Sony had always stuck to the same strategy of, “we will not create a unified network” and “we will continue to allow publishers and devs to run their own servers for online gaming”. This is the same strategy they used for the PS2 online and the strategy “was” flawed. Allowing your publishers and dev to do their own thing without any consensus on features is BAD for gamers. Without a unified service, gamers were forced to maintain separate friends list for each game and no new features were added to the online experience, just the “same old”.