Why PS3 ‘cloud game saving’ is a ‘game changer’

Gamer.Blorge writes, "In addition, developers who may create a PC and PS3 version of the game (like Dead Space or Assassin’s Creed), can also allow gamers to switch platforms for those traveling with a laptop. Centralizing PC and PS3 game saves will also aid in cross platform gaming like in Portal 2. This allows all PC and PS3 gamer stats to be filtered for progress or matchmaking."

[Speed-Racer]

What if the cloud goes down? Or data gets corrupted online due to cloud failure?

[DualConsoleOwner]

what are you trying to say??

it is like 1000 times more likely that you are going to lose data by having it stored on your hdd.

[saladthieves]

Not to mention the fact that it is even less likely for both your game saves (on the server) and the PS3 HDD get corrupted at the same time. Thing this this feature makes sure that there will always be a game save (by your choice) either on the PS3 or off in the cloud...this is a good thing!

[I_find_it_funny]

too bad it can't be mandatory because of required internet, this could make chating with altered game saves harder

[ActionBastard]

Redundancy exists for a reason.

[morganfell]

I am so looking forward to this feature. I have multiple PS3s in my house and depending upon the room, I have to manually transfer game saves between systems. This feature averts that necessity.

Now consider the possibility that a game on the PS3 and NGP that are identical. This service would allow sharing of the same game save. It would be an ingenious move by Sony.

[Speed-Racer]

Seems everyone here is only talking in theory and have never seen clouds work in real life... Redundancy my foot... stuff still goes bad

[rockleex]

I see clouds ALL THE TIME.

And they ARE pretty redundant.

Oh wait, you guys are talking about Cloud storage.

[Nitrowolf2]

Hopefully Sony Makes Backups of all the data for "just in case" Situations like that.

[Godmars290]

If such were to happen, what would be the chances of it happening when both it and your PS3 fail?

The correct answer is, "Not worth thinking about."

[kneon]

If the PS3 cloud service ever does go down then it will surely happen to someone. And it will all get blown out of proportion claiming "millions affected" or some other such stupid comment.

[AssassinHD]

Better yet, what would be the chance of your PS3, the cloud, and the cloud backup all going down at the same time?

You know the cloud will have a backup. On my network I backup in triplicate.

[saladthieves]

I think you don't understand what cloud is. You are assuming cloud is just one giant server where everything is stored. There are (will be) more than one servers to handle this, in case you upload your saves and the server is busy, the other one will then do the work. The same thing happens with the storage as well...chances that all servers containing the save data crash at the same time are really low. Besides there are backups made all the time.

[WildArmed]

Actually, I don't know how many of you work on servers, but I was doing an internship when I was a CS major for setting these up.
They usually have secondary to tertiary backups of such things.
And they are usually done bi-weekly (depending on what type of data it is).

I think it'd be a great movie 4 Sony.
Allocate ~500mbs for each account (heck, they could start this as a PS+ only service).
You can choose which games to sync, kind of like how Steam does it (<3 Steam)

Edit:
@below
yeah, I just finished reading the article ^^
Hopefully it'll hit sooner than later.

[saladthieves]

It is going to be a PS+ only serice :)

[Pandamobile]

God damn you Sony.

[r1sh12]

Its a good idea, but I think more people will use it as a back up rather than the primary save location.
Imagine if some saves are pretty big and the internet connection is quite bad...

[kneon]

I don't think I've seen a game save over 1mb, are there any? Usually they seem to be in the 250-500kb range. Unless you're on dial-up that shouldn't be a problem.

[Mister_G]

Cloud failure! Lol! :D

[imaballa]

Thats what redundant failover and load-balancers are for. These servers will probably take regular backups as well. All standard practice stuff.

[miyamoto]

another mind blowing news after the other from Sony now a day's.
PS3 games on NGP, OLED, QuadCore ARM Processor, Android OS, Wi-Fi+3G, Dual Analog Sticks, .... Sony's on a roll! Good news for gaming over all

[Ju]

I think this is more related to NGP than people think. If the cloud is accessible from the PSP2, and as some envision, you can basically take your game with you and continue playing on the go - and also save this back and pick off on the PS3 when you are back home. I hope they come up with a very good pricing model for a "digital copy" of PS3 games...

[jack_burt0n]

for sure, great feature on steam and will be great on psn.

ps3 + gaming laptop = win

[jashmister]

Its a great feature it also stops modifying save games levels stats and stuff like that in games you can.
but its bad when old games try and incorporate it and do so badly that everyone looses their data and have to restart. I'm looking at you Steam Plants vs Zombies

[swice]

This is a really awesome idea. Especially being able to go from console to handheld

[P_Bomb]

Cloud storage (assuming you can transfer/access the save between multiple consoles) is very necessary in an era where the odd dev' gets stupid and decides to lock a save file to your system. Looking at you KZ2, AC2, Demon's Souls, Dante's Inferno, Transformers WFC, Sly Collection, Bad Company 2, Fat Princess, Lara Croft & the Guardian of Light, Dead Nation etc. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Lost a lot of garbage to YLOD, plus not being able to take my progress to my friend's house or back it up is dumb after doing it with memory cards for 15 years.

[Jdoki]

I agree. This service has to be 'per PSN account', not 'per PS3' as it is now for most saves.

I love the idea of logging in my PSN account on a friends PS3 and having access to my saves.

I've lost my saves a number of times as I have had two PS3's YLOD (both 60GB with BC). I do take back-ups, but getting in the habit of doing it regularly is a pain (and for copy protected saves it's pointless really)

[TBM]

now that you mentioned this my PS3 died on me in december just after i did a backup to an external harddrive, and now im just realizing that my KZ2, Demon's Souls, Lara Croft, and dante's inferno saves are gone.

damnit man the lose of DS, and LC is upsetting since i didnt finish those and have to start all over. cloud game saving would be great and developers need to stop with the protected saves.

[Achemki]

Copy protected saves are pointless since they're not even universal. Assassin's Creed 2 was protected but Assassin's Creed Brotherhood wasn't.

Resistance 2 and RE5 used to be but fans complained and the developers to their credit un-blocked them with a patch. More developers need to follow suit as it only pisses off their loyal customers to copy protect their saves.

Hopefully cloud storage addresses this issue and is tied to the PSN ID, not the console. Consoles break.

[ugo]

yet another reason to have a psn+

[Corrwin]

Yeah, I can't wait to start uploading my multi-megabye save data over the net.

Mafia II had 50mb save files, with an Autosave every checkpoint. If I have achoice between savegame security and faster loading saves, I'll take the latter.