PlayStation Multiplayer Needs Help

The PlayStation 3 has seen a huge rise since it's troubled start back in 2006. Now, the PlayStation 3 is on par with the other major consoles and even excels in some areas like graphics and original games.

However, one area the PS3 still struggles with is multi-player accessibility.

I was playing my PS3 and wanted to play "Tomb Raider" with a friend. I thought it would be easy to just get into a lobby and search for a game: Wrong.

For Tomb Raider, there was no option to create a party with friends. The only place to make one was to create a private game where you can't play other people, only friends. It shouldn't be this difficult to play a simple online match with a friend.
                                
It's possible to invite a friend to a game if there is room, but the process of inviting a friend takes too long, and when you finally send the invite the spot is taken. It's a ridiculous process and really takes away from the fun.

This isn't the case for all PS3 games thankfully. "The Last of Us" makes it a simpler process to create a party before venturing out into the online realm. The same is for many of the sports game as well.

For consoles, the best online experience comes from the Xbox 360. It's easy to join a party outside of a game and chat with friends. It's easy to join a friend in a match, so easy it only takes one button. For the PS3, it's a like a checklist: You have to go to the home page, find the friend, create a message and then the invite is sent.

If this problem of making a party in the game to find matches were the only problem, then it's really not that big of a problem, more of an annoyance. But the real problem is how hard it is to communicate with someone outside of a game.

The Xbox 360 really spoiled me on interacting with people online. It's so easy to make a party and talk with friends then go into a match. I was expecting it to be that easy with the PS3, but it's not.

There is a party chat function on the PS3, but you can only use it in the home page area and it only supports one-on-one chat. It also is only available to people with video cameras. If no video camera is attached, you can only text chat, not voice chat. If you want to bring the conversation into a game, you need to form another party in the game.

The PS3 loves to boast how advanced it is. That it's not just a game console but much more. So I don't understand how hard it is to make a chat function and invite system that is user friendly and make it easy to play with multiple friends. It really makes playing multi-player games on the PS3 a hassle.

Hopefully the PlayStation 4 will fix all of this. It really doesn't seem that hard to fix honestly. Still, Sony has promised and new and better way to play games so it's time to stay optimistic and hope Sony pulls through.