future of the industry in general,” Reiss said.
While it’s uncertain at this time when we’ll see cross-game voice chat, one thing is certain – improved voice chat will make a lot of gamers very, very happy. We know a lot of people use their computers to run software like Skype to supplement the lack of voice chat functionality on the PS3, let us hope that 2010 brings about better options for Sony’s console.
We will have more on our interview with Astro Gaming soon.