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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.
When what you have to say is best summed up by a damn 'Penny Arcade' article...
A quick glance at your sad post history...Go away troll.
That rambling Penny Arcade fanboy drivel is hilarious in its desperation to try trash Home. Home does generate an insane amount of terror in the fanboys of other platforms where they start lashing out incoherently.
The scope of Home and the amount of work Sony has done is staggering.
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.
So other than the initial login servers getting swamped for the first few hours the service went live it was incredibly smooth and lagfree even though every single space in Home was maxed out with people. It has been one gigantic party going on for since yesterday.
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.
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.
The party/matchmaking/game launching is incredibly cool - although more games need to patched for support. There are about 10 right now.
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. When you are done you all drop right back to where you were in Home together. So if you have a group of friends you can all hang out at your personal space before and after games or anywhere inside of Home.
But for clans it is even cooler. You can setup a clubhouse for your clan and everyone can come and go when they want. For clan gaming nights everyone goes to the club and you are all able to jump into games together and come right back to your clan clubhouse. Eventually you will be able to stream movies up on your wall or screenshots of various games up on the wall of your clanhouse in addition to having it decked out in the style of your clan.
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.
Companies like EA are creating entire pavilions for their sports games with every game having separate areas inside the space. There are mini-games inside of the game spaces that unlock items for you or let you into special areas. Anything you can do in a game you can do inside of Home.
And there are already third party non-game Spaces going into Home like Red Bull's space that is going live next week.
A year from now it looks like there will be easily more than a hundred different Sony, third party game, and third party non-game company spaces in Home.
Sony has been working on this amazing world since the early PS2 days and it shows. Looking over at it right now with people everywhere inside of Home running around having a blast already, it is hard to imagine how insanely cool Home will be as it continues to grow with the huge number of additional spaces and content over the next five years.
You can just taste the salty and bitter fanboy tears from that post...
But why isn't Microsoft listening and learning?
Take a look at the joke of an online service Microsoft has for the 360:
> Forced 50 dollar a year fees for online gaming - You've already wasted an extra 150 dollars over the price of the console so fan just to be allowed to play games online
> No dedicated servers. You are being forced to pay Microsoft to play games online and then Microsoft turns around and makes players host games on their own crappy home Net connections. That's why Xbox games are so riddled with lag, cheating, and host advantage problems
> Outdated P2P online tech limits you to being only able to handle what the average residential Net connection can support. So that means you are stuck with games like Gears of War that can only handle 5 vs 5 people playing at one time, or Halo 3 that can only handle 16
> A Nintendo Mii ripoof - what the fuck was Microsoft thinking when they decided they would ripoff Nintendo's Mii's for the Xbox online service. Even Wii fans don't bother with Miis anymore.
> Nickel and diming in every possible way. Microsoft is openly hostile to anyone providing free content or free mods for games because they want to get a cut of everything. Games like Unreal Tournament had to be delayed a half a year to rewrite the mod support to deal with the mess Microsoft has with their online service
It is funny that Microsoft who owes so much to PC online gaming - free, dedicated servers, open to mods and free content - can't manage to get online gaming right and it is Sony with no real PC gaming background who has nailed online console gaming:
> Free for everyone
> Dedicated servers for lagfree online play
> Gigantic player counts 32,40, and 64 per game
> Completely open to mods and free developer content
And all of that is before that insane Home.
Why isn't Microsoft learning from Sony? It's all right there. They keep clinging to stupid shit like cross game chat as some sort of justification for their crappy online service.
Wake up Microsoft. You look like a complete joke with your fees, laggy online games, and stupid Mii ripoffs.
"Home is two years too late"
Looks at the entire PS3 community worldwide packed onto the Home servers...
"coast on their reputation"
Yep, that's why they just tacked on a controller gimmick to their same old hardware...wait no that's Nintendo.
Let's see Sony since the PS2 has:
* Co-developed the most powerful consumer electronic chip on the planet along with IBM and Toshiba
* Help push through the next gen media format BluRay and included it in the PS3
* Massively upgraded their first party developer studio array to over 20 compared to only 10 for Nintendo and, lol, 3 for Microsoft
* Developed the incredible and gigantic Home online service
* Branched out into smaller but high quality game development with PSN games
* Created at movie download service for sub-HD movie purchases and rentals
* Created the console with most enormous graphical power advantage over its competitors ever in console history
Yeah, they are just 'coasting' on their reputation...
Honestly if you weren't just trolling, sell your fucking PS3. You won't be missed.
Pathetic.
"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."
There was no firmware update out yesterday. And firmware updates only take five maybe ten minutes max. And regardless of your lies, having the latest firmware has nothing to do with Home.
And then another lie about downloading Home. It is only 35 megs.
And yes Home is setup to allow people to run with minimal drive space used for people who only want to use their own personal Space for meeting with and launching games with their friends. And even beyond that you can download the relatively tiny zones in the background while you are doing other things. So even ignoring your lies about updates and download times...yes Sony didn't let you IMMEDIATELY jump instantly out into the central square.
The rest of your garbage isn't worth replying to. Multiple lies in one single point is more than enough to not waste time with you.
PLONK
LOL! At the Xbot with mod point so embarrassed by Microsoft's online service they lashed out with their mod points.
Hilarious and pathetic.
50 dollar a year online charges - check.
P2P online gaming - check.
Massive lag problems - check.
A Nintendo Mii clone - check.
I guess I'd be bitter and want to lash out if my console had such a shitty online service.
Ignoring any Dreamcast Xbox similarities, when a console has been on the market like the 360 has and all it only has a game running a multiplatform engine and faked/rigged comparisions at sites like gametrailers something went terribly wrong with your console's graphics hardware design.
Every previous console generation even the weaker console like the 360 is this gen still had stand out first party titles. The 360 is the first console ever, at least since the move to disc based media, to have such an enormous graphical power disadvantage compared to its competitor. There isn't a single first party 360 game that isn't considered a joke graphically: Halo 3, Forza 2, Banjoo, Perfect Dark...
The 360 has been living off fake Epic 5000x5000k 16xAA photomode marketing bullshots as the single thing that is supposed to demonstrate its 'power'.
There are two main reasons for why the 360 is so weak graphically compared to the PS3.
1. The gimped storage format. The 360 only has 7GB per DVD of storage. That is actually 1.5 GBs smaller than the PS2 and Xbos had last gen. The 360 is the only console ever to have less storage space than a previous gen.
2. The 480p graphics system being forced to try to be used as a 720p system. The 360's graphics system is designed around a 480p 4xAA framebuffer. Anything more than that and you have to waste time writing tedious to write and implement tile rendering code that degrades overall performance. It is the result of grabbing whatever ATI had available back in mid 2005 when the Xbox died in the market and throwing it in the 360 for release just a few months later.
The only positive outlook for the 360 on the graphics front is that with such a weak first party lineup the system is relying almost entirely on PC ports for exclusives and Microsoft can use the high rez screenshots and footage of the PC versions of games running on high end hardware and make the claim that you are looking at the 360 version or that the 360 version is going to look just as good. Most likely that is what we are going to start seeing with Alan Wake.
In retrospective it wasn't the botched hardware design that was the real fiasco for the Xbox 360 since Xbox owners showed that they will put up with defective hardware and continue to fork out hundreds of bucks over and over again for replacement consoles. It will be the shockingly bad graphics hardware design. It has become sadly hilarious to still hear Xbox owners clinging to Gears of War.
In a sense that is like Dreamcast owners and that game Shenmue.
No DRM. Why even worry about crap consoles.