I remember when this article was first published on Edge's legacy website. Then, as now, it reminded me what a fantastic game PoP:SoT was. A true joy to play. It's one of the few previous-gen games I still own, and I still pull it out to play on my 360 every few months.

Background downloading: PSN only downloads in the background while you are in the XMB. As soon as you launch a game, the download is paused, whether you are playing online or off. With Xbox Live, the download is only paused if you play a game's online multiplayer mode. If you only play offline, the download will continue in the background.

Regarding streaming video, I'm enumerating Netflix, Sky Player, etc as Xbox Live features because they are branded with and specifically engineered into Xbox Live. Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm are also coming. Yes, you can access all those services using the PS3 web browser, and you can use third-party software to finagle them on to your PS3, but that doesn't make them PSN features.

Patches: yes, Microsoft limits title updates to 4MB. For larger content updates, developers must deliver a content patch via Marketplace (which can be background downloaded and added to the game without a restart.) That is really good design, because it means you can actually play your game while waiting for the content patch to download (and when the content is done downloading, you don't have to restart the game to use the new content,) but really important bug-fixes get delivered super-fast.

Here are a few things PSN can't do that Live can:
* allow up to four people to log in from one console at the same time
* match me up with players that are about the same skill level as me, so I don't get my butt whupped online all the time (trueskill)
* keep stats about my online (and sometimes offline) gameplay along with gameplay recordings, and allow others to view them (stats w/ attachments and leaderboards)
* party up with up to 7 other people
* send invites to people who may be playing other games
* save my preferred game settings so that whenever I play a new game, it already knows I like bumper-cam (in a racing game) or southpaw controls (in an FPS), for example
* download things in the background, even when i'm playing a game, but also intelligently pause the download when I play online, and resume when I stop playing online.
* send data about the games I am playing and achievements i am earning to sites like mygamercard.net and 360voice.com, enabling community and meta-gaming on those sites based on that data.
* distribute indie games (Xbox Indie Games).
* allow me to download a trial version of an Arcade title, then purchase and unlock it on-the-fly with no restarts, no trips back to the Store and no waiting.
* patch my games in 10 seconds or less.
* intelligently pick the best online game session for me, based on skill level, language, ping times, gamer zone and player Rep rating
* allow me to globally block or mute a player, so that person can never talk to me or send me messages again.
* allow me to view "friends of friends"
* allow me to use Windows Live Messenger for chat.
* allow me to view my games and achievements, send and receive messages and view Friends' status and profiles on the web at xbox.com
* allow me to purchase any Xbox Marketplace content on the web, and queue it for download to my console once I log on.
* stream video from a variety of popular online video streaming services, eg. Netflix in the US, Sky Player in the UK and Canal+ in France.

There's plenty more, but the bottom line is PSN has a long way to go before it catches Xbox Live.

Not at all. You buy a game like Halo 3, and every day (or week, or whatever) the developers are updating the multiplayer "hoppers" (mode selections), maintaining the leader boards and File Share services, things like that, occasionally releasing new map-packs, etc. But that doesn't stop you from selling your copy of Halo 3.

Double post. Sorry.