WE WANT CROSS GAME VOICE CHAT!

For years now, Sony haters and fanbois (pronounced like “Quebecois”) alike have raised their voices in a wave of guttural cries at the altars of Sony Entertainment and lamented their inability to play Killzone 2 and still be able to hear a 10 year old laugh while they teabagging noobz over in Team Fortress 2. 

It’s the one thing that everyone wants on a PS3, and it’s the one thing we keep not getting.  360 has had day one (I think?) cross-game voice chat: why can’t the PS3 get off its ass and do the same?

Well, it only took about three straight years of screaming your lungs out to be heard, and PS3 is going to have cross game voice chat come out with the next firmware patch, version 3.10!

Maybe.

Okay, thanks to a developer over at Naughty Dog for Uncharted 2 going by the handle ReklissAbandon, he got on the Playstation forums to talk about his game and accidentally let slip that 3.10 will have voice chat.  The post was quickly retracted (not sure by whom), but it was quoted again in a later posting, and then that post had babies with another post and so on, and now it’s here, in front of you. 

Of course, what does Sony do in the face of evidence pointing to something that they are working on?  Deny, deny, deny.  Sale of PSN points cards?  Deny.  Sony PS3 price drop?  Deny.  Sony PS3 Slim?  Deny, despite leaked pictures. 

And this will not have been the first time that someone has proverbially cried “wolf” when it comes to cross game voice chat.  We’ve been hearing this since people first realized that it didn’t come standard like it did on the 360.  Wishful thinking on people’s parts, rumormill working over time. 

I personally think that it might finally be time.  Over the last few months, the PS3 has come out swinging at the 360 harder than Rocky Balboa coming after Ivan Drago in the last five minutes of “Rocky IV”.  Price cut, PS3 slim, Uncharted 2, InFamous, Demon’s Souls (and yes, I think it’s a system seller) console exclusives, people suddenly waking up and realizing that Microsoft is charging them $100 for a wireless adapter and $50 a year for Xbox Live while it’s all free on the PS3?  And down goes Drago!

Sony is literally firing every weapon in its arsenal gearing up for the holiday season (okay, let’s ignore that whole “PSP Go” mess), so why not throw this on top of the whole kit and caboodle and really send it on home? 

Maybe it’s just me hoping it’s true.  Organizing a gamer night or Summer games event on the 360 was a breeze, while doing that same game on a PS3 was a back alley abortion, every time.  Cross game voice chat?  All those problems go away…well, most of them.  That crap with Battlefield 1943 needing 16 people to play before you could start a multiplayer match is ridiculous and someone needs to be fired.

Well, as a gamer, as usual, I take everything with a grain of salt.  A healthy dose of “skeptical optimism” goes a long way in this business; if it were a default setting on my character, that’s about where I would be at most of the time. 

So just a little more screaming and yelling, people, I think we’ve just about got it nicked.

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