Bizarre Creations’ upcoming racer Blur will allow you to compete with your friends regardless of whether you have an Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Live Silver, or PlayStation Network account … sort of.
One of the downfalls to the increased number of multiplatform titles with online multiplayer is that the playerbase inevitably becomes fragmented. Xbox 360 owners can’t play against PS3 owners, Xbox Live Silver members can’t play against anyone at all, and so on. However, Blur developer Bizarre Creations and publisher Activision think they have a solution figured out.
Speaking with MTV Multiplayer, the game’s Lead Designer Gareth Wilson mentioned that while the different networks wouldn’t allow direct play with people on different platforms, his team had included a feature that would let friends challenge their friends – over microblogging site Twitter.
“A lot of us have kids and family and stuff, but we’re finding that as we’re getting older we’re just not able to get everyone together to play at the same time,” said Wilson. In response to this, he said that the team chose to develop a system that would let people compete without having to be playing at the same time – or even on the same console.
“In the single player mode when you finish a race, it records all of your stats and information,” he explained. “You can choose what you want to put into your challenge and send it to your buddy. He receives that as an Xbox Dashboard message, so he could be playing another game, he could be watching TV on Netflix.” Wilson emphasized, though, that this would not be just a “horrible, spammy thing” – it was something that the player chose to send.
“The main reason for having it is so that people on different formats can compete with each other.”
While people will be able to play head-to-head normally on Xbox Live Gold or PlayStation Network, this sounds like a cool little feature that other multiplatform games might want to look into including.
