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Sony, Microsoft Begin Battle of Virtual Worlds
Slatterz writes "Sony and Microsoft are poised to do battle in virtual worlds. The console kids both announced Second Life-style virtual environments at the Tokyo Game Show today. Both games show striking similarities to Linden Lab's creation. Players are represented by avatars which live a virtual life — engaging in relationships, going about day-to-day business."
So, two clones of something that is little more than a furry playground? My pythonic "yaaay" just isn't lethargic enough to express my feelings.
Now the real question is will people be able to make real income off these clones as many have and failed in Second Life?
Having RTFA, and also having a background as a games dev.
Home is a virtual world, but isn't Microsoft's avatars pretty much just the same approach as Miis?
I think the article's a little misleading in implying that Microsoft are making some virtual world (like Home or 2nd Life), when instead, it's just giving devs a representation of the player to put into their own games, like how Miis are currently handled on the Wii.
Baka Drew
Using second life as a target displays a considerable lack of ambition.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
"engaging in relationships, going about day-to-day business."
Strange how people will sit in a bedroom controlling an avatar which is decorating it's bedroom....
Although I can understand to an extent. there have been times when I was unhappy and being able to spend a few hours in a virtual world completely disconnected from my real life somehow helped and overall made me a happier person. Don't play now that real life is good.
I avoid WOW at all cost though. I want to play it but I've seen what it does to people and I know I'd get hooked.
If the rumours are true, a staggering fraction of people abandon SL very fast because the can't get along with the client interface. It may well be that the pool of potential participants is much larger than the current SL population.
Nice avatars to gather along -yeeah-...well I suppose that IRC wasn't enough graphical (or maybe too metaphorical in his representation for most people) and that you couldn't conclude serious business within all those Multi players games /sarcasm.
The problem is that they are wholly boring. the best of the world would be to include a "second world" into an already existing -and even moderately successful multi player game-. Imagine a "low paying" WoW/Eve/Warhammer account where your user would be forced to stay within cities (you could travel using existing methods or players) - some basic skills learning and basically their paying accounts gives'em some gold every month so they can shop for clothes and various other stuff".
That would ensure a lot of people "who would buy" stuff from the players creating a more vivid economy "hey looks there are the peons in the cities". They could get some funny things like plague, rest in buildings "with their names into them" and so on.
you could upgrade on those accounts to go kill things out there or well downgrade a full time killer to being a city dude with maybe some gears being put in a repository so you don't encounter a neighbor who wears a flaming armor with killer ghosts trapped into it".
It looks like a good idea
Bet nobody will buy Vista in their virtual world either.
Strange how people will sit in a bedroom controlling an avatar which is decorating it's bedroom
And strange how people will buy stuff to decorate a virtual bedroom from a talking raccoon. Dedicated gamers can earn bells, gil, plat, or whatever virtual currency a lot more easily than dollars.
Second Life certainly has its failings. However its big plus is that you can create anything you like from basic shapes like cubes. This seems highly unlikely to be possible from online console games.
Second life isn't that bad as MMOs go, I mean, just look at Furcadia, Planeshifts etc.
Maybe you could come up with some actual sources proving it's not as popular as the MMOs I mentioned? Thus proving that it's "one of the worst performers still in business".
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
However its big plus is that you can create anything you like from basic shapes like cubes. This seems highly unlikely to be possible from online console games.
I had a PS1 game where I could build stuff out of cubes, and it came out in December 1995. It was called Geom Cube, a port of Blockout. Nintendo even cloned it on the Virtual Boy. As for texturing those cubes, Doubutsu no Mori (ported to USA as Animal Crossing) explored it in 2001, and MySims refined it.
My main beef with Home is the fact that the average real-life looking avatar seems to be a hip 20 something with a slim athletic build and angsty haircuts (what Sony probably believes is their main demographic). I'm not some fat dork but I'm close to 35 so I really having problems connecting with the avatar. Meeting up with pals in Home would be ridiculous when everyone looks like someone fresh from college. Miis and the new Live avatars while a lot more simple offer a better way to create a good caricature of yourself. Sony should watch and learn.
I have enough trouble keeping up with the first one.
Sony's 'Home' is really not comparable with Microsoft's new avatars/Xbox UI. Home is a virtual world, MS' UI is just that, a UI.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
What has been described in the press so far doesn't sound anything like Second Life, except at the most superficial level. These systems are targeting things like IMVU and Puzzle Pirates. There are more similarities between Slashdot and Livejournal than there are between Second Life and Sony Home.
If that's the case, Second life would still be only ten simulators, not increasing every month still.
There is no subscription fee for Second life.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Its like reality TV, why would my daily business be sitting in an armchair watching other people go about their daily business?
Now I get it: it is a manager's tool!
Sony announced Home a long time ago. And yeah, it does look a bit like Second Life. But given that Second Life is meant to be like real life, it is odd that other things look like it too?
MS didn't announce any kind of virtual world at all. They have avatars now, but no world to roam in. It's not anything like Second Life or such.
Honestly, this whole article reads like more Second Life PR. I can't believe how much PR these guys get. A guy on the plane next to me two days ago was reading an article that said explained how Second Life is hot again, that companies are "moving in" again. Which of course is absurd, Second Life was never hot before and it isn't hot now, and companies "move in" at times, rarely having any positive effect on their sales or Second Life for that matter.
Linden Labs has some of the most amazing PR I've seen.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
...to move all stock exchanges to these virtual worlds. We're practically using virtual money anyways, and this way we can easily 'patch' any bad stocks by adding an arbitrary number to badly going stocks ;=)
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
"Ryoji Akagawa of Sony said that around 24 game design companies would provide the content needed for Home - but didn't give much else away. "
This is nothing like SecondLife, then - barely even an imitation.
SecondLife is about user content and creativity while Sony's - and quite possibly Microsoft's - solution is about you paying them for the right to purchase items created by other companies. You have zero capacity to create your own content and items.
In other words, this isn't a virtual world: This is a 3D chat room, straight from the jolly 90's.
From everything I've seen, Microsoft is allowing people to create 3D avatars just like Nintendos Mii. They will have games and applications where many of these players can mingle together online. This isn't exactly a traditional "Virtual World" like the PSN Home or Second Life.
Of course, you don't have to buy a sim, you can just buy a parcel of land. Private sim owners and Linden lab both sell smaller parcels of land for a lot less. No setup fees either.
Additionally, one does not need land on Second life to interact, build, show off things, sell things (places like slexchange will provide server box parcel locations to host your prim server thing).
But sure, if you want a permanent place to stick your sky castle, sky mall/shop etc. It suddenly becomes a problem.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I don't think it's precisely inability to get along with the client interface. As a (not exactly veteran) SL player who hangs out where the new players first show up, I can tell you why so many people quit:
1. The client interface just doesn't even work. It's not that they can't get along with it, it's that they sign up for a character and the SL client program tells them that it doesn't work on their hardware. They consider buying a new computer just to play a stupid game, and think "that's really lame" and shrug and go do something else. I know a half-dozen people who have gone down that route.
2. They get online, jazz up their avatar, look around, and say "uh, now what?" They're coming from a television or WoW background and expect that someone has written a plot and lined up a bunch of things for them to do, and when they realize that there isn't a goal, that there isn't a dedicated newscaster to stand there and entertain them, they say "what's the point?" and leave. (I see that literally every time I get on SL: a new person gets on, says "so what's the goal of the game?" and when people say "there isn't one" the person says "that's dumb." and logs off, most likely forever.)
My guess is that the active population of SL is less than 1/100 of what Linden claims, possibly much less.
But, for what it's worth, I fairly rarely hear of/see people who are having consistent problems with the (stupid) interface. I think people get used to it.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
There is one actually. And the Second life viewer is opensource too.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Second life might get slashdotted now.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
i'm curious; how could you tell that it was a _badger_ dick rather than, say, a weasel or ferret dick?