Access Granted ?

So this week saw the release of firmware 2.30 for the PS3

Most of us were excited about the redesign of the Playstation Store, with good reason as it now loads significantly faster than before along with being much more user friendly in the navigation stakes.

The other little tit-bit that had people counting down was the news that with the store update they'd be opening up the Metal Gear Online beta to Europe officially (instead of having to sign up for a Japanese account and going through a very odd/confusing process all in Japanese)

This brings me to the topic of this post ... Access ....

A lot of people have been very vocal about the fact that PSN is free for users and allows them to play with others online in the same way that Xbox Live does. A lot of other people have been very vocal about the quality of service offered by Xbox Live and it's "user-friendliness" ..... I think that the later of these two sets are going to be very happy with what's happened.

In order to play Metal Gear Online you're going to need to do the following ...

1) Have a playstation network ID (pretty much a given I know but there's a point here)
2) Sign up for a Konami ID on a separate website
3) After signing up for a Konami ID, you then need to create a Game ID

It's also worth noting that you need to create a password for both the Konami and Game ID's. The Konami one needs can be alpha-numeric but the Game one can only be numeric.

So, realistically, you need 3 ID's and passwords to get MGO running ... and before anyone suggests it the Konami ID and Game ID cannot be the same ....

On Xbox Live everything is tied to your gamertag .. that's it .... that is your online "presence" for that console.
And that's it ... no going to website "X" and signing up for account "Y" ....
Admittedly with Phantasy Star Universe you have to pay a monthly fee for a "hunters licence" but you don't need to sign up for another account, you can do it all using your gamertag and from the Marketplace blade of the 360 itself.

This in my opinion is why the Live service is worth the money .. after all it's £40 for a 12 month subscription (which works out at roughly £3.35 a month) so it's not exactly breaking the bank.

I've got my account ready and the client for Metal Gear Online downloaded so once it goes live on April 21st we'll see how it performs ....