PS3 will never get cross-game chat

Well everyone, it looks like those near-monthly PS3 firmware updates are going to be a bit bleaker. I mean, they’re already pretty disappoint since they usually don’t add any new, useful features, but the next few will be especially painful. That’s because we now know that the PS3 is never going to get a cross-game chat feature. You can go ahead and try and pretend you didn’t just read that, but Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida just broke the terrible news to Eurogamer, and I’m pretty sure he would know exactly what the PS3 is and isn’t capable of handling.

At least you can take solace in knowing that the PS3′s lack of cross-game chat isn’t due to Sony being lazy or having developers who weren’t trying. It’s all a RAM issue. The issue being, the PS3 doesn’t have enough of it to support a game and cross-game chat. Sony didn’t want to take RAM away from the game, probably because that might risk performance issues.

Cross-game chat is still in Sony’s future plans though, just for another system. The PS Vita is going to have enough RAM for the feature. So a Vita owner will be able to play one game, but enjoy voice chats with a friend who is playing a different title. Which is pretty neat.

If you enjoy the technical details, it seems like cross-game chat is determined by system RAM. The PS3 has 256mb while the Vita will have 128mb. If it makes you feel any better, the PS3 has far more video compared to the handheld, as the Vita has 129mb video RAM and the console 256mb.

I’m curious to see what kind of comments this will spawn on the PlayStation Blog’s PS3 firmware update notices. Since people can’t beg for cross-game chat anymore, I wonder what feature they’ll be asking instead.

Read [Eurogamer] Via [Gematsu]