The producer for PS3 launch title Full Auto 2: Battlelines has discussed PS3's still-mysterious online network, noting that Full Auto 2 will not be supporting achievements or stat-tracking over Sony's "I Can't Believe it's Not Xbox Live!"-style service.

Producer Mike Gallo revealed during an Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine podcast that stat tracking will be handled by Gamespy - which he seems to be more familiar with than the PlayStation Network itself.

"We use Gamespy as part of our back end. And we do support your user profile, or whatever the final name for that's gonna be... You have a user ID and an online profile that's set up through the PlayStation, we don't have anything to do with that. That's all done through the PlayStation Network."

And while Full Auto 2 will at least still feature online play on PS3, you won't be getting any Achievement-like awards to race-and-gun for. "It's a feature we had to, regrettably, not support," Gallo says, though he claims it's due to the quick development time of a launch title, rather than Sony simply not providing enough information about the PlayStation Network, as some other developers have stated.

We hope Sony still has a last-minute announcement of a stable, secure online environment up its sleeve - but it's looking increasingly like the first wave of titles will suffer in comparison to Xbox 360's flawless Live launch.

October 9, 2006