Sony says it's no longer playing catch up with Xbox Live

Eric Lempel, SCEA's director of PSN operations, has said that the service is no longer playing catch up with Xbox Live.

"I don't think there's a lot of 'catch up' [with XBL] any more. In some cases, I think we've got more, and we've got some other things they don't have," he told Industry Gamers.

"In terms of strengths, of course we're still free, and we're giving you a lot for free. It's not just free online gaming, but we've got PlayStation Home, which is a massive community and application that's totally free to use. I think there's a lot we're doing that in some cases they're not doing, and I don't see a lot of things they're doing that we're not."

Lempel also elaborated that Sony did not want to go the Apple route with various software options, especially for PSP.

"Right now our free catalog consists of demos, wallpapers, themes and videos about games. I don't think we want to degrade the experience you get from a PSP. Because [iPhone] is not a gaming-centric device, I think a user picks it up and says, 'This is kind of dumb, but I don't care because I know this device wasn't intended for games'.... we don't want to see a bunch of little things that don't quite make sense or provide a good experience because I think that takes away from what the device is intended for."

Just for reference purposes only, the amount of people that purchased an iPhone amounted to 3.79 million in quarter one of 2009 alone, which represented 123 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.

Thanks, GI.biz.