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PlayStation Home Beta Opens to the Public
Yesterday Sony launched the open beta for PlayStation Home, the virtual world designed for PlayStation Network community members. Eurogamer has an in-depth look at the features of Home. They point out some glaring weaknesses, such as a poor communication system, a flawed business model, and the inability to form groups without entering games, something the recently revamped Xbox interface does better. "It's not alienating, it's easy to identify with, and the socialising and advertising are entirely in context. But you're left pondering the inevitable question: why would you want to spend any time here?" Home's debut to the public saw a few typical launch-day problems, but Sony was quick to address them and get things back on track. Gizmodo has some screenshots and basic information available.
Home is basically a collection of mini-games tied together by a giant pain-in-the-ass world where you have to walk around and stand in a real line in order to use a piece of virtual equipment.
Movie trailers are not the worst idea in the world. I might be interested in watching movie trailers on my PS3. What I'm not interested in doing is logging in to Home, going through a million loading screens, and then watching a trailer (which one? Whichever one they're showing! Want to change it? Too bad!) in a virtual theater full of actual jackasses jumping up and down in front of the screen ("Yo dawg, I know you like TV, so we put a TV inside your TV so you can watch TV while you watch TV!") and make homophobic comments over the voice chat.
Meanwhile, there's nothing to actually DO with anyone you would meet in Home, so the 'social MMO' aspect of Home is totally pointless. I keep waiting for Ken Kutaragi to hold a press conference just to announce, "The Aristocrats!"
Clearly you either work for Sony or are otherwise tasked with promoting Home. And I don't just mean that because I find it so unbelievable that anyone could be so gung-ho about such an obviously flawed program, but also because you've clearly got your hands on information that nobody could possibly know given the limited amount of time the public has had to digest this thing at this point. I played around in there last night for a few hours and I didn't see half the stuff you're talking about.
There are 18 million PS3 already worldwide with 14 million PSN accounts. So the massive amount of traffic on the Home servers yesterday was understandable. No other MMORPG or online world has ever been build to handle such a gigantic userbase.
Then why did I only see about 200 people total in the entire world last night?
Let's break it down. Last night when I tried to connect to the PSN network, I was told I'd need a system update. Half an hour later, my system went through its reboot and I was done with that. So, then, go to load home. Another download, another reboot, another half an hour. So, now I'm finally in my apartment. I go to leave, and am confronted with yet another download.
What regular person is going to put up with this? This only even has a prayer with the truly hardcore. It's too much work to even get started.
Everyone is filling out their friends list with people they've met. People are playing the in Home games together, checking out the initial game spaces for Uncharted and Far Cry 2, dancing in the social music area, or just hanging out chatting with their old or new friends.
I saw, and I am totally serious about this, nobody doing any of these things.
There are things to unlock in the various games throughout Home for your avatar or personal spaces. And of course there are things you can buy if you wish to.
I certainly found things I could buy (who is Sony kidding with this? I'm going to pay $1 for a fake table?). I found nothing I could unlock. And if I couldn't, no average person who doesn't have four hours to kill on a Thursday night is going to.
If you are a solo player you can setup up an online game and then invite or have people join you while you are in Home. It shows which game you have setup under your name for other to see. Once you are ready you all launch together right into the game as a party.
Again, I saw not a single person doing this. Why would you invite people this way? It is much, much easier to simply start up the game and send out an invite.
And then there are the third party game spaces that almost every console developer is in the process of creating. You don't have to have the game to enter these areas. Each of these spaces look just like the real game and give you a feel for what the game is like with the overall art style of the space, pictures from the games up on the walls, and movies streaming from the game.
You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes.
The ability to walk around in a space that looks kind of like a game is not very compelling to me, nor I suspect anyone else. Give me a demo and I'm a lot happier, not to mention a lot more likely to buy the game.
What you're saying is not unlike what Linden Labs was saying about Second Life (how every major company was building "islands" in the game). We all saw how well that worked out. People would rather just look at stuff on a web page.
And there are already third party non-game Spaces going into Home like Red Bull's space that is going live next week.
Great, so I can experience an ad!
Can you please tell me why you think people will want to do this? Every single time somebody has tried to position an ad as if it's some sort of compelling content, it has failed. Especially in virtual worlds. Every single time.
A year from now it looks like there will be easily more than a hundred different Sony, third party game, and third party non-g
Where are the dedicated servers for Call of Duty 4 & 5, GT5p, RSV2? Warhawk is the only game I've played on my PS3 which had dedicated servers.
I have a PS3, but I play on a friends' 360 regularly. Live is so good I've got a Live account even though I don't have a 360 myself. It's just better than PSN - it's faster (updates, menus, messaging - Live itself, I don't mean the games), people actually have mics and use them, you can form groups (parties), you can see what your friends are playing, the reputation system means you can prefer and avoid players and the player matching will take that into account, the list goes on and on. PSN is lacking so many features Live has had for years it's pretty embarrassing. It does cost money, but Microsoft use that money to ensure the Live servers are fast (PSN takes an age to show your own trophies, Live is virtually instant) and they can shove money at game publishers and get early releases and exclusive content.
I fucking hate Microsoft and think the 360 isn't particularly impressive - DVDs and no mandatory hard drive sucks, everybody with a 360 I know has had the RROD at least once and worn out many controllers - but even I can see Live is just plain better than PSN. The only people who don't think so are fanboys and people who've never used it. A few games with dedicated server doesn't make up for the deficiencies, even when you take the price of Live into account.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
No furries.
That's about all good that can be said about it. This genre is inherently unworkable: it's a solution looking for a problem, it's a "virtual world" for the sake of being "virtual" and futuristic. Home addresses no need of the average consumer, it has very little entertainment value, and any applications to organizational tasks are better suited to simpler systems like IM.
When will these companies realize that you generally tend to invent things to make things easier, not abstract them in a confusing mess of real-life analogies and bloated 3D interfaces? Reminds me of the AOL-esque portals of the 90s.
When the PS3 first came out, I derided them for pushing BluRay, which IIRC was the main reason the console came out so late (?). What I've come to realize is that BluRay is the PS3's saving grace. If they had gone with DVDs like the 360 did, there would be little reason to own one.
I own all three consoles, and I find the PS3 to be a capable multimedia machine. I use it to play movies and we've rented some off the PlayStation network. But I only own one game for it, compared to my 4 Wii and 9 360 titles.
Here is what I wrote in the PS3 suggestion thread after playing home:
" Hi, new to the forum and just want to get my 2 cents in. I tried home and like the potential of what it can be, there isn't much to do at the moment, but I definitely can see where it could go given time. With that said, I can see a lot of negatives that can kill home, especially this early in its infancy. The first and biggest problem I see is that the prices are too high for many. I know some people disagree, but for many of us, it is out of the question for different reasons. Some just cannot imagine spending real money on virtual accessories, especially with no guarantee that home will be around in a few years. A LOT of people are in a financial bind with the way the economy is at the moment and are saving their money for more important things like food/bills/gass..etc, there is no way they are going to waste money on something like this. I personally fall in between those two. Finally, there is just too many people trying this, Sony with home, Microsoft with avatars, games with DLC, itunes, netflix, etc,etc People are having to prioritize where their microtransactions are going. Both Sony and Microsoft will get money at first, but it will eventually taper off with time.
Another negative affect is that you will be creating two classes of people, the have and the have nots. Your going to see rich brats running around with all the best clothes/items/living spaces while everyone else is living in the equivalent of cardboard houses and donating clothes. Not exactly a place the have nots will want to visit.
Now, with that said, I can see a possible solution to this problem. If I was Sony, I would get advertisers to pay to put their real world item brands in home (coke, Pepsi, nike, levis, Olivia,Toyota..etc) and give the virtual clothes/itmes away for free. In exchange, sony can give the companies stats about their products, keep track of what people are wearing, what items are popular. They can even put in items not yet released to see what people say about it and if its popular or a dud.
The other thing is that I would keep the option to pay in real world money for those who have it (and willing to use it), but I would have an alternative in-game money that people can get through activities in home, much like an MMO. These can be things like filling out surveys about products, to having competitions sponsored by advertisers, to scavenger hunts, to sitting and getting paid to watch ads, to get paid to go to sponsors home channels and getting paid to play their games (pop the Pepsi balloons, hit the whack a coke, beat the wrestling Toyota bear..etc). I hope you see where I am going with this. This would seem to be the best WIN-WIN scenario for everyone.
Like I said, I can see the potential of what it can be, it just needs a little work(and a lot more content) to get it started. "
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I also want to add that they need to start showing some actual movies in the theater to try and bring in some people and give people TV sets so that they can watch their own videos/music with friends in their home space. There needs to be SOMETHING to bring people in, so far there is nothing really FUN to do. One other quick thing, why is everything crammed together and scarce? The developers have near god like building powers and they create this small, sparse, sterile, cramped areas and buildings. I hope this was just a stress tess minimum stuff and the real goodies will start coming out. I do believe home could be great, however the are kidding themselves if they believe people are going to pay for all the cool features through microtransactions.
I have to agree with everything the parent said. I spent about an hour in there, and came out on the other side wondering - "why?" Other than people wandering all over the place, I saw a "bowling alley" with just enough people in it to fill all the available games, a mall with stores trying to sell me virtual stuff for real money, and a movie theater full of people calling each other faggots and n*ggers over voice chat. I saw almost no real "socializing", other than some dance party happening off the central plaza, which was mostly about a female avatar being molested by male avatars that I assume are controlled by 12-year olds (or maybe not... 0_0).