I notice that people who are looking into buying a console often get misinformed due to the fanboys, so I decided to make this as way for those who are looking for more honest and knowlegable answers. I own both systems and have used the online services on both for a good amount of time. (alot of people who say they have both are lying)
First let me state that neither service is "better", they both offer largely the same stuff. It all boils down to prefrence, so there is no "wrong" answer as to what someone prefers. No one can make this decision for you, the best thing to do is think about what YOUR PREFRENCES ARE and not some fanboys. So I will list advantages that both services have over eachother and you can decide for yourself what is the "better" service for your own prefrences and needs.
Advantages of Xbox Live:
The Party System: Communicating and joining friends is alot smoother and easier on Live than psn. For example on PSN the friend system varies from game to game, so on a game like COD on PSN you can join your friend by simply pressing a button on their name, but for other games on PSN the process can be totally different, and in some cases confusing. On Xbox Live you simply press the middle button and go to your friends and press join and it's the same way across every game.
It's simply more user friendly on Live and makes playing with friends a breeze, it's not that you can't play with your friends on PSN or anything (I play with my friends all the time on PSN) it'sjust that the process on Live is more convienant. You can also have private voice chat with your friends even when they're playing a different game (aka Cross-Game Chat), a feature that PSN is completely lacking at the moment.
More People Have Headsets On Xbox Live: This has alot to do with the fact that the 360 comes with a headset (although it is of pretty low quality)and Sony doesn't package one in with their PS3. While this may sound like a bad thing (such as more idiots and jerks yelling and swearing) but it's actually not, and it's NOT HARD to mute someone.
It makes the online community feelamore alive than PSN, this isn't to say that there arn't any players with headsets on PSN, there are actually ALOT. But it's still no where near the numbers of people with headsets compared to live, but to be fair the offical PS3 bluetooth headset is ALOT better in terms of sound and quality than the headset that comes with the 360 (but it's easy upgrade to a better 360 headset for a low amount of money).
Advantages of Playstation Network:
It's FREE: Yes that's right it's FREE and despite what fanboys tell you it will remain free aswell. With Xbox Live you have to pay a 60$ a year to play your game(s) onlin, although you can also pay 3-months at a time for 30$ and you might even get it cheaper if you shop around on Amazon, but there is no guarantee for that.
It really feels good being able to buy your game and not having any strings attached when you want to access the content that you already paid for in the 1st place. It also feels good to be able to buy another game with the amount of money you save from not having to pay-to-play online, or heck even being able to buy multiple games if you buy greatest hits or used games with that money. Another good thing about this is that you don't suffer from "membership guilt", by wich I mean with Live if you want to play a single player offline game you start to feel guilty because you feel that you need to get your money's worth of paying for online play.
Dedicated Servers For 1st Party Games (or MASSIVE Games): The majority of Sony's first party developers use dedicated servers for their games wich reduces lag by ALOT and can allow for more players online at a time in a match like the resistance games which have 40-60 players at a time in a match (hence the word MASSIVE). Some people don't see the appeal andmay prefersmaller games, but it's truly a marvel being able to look over a battlefield and seeing a large number of people fighting it out in an online match, it feels AWESOME. And wathcing everyone communicate together in large numbers and working towards a single goal feels like your actually part of some great large-scale conflict.
Imagine playing a 40 to 60 player deathmatch with NO ALLIES, it's intense. Or how about a 40-60 player snipers only battle, that's pretty intense too. After the match is over you get this feeling like your just returning home from a war in a sense. You just kind of calm your nerves down and prepare for another intense round. Of course massive numbers isn't what makes a game good neseccarily ( I love Gears Of War and it's small scaled battles) but not being able to experience it feels like missing out. And dedicated servers are a HUGE PLUS.
Other than these differenes they are THE SAME, they both have friends list that tells who's playing what, both have achievemtnts/trophies, both have the same amount of lag/no lag, both have demos and DLC etc... their are a couple of smaller things like PSN has web browser and Live has integrated facebook, but those things don't matter and I doubt anyone cares about them either. Only the things above are what matter.
So think about your prefrences and your wants and pick out what you like more. Ease of joining and communicating with friends with a more alive community, or a freeonline service with massive games. That's really what it boils down to. Their is no "right" or "wrong" decision, what's "right" is what is right for your own needs and prefrences.
Personally I prefer PSN, but Live is good too and better in some areas just like PSN is good too and better in some areas aswell.
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