from
https://www.gamesindustry.biz :
This week, some of our deepest fears about Sony's online service were confirmed when Insomniac's Ted Price revealed in an interview that one of the biggest launch titles for the console, Resistance: Fall of Man, is set to use its own buddy list, clan registry, in-game messaging and chat services, and so on. While the game sounds like it has a very extensive and comprehensive range of online gaming options, and it runs on Sony's international network of servers to guarantee a high standard of network performance for online play, the simple fact is that the last hurdle Sony needed to jump has been missed, at least for the launch titles. The central buddy list doesn't integrate into the game; you'll need to add all your friends again to play against them in Resistance.
The ball, in other words, has not so much been dropped; it has been hurled at the ground with alarming force. Sony has done the hard work - it has built a console operating system which can be updated over the network, which is always-on and network aware, which can handle multiple user profiles and friend lists, messaging and chat, and so on. It has built an infrastructure which can support multiplayer games running on remote servers with players all over the world taking part. Somehow, however, it has failed to take the final step - actually providing the single sign-in, single-ID, single profile service which lies at the core of a console multiplayer offering.