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.

Comments

In other words,

[Hertne]

"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?"

it's like Myspace. Let's see if the same model works more than once.

Re:In other words,

[Anonymous Coward]

I just logged in and was bored to death. I will never EVER use this and I'm not sure I'd want to associate with anyone who would. Like with avatars on the other platforms, there's no way to make them look like yourself. You start off in a empty lame looking house overlooking a bunch of boats. Then you can jump to a Far Cry 2 themed hangout or a Uncharted one. Both are filled with idiots standing around doing nothign and saying "dur dur this is cool".

If there was a great deal of interactivity here, that'd be different. I don't see that happening though. And by interactivity, I don't mean a bunch of teenagers yapping at each other in 3D avatars. I mean actual things to do. Reasons to compel me to fire up Home instead of a videogame.

*YAWN*

At least it was only a 77 MB download and they didn't charge for it.

Re:In other words,

[Repossessed]

There seem to be some key differences with myspace, in particular myspace doesn't charge you money if you want to change the color of your page, or keep you from playing the stupid flash game just because someone else is already playing it.

Penny Arcade also summed it up well

[nweaver]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/12/12/

Makes you want to rush out and get a PS3.... NOT.

Re:Penny Arcade also summed it up well

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. There are many reasons to own a PS3, but Home, unfortunately, appears to not be one of them.

Penny Arcade's Scathing Review

[Thatmushroom]

http://penny-arcade.com/ has an extremely critical take on it.

Re:Penny Arcade's Scathing Review

[Miseph]

"This is like having the ability to shape being from non-being at the subatomic level, and the first thing you decide to make is AIDS."

Oh snap.

My only question is why he went off on this tangent about Vista.

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. You're beautiful, don't forget to tip your waitress.

Short Review: It Sucks

[rsmith-mac]

I loaded it up early this morning, and in short, it's terrible. It's everything bad about Second Life meets the Xbox NXE meets Miis. I was going to write a lengthy explaination as to what's wrong, but Tycho over at Penny Arcade has done a much better job hitting on everything, and using bigger words in the process. So without further ado:

The Beta for Playstation home is now available to everyone, and now you know what I know: this is what happens when your marketing department tries to make a game. Here is everything you need to understand about Home, if you should accidentally launch it from your XMB: press and hold the Playstation button in the center of your Dual-Shock or Sixaxis controller. From the menu that appears, select Quit.

There are things about Home that are simply beyond my understanding. Chief among these bizarre maneuvers is the idea that, when manufacturing their flimsy dystopia, they actually ported the pernicious notion of scarcity from our world into their digital one. This is like having the ability to shape being from non-being at the subatomic level, and the first thing you decide to make is AIDS.

If you approach an arcade machine and there is a person standing in front of it, you will not be able to play it. Likewise, if you see people bowling and think that bowling is something you might like to do, you probably wont be able to. Unable to play arcade games like Ice Breakers and Carriage Return the first several times we logged on, these games had begun to take on an epic stature in our minds. These were gushing fonts of liquid fun, habit-forming and dangerous - for the good of our virtual society, the supply had to be controlled. When we were finally able to play them, we learned that they were the equivalent of browser games.

There is nothing about the experience of using Home to suggest that you are actually moving through a single, contiguous environment. It is very clearly a handful of walled off zones, where you are confronted by incessant load screens in a desperate search for stimulation. From the moment you enter one of their ultrahygenic "amusement regions," it's clear that all life has been burned away. You get the sense that this is a place in which no interesting thing could ever happen.

There is already a growing school of Home apologetics, fostered by the same Order of Perpetual Masochism that lauded the rumble-free Sixaxis at launch and suggested, hilariously, that Lair and Heavenly Sword were videogames. They're under the impression that because something is free, this places it on some golden dais beyond censure. It's no virtue to give away something that no-one in their right mind would buy. Sony has no idea what this world is for, and that ambiguity infuses every simulated millimeter of it.

This is the terrible secret that roils beneath their false universe: it is nothing more than a cumbersome menu, a rampart over which you must hoist yourself to accomplish the most basic tasks.

(CW)TB out.

Re:Short Review: It Sucks

[QuantumG]

Chief among these bizarre maneuvers is the idea that, when manufacturing their flimsy dystopia, they actually ported the pernicious notion of scarcity from our world into their digital one. This is like having the ability to shape being from non-being at the subatomic level, and the first thing you decide to make is AIDS.

Or like DRM. Or like Second Life.

Re:Short Review: It Sucks

[Xaoswolf]

It's no virtue to give away something that no-one in their right mind would buy.

I wish more people would realize that...

Flawed?

[MikeBabcock]

If you want to use Home, you don't need to buy anything. If you want to spend money on premium clothing/decor items, the feel free. Its $0.50 for almost every item, have fun.

I don't see a flaw with this in a BETA -- they don't know how many things people will pay for, or what price to make them, but its a good time to find out.

Re:Flawed?

[Junta]

It can be legitimately criticized, despite being a 'free' product. Notably, an obviously large amount of time and money was invested into this. Instead of considering Home 'free', one could wonder what they could have alternatively done with the servers, developers, or simply the money. Maybe they could have not had those servers and developers and lowered the console price. Or they could have pieced something compelling together. As someone who purchased a PS3, I'm interested in evaluating all the Sony offerings that are being provided free of additional charge, as my purchase contributed revenue they used to do this.

Looking back since they first started teasing Home, it has been a very long time. Now that we've had a chance to see what it has taken so long to piece together, a lot of people may rightly say "that's it?". I know, it's "beta", but few projects with this degree of uncertainty would survive so long without declaring a 'release'.

In my view, there is something actually interesting about the fundamental concept. I could see how the experience could be relaxing. It's obviously comparable in Second Life. Both have yet to hold my attention longer than a first impression, so maybe it isn't as interesting to me as I would think.

Compared to Second Life, I think Sony's Home has done a good job of looking significantly better. The best of second life doesn't look as good, and the prominence of objects designed with all the design talent of the average MySpace page author clutters that landscape with ugly atrocities. Of course, if trying for the social networking aspect, to date the popular ones have been those to allow maximum creativity, for better or for worse.

What they have done worse is aim for too much realism. The avatars move painfully slow. The 'bowling alley' is all but useless because all the slots are pretty much always in use. They could (and should) mitigate this through more instances of 'bowling alleys', I guess it is a matter of them determining the best balance between too sparse and uselessly dense. I would wager if they doubled the instances of bowling alleys, people wouldn't be bothered by the immediate appearance of limited supply, since they wouldn't have any hard time finding an empty lane or whatever. Also, the ability to import such attractions into a personal space could help, so a group of friends would always know where/how they could pass the time. It's clearly a casual gaming play here, which is a proven genre of interest.

I remain dubious of Sony's direction in general. They did this 'Qore' thing in which users are expected to buy pure advertising. Then they realized they wanted to advertise and so they did this 'Pulse' thing. Then they released this 'Home' thing. All the while not seeming to deliver what PS1 and PS2 had achieved success with, a solid set of games.

Re:Flawed?

[Darkness404]

I don't see a flaw with this in a BETA -- they don't know how many things people will pay for, or what price to make them, but its a good time to find out.

Beta today is not Beta 10 years ago. Today services that people depend on, such as gMail are beta. People use OSS beta software all the time, beta has become the new "1.0" release. Today, most "1.0" releases are equivalent to a "1.01" release.

Re:Flawed?

[MikeBabcock]

Whether people choose to pretend that betas are full services or not, Beta doesn't change meanings for the rest of us.

Taxed entertainment.

[Anonymous Coward]

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.
If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds... [we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers... And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another ]...
till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression. - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Samuel Kercheval, Monticello, July 12, 1816

when was the last virtual world succesful?

[I.M.O.G.]

I can't say I would consider any of these virtual worlds successful, and google was smart to quickly scrap their foray into this genre.

I guess it somewhat depends what you consider successful, but profitability is as good a gauge as any. Was second life profitable? I know a lot of people who play world of warcraft, but I work in IT and I know exactly zero who play second life. I knew a few that played the fairly popular website where you create pets and care for them, tho I can't recall the name of it even. (Total waste of time in my perspective).

So like the summary, I'm left wondering what is the upshot of being in this virtual world, especially if grouping up and exploring socially isn't built in? Honestly in my book, this sort of crap ranks up there with chain letters, tripod websites, and other online things I avoid because the thought of them makes me feel dirty.

Re:when was the last virtual world succesful?

[BobReturns]

Virtual worlds will take off when they manage to get the socialising aspect right - ie as easy as chatting in person or through video. Which to my mind at least means more or less never. I, for one, don't want to have to invest effort in learning how to work a virtual world when it would be far easier to IM/Skype/E-mail someone. It baffles me that companies invest actual money in virtual presence on things like Second Life.
It makes sense in the context of MMORPGs, but stripped of gaming there's really very little point. You can never communicate as well through an avatar as you can face to face, over a video link, or even in less constrained text environments such as e-mail where you are free to express yourself at length. If the world of Snow Crash ever came to pass, then it would make sense - the Metaverse in there allows for depth of expression.
And as for the PS3, if I want to play a game or watch something then I'll do it. I don't want to have to 'go to the theater' or the 'arcade'. I have a console so that I don't have to. And the virtual world features certainly don't offer me any incentive to waste that time getting there.

Re:when was the last virtual world succesful?

[JoeMerchant]

The point of games is to "entertain" - i.e. waste time. If you want to "meet up" with other (paid content) game players before launching, Home is at least more interesting/diverting than the battle.net text login screen.

By its placement, Home will always be lame, noone would want it to compete with purchased titles. If it can compliment them and provide a "universal pre-play lobby" that all the PS=3 games can use for players to "hook up", then I think it will be "successful."

Re:when was the last virtual world succesful?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it somewhat depends what you consider successful, but profitability is as good a gauge as any. Was second life profitable?

Second Life has been profitable for the past two years, and continues to be.

Re:when was the last virtual world succesful?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree and disagree on this. Your first statement is absolutely true, but I don't think that "never" is the correct answer for when someone will get the socialising aspect right. I do however think that it could be a few years in the future as both the computer hardware and VR software needs large improvements which will take many years. Some examples of features that I believe will need to be perfected:

*facial expression recognition software connected to a webcam, that could make avatars much more lifelike.

*the ability to handle large numbers of people being at the same virtual location, with tons of graphical details and no lag/slowdown

*the flexibility, scalability and ability for users to make real and fun games. SecondLife is trying this but is so far not working very well. Many people have tried making fps games in SecondLife but they're always too laggy and cumbersome to be fun. When this technology is perfected so that it's possible to make fps games that are as good as any of the standalone online fps games, then I believe it would start getting much more popular. You could then have a virtual world where you could travel between many different fun games.

Home Makes Everything Worse

[rkanodia]

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!"

Re:Home Makes Everything Worse

[_xeno_]

I might be interested in watching movie trailers on my PS3.

Great, then head on over to the PlayStation Store, where you've been able to download HD movie trailers for the PS3 for ages! It does sort of make the Home movie theater seem kind of stupid when you think about it, though - it's a worse version of something that the PS3 has done since launch. But don't tell the marketers that, you know they're just salivating at the thought of being able to force us to watch the trailers they want us to watch rather than trailers for movies we're actually interested in.

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 remember trying to enter a store in the "mall" area and getting a dialog informing me that there were no items in the store. I'd accept that for an alpha, but you'd think they'd get around to offering real content by open beta. Even better, after displaying the dialog, it dumped me into the store anyway, and then made me confirm that I really did want to exit the empty store.

You could, however, buy a new "apartment" area for $5 which you could then fill with the nothing that's available.

I get what they were trying to do with the "social MMO" part, but wow did they miss the mark on that one. There really is nothing to do in Home. I can't imagine that there's really anything Sony can do to fix it, either - it's just a dumb concept.

Re:Home Makes Everything Worse

[Doctor_Jest]

That's funny, because I thought the 'NXE' xbox interface was quite homely and vapid as well. Sony and Microsoft are beating themselves to death trying to recreate some buzz around virtual characters like the Wii has. (Don't Sony and MS realize that the online portion of the Wii is as hard as Mandarin Chinese to get anything useful going on with 4000 character "friend codes" and other fun stuff.) Still, I despise the beta of home, and I got to experience it before the open beta. I got utterly bored... It's like a really silly collection of loading screens. ;) I'd rather eat dirt and put plaid pants on my Xbox "avatar".

I'm no fan of either's online presence... because all they seem to collect are morons, half-wits, and people who think they're "kewl" because they call everyone "fag" and don't get the living snot beat out of them. (Penny Arcade's summation of what the internet does to common courtesy speaks volumes about _ALL_ online offerings.)

Funny thing is, you have to _pay_ for the privilege of the a-holes on XBL, but Home's FWEE! :) Meh. I guess I'm getting old. I'd rather just play games, thanks... and in the rare occasion I get enough time to play multiplayer... it'll be with people I already know, rather than the 8 metric tons of idiots that troll the online gaming world looking for a few stupid laughs about dick size and "mad skillz".

Re:Home Makes Everything Worse

[wc_paladin]

The movie theater was a horrible idea, as is most of home. But they promised us personal TV's for our apartments that we can buy and then use to stream media from our PS3 to anyone who is in the apartment with us. (radios do the same with music, and picture frames do the same with pictures) At least this is what I have read.

Also, $5 to start a club? who's brilliant idea was that?

Re:Home Makes Everything Worse

[grumbel]

it's a worse version of something that the PS3 has done since launch

I wouldn't say it is that bad, I actually like having advertisment, trailers and stuff shown to me while doing something else in the virtual world. The Playstation Store surely is faster, but if you don't know what you are looking for it doesn't really help all that much, Home on the other side shows you stuff you haven't been actively looking for (which is how I learned that there was an ew Watchmen trailer). Home however has two huge problem. The first one is that movie trailers in the cinema require load times, you have to sit there and watch a status bar instead of being allowed to freely walk around while the thing is loading, which is stupid and breaks the whole 'loading in the background' that Home does in most other cases. The second problems however is the bigger one, there simply isn't anything to do in Home, so you really have no need to get back to it after having seen all the location once. Now I don't expect Home to turn into GTA, but if they haven't any decent gameplay going for it, they should at least have a good amount of locations to wander around in, so that you can do some exploring while being bombarded with advertisment. Or heck, they should just implemented some full blown adventure games in Home, that way you would have plenty of walking to do without it feeling all pointless. The biggest problem with Home for me is simply the lack of content, after all those years I would have guessed they did create more then those handful of rooms, currently it feels more like being locked up in a virtual shopping mall then like a virtual world.

Re:Home Makes Everything Worse

[KDR_11k]

and in the rare occasion I get enough time to play multiplayer... it'll be with people I already know, rather than the 8 metric tons of idiots that troll the online gaming world looking for a few stupid laughs about dick size and "mad skillz".

I guess that was the kind of person Nintendo thought about when implementing the friend codes but the implementation sounds pretty annoying anyway (I have only one online-capable game for the Wii and that's Endless Ocean so I haven't tried online yet).

No idea why MS and Sony are trying to take the Miis, I guess they thought that's the secret to the "casual" market (as opposed to, say, games anyone can play with little prior knowledge but that still pose a challenge...).

Re:Home Makes Everything Worse

[Doctor_Jest]

I think that's the very thing they wanted to do with their "miis" since the Wii was so successful, not to mention the amount of so-called "casual" gamers who have bought a Wii.... MS and sony thought, "Mii == casual gamer" and voila, now we've got our very own Sony/MS branded Miis. Marketroids have done it again. ;)

bleh.

Re:Home Makes Everything Worse

[Anonymous Coward]

NO.

See the difference is in XBL's NXE the avatar is just minor, a representation like an extended gamerpic. Parties were the real major innovation.

It is Not an ENTIRE NEW virtual world/hassle you have to wander around through and be force fed advertisements, loading screens, virtual apartments/stores/lobbies/etc..

Home makes everything SLOW and annoying.

NXE makes things faster & easier.

get it?

Re:Home Makes Everything Worse

[Doctor_Jest]

NO. The "blades" system initially set up by microsoft was compact, useful, and dare I say, quite snappy. Now we have these moronic billboards attached to each of our files, and long stretches of unused air between your current "tableau" and the next... not to mention several metric tons of adverts under "SPOTLIGHT", but I guess you missed them. NXE is a response to the hype of Home and the Wii. Nothing more. There is nothing useful about the NXE (that wasn't cut due to time constraints... some of it that was cut might've been interesting, but who knows when that'll show up, if ever.) At least you can go back to the old blades view IIRC. And in Home, you can still use the XMB and ignore it entirely... provided you're not some rabid masochist who has never used a PS3 but feels the need to comment like an 8 year old borrowing daddy's laptop. You're being advertised to by both companies in equal annoyance quantities. The fact that you dismiss it in NXE doesn't make it "okay" compared to the ads in Home. Get it? Probably not. You LIKE the NXE.... that's what, -20 IQ points right there. Hope you're not in deficit now, troll.

Slightly off-topic, perhaps....

[westlake]

But if I hear a geek mouth the words "flawed business model" one more time, I think I will throw up,

Re:Slightly off-topic, perhaps....

[Vexorian]

It seems you are one of the guys defending their flawed business model.

Re:Slightly off-topic, perhaps....

[MrMista_B]

Why, exactly? Who would you rather hear it from, a plumber? Remember, business people are geeks, that's why they're in business. What better place for a business geek than in business?

And aside from that, anyone can see their business model is shit. Or flawed, if you like.

Re:Slightly off-topic, perhaps....

[Anonymous Coward]

What better place for a business geek than in business?

Oh, I dont know. Maybe the bottom of the ocean?

Re:Slightly off-topic, perhaps....

[Doctor_Jest]

It depends on if you think Home is the lynchpin of their overall plan to become "Microsoft's bitch" in the online world. At least it's free. ;) I think there will be some big reworking and retooling of the Home stuff as it leaves beta... (and into another beta! heh.)

Besides "flawed business model" is like "synergy"... makes you want to hit someone with a bat every time you hear it.

SCEA has been reportedly saying that SCJ (or whatever it's called over there) is basically clueless when it comes to the importance of online and community in the new console generation. Now granted, I'm not so sure the whole "community" aspect needs to be the sole focus of the big picture, but it does have a place (just not in my universe... so I'm old.) But if SCEA can see Sony Japan's reluctance to try and do battle with MS in the online arena (networked games don't count), it must be patently obvious to everyone. :) That being said, perhaps Home will become the tool it needs to be and less of the "MMO" it is trying to be.... *shrug* (I'm skeptical... because Sony's big, cumbersome and glacial...)

Penny Arcade??? Are you joking?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Path3]

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.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Tony Hoyle]

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.

And about 1% have even heard of Home.. and even then at 3am it was so full it was unusable.

Of course, give it a week or two and it'll be empty.

One gigantic party? LOL. Sounds like you've never even seen it. It's loads of people wandering around aimlessly using their 'hello' macro and looking at dumb psp adverts.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[maxume]

Why would you bother calling someone else a fanboy?

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

I own a ps3, I bought it when it first came out, I rent blu ray disk.........I'm close to a sony fanboy. Seriously though, home is a terrible terrible experience (I was on the beta before it went public, it was insanely slow then, I don't know about now.........it sucked too much for me to try it out again). It's reskinned second life with a massive amount of Sony advertising.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Free the Cowards]

Home does generate an insane amount of terror in the fanboys of other platforms where they start lashing out incoherently.

Here's a quick hint for you: when you start saying completely ridiculous things like this, it's a good sign that you're the crazy-assed fanboy, not the other guys.

(Full disclosure, I own a Wii, I've had it for two weeks, and I've never owned any other game consoles in my life. Pretty obviously not a fanboy here, so don't even try it.)

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[mollymoo]

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.

I'm not a fanboy of any other system, the only games consoles I've ever owned have been PlayStations. Home sucks. Well, it doesn't suck if you like the idea of something like Second Life, but I don't. As a social tool for people who like decorating a virtual space and interacting with random people online rather than at their local pub it's probably fine. Some people like Habbo Hotel and Second Life and would love the idea of walking a character through a 3D environment to view a game trailer not-quite-full-screen (even if you select it). I have nothing against them if that's what they want to do, they'll probably love Home.

My worry is that Sony will make Home the preferred way to create groups, have multi-user chat, set up private games, use the Store and so on. For just doing things like that Home is absolutely terrible. It takes an order of magnitude more time to load a space in Home than it does to show a simple menu in the XMB or page in the Store. It takes an order of magnitude more time to walk an avatar across a room than it does to select something from a menu. Menus are fast and efficient, 3D environments are not. You can skip some of the walking about in Home using the menus, but you still have to wait for spaces to load.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[badasscat]

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

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Conception]

*looks for the "Disclaimer: I am employed by Sony" and finding none assumes it was a forgetful mistake and moves on*

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

'Fanboy drivel'?

In the past few months they have been scathing about the Xbox's NXE as well, and they're not particularly hot on Miis either.

If you mean that they're fanboyish over games that aren't crap then I can only hope that you're either joking or paid extremely well.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

"or paid"

Wow, who didn't see that tired old retort from one of the above posters...

Penny Arcade is pathetic joke of a site.

They are pathetic when they rip on the PS3.
They are pathetic when they rip on the Wii.
They are pathetic when they rip on the Xbox.

Losers with nothing but sarcasm.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

At least we both agree that they're fair about it.

Your opinion of their humour is one thing, but there's a difference between that and pretending that they don't like Home because they're inherently biased against the PS3 - that's just bullshit and everybody knows it.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[bluefoxlucid]

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.

Everquest runs on Playstation 2. FF11 runs on Playstation 2. World of Warcraft runs on everything but Wii these days. PS3 has the smallest market impact of everything out there (the Wii has 35 million units out there these days), and their "game" is rudimentary and pointless. SecondLife is over-scoped, too flexible for its own good and this limits what rendering optimizations can be done (i.e. it prevents the basic rendering strategy that makes low-powered consumer graphics card like quad GeForce 8800 GTX viable for real-time graphics); similarly, the server takes a pounding, far more than this limited-scope world can handle.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Thatmushroom]

I wish I hadn't forfeited my mod points trying to cram in a Penny Arcade link earlier, so rather than mod you up I'll respond.

The less-than-perfect launch seems to be a minor point of criticism. I think some of the fundamental game choices are the object of their ire. Choosing to artificially limit access to content seems to be the main objection. It makes it more similar to real life, but it also makes it much more frustrating to people. It's already selectively enhancing part of real life, why can't it eliminate scarcity? If there's a technological reason that prohibits that, then hopefully we'll find out about it sooner or later and adjust expectations for the (server-side and client-side) hardware accordingly.

It seems to work splendidly for more narrow objectives, such as having a meeting place for a clan. I hadn't heard that brought up before, and that's a really good point. However, as a general multifaceted virtual world it seems to fall short of its aims.

As a final note, I don't have any current-gen consoles, and I really only use my Xbox for a living room media player, so I can't really say I have fanboy-like opinions for or against the PS3. These are just some comments from someone bored at home.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

...from someone bored at home.

I see what you did there.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[somanyrobots]

Why would you bother calling someone else a fanboy?

Probably because it's the easiest way to defend yourself when you're a paid sockpuppet.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[blue l0g1c]

That brilliant derision has earned you a permanent +1 my friend.

It was like watching a beautiful butterfly emerging from it's chrysalis sporting biting insults for wings and common sense for feelers.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[lysergic.acid]

i don't own a PS3 so i don't know if that's the direction the PS3 is headed in, but i agree that i would be really stupid, especially since the XMB is such an easy to use and well-designed interface (i believe it's won an award for its design).

what would be nice (and make more sense) would be if Sony had instead spent their resources on expanding/extending the XMB by adding useful features. for instance, add some kind of media manager like the iPod or iTunes that lets you organize your music and browse by album/genre/artist/etc. and for the PSP's XMB it would be nice to also have an e-book browser/reader/download service.

like Microsoft's idea of a virtual mall posted on /. earlier, this is just another useless VR application that people will quickly lose interest in once the novelty of a VR environment wears off.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[compasseng]

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.

And nobody using any of them.

Actually, a few will be using them. Everyone else with be waiting in the virtual line.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[HiVizDiver]

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).

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Opportunist]

My worry is that Sony will make Home the preferred way to create groups, have multi-user chat, set up private games, use the Store and so on.

If they do that, the PS3 will die as a multiplayer platform.

When I play a game, I want to play a game. More specifically, I want to play this game. I do not want to play Second Life to be able to play $multiplayergame. Someone might enjoy 2nd life. I don't. I don't want to be forced to move through some pseudo-multiuser virtual world to do what I want to do.

If people are anything when it comes to their games, it's impatient. Know what was the first thing that made consoles popular over computer based games, back in the good ol' days when computer came with floppy discs and consoles with cartridges? Load speed. It took seconds at most to load a console game, it could take a minute to load a computer game. Right behind it was ease to use. Push the cartridge in and play. No booting, no disk swapping, no searching for the right executable.

When people now have to meander through some virtual world to finally do what they wanted to do in the first place, they will most likely ponder whether it's worth the hassle in the first place. When I fire up a game and select multiplayer, I expect to be in a multiplayer lobby where I may pick my partners/enemies and go on to play it. A system that does not offer this is going to be replaced with one that offers is.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Opportunist]

It's one of those "wtf" moments, ain't it? I mean, was Sony still asleep when Atari started off the console market?

What made the very first consoles popular? Why did people go out and buy a console to play PacMan or other classics? Price? Because they didn't want to spend quarter after quarter? Probably not. It would probably have been cheaper than the console. They wanted to play what they want to play when they wanted to play it, at the leisure of their home, without having to go down to the arcade, just to find out that someone else is currently hogging your favorite machine and you wait for him and pray for him to finally fail or for a brief blackout (brief! Or you couldn't play either!).

And now this key argument for consoles is done away artificially? If there's one thing people hate it's waiting for something that someone else is currently enjoying. It's frustrating to see someone else have fun with something you want to have fun with. And this very nuisance is deliberately added?

I'd really love to hear the reasoning behind it. I just can't think of a good, sensible reason why one should artificially limit something without any tangible gains.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Yeef]

Then why did I only see about 200 people total in the entire world last night?

That's just part of the way Home works. Each individual area is instanced with a handful of random people, sort of like the public chatrooms you see on Yahoo and the like. I think about 50 or so per area. So even if there are 10,000 people in Home you'll only run into a handful of them in a session.

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.

I believe (though I'm not entirely certain) that you can unlock each arcade game for your own 'space...' if you beat it in one of the public spaces. It seems kind of counter-intuitive though, especially since you have to wait for the public ones to free up. The idea of spending real cash to buy virtual items has always rubbed me the wrong way, and although I knew that Home would use that model for a long time now, I sort of assumed that it would be a "grind to unlock or pay to skip the grind" sort of thing that a lot of Asian MMOs do.

Why would you invite people this way? It is much, much easier to simply start up the game and send out an invite.

Up until last night I was pretty excited for Home. Not for Home itself, but because I recall reading an interview long ago that mentioned that all of the features of Home (in terms of partying and invites) would be added to the XMB. That's clearly not the case right now, but I'd like to believe that it's just because Home is still in beta.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[SuperKendall]

Then why did I only see about 200 people total in the entire world last night?

Don't you think it's very likely some kind of instancing or server balancing? Obviously the few places they have would be overwhelmed with even just 1k people, which there were obviously lot more of as you could tell by...

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.

The first download was a system update that was out a little while ago - perhaps a week or so. Generally people get them pretty often because you have to have them to access the store to look at new demos.

If you look at the download size, the actual Home download was only 77mb. Similarly the central hub download was only about 24mb... from an observer using it now, yes there was an absurd amount of waiting (in particular the starting apartment felt more like a cell than a living area when I realized I could not leave until the download completed). But from a technical standpoint I think they actually broke it out pretty well so that in normal use a person would hardly notice a delay, even for a new area - under normal conditions the download of 24-77mb of content would be a matter of seconds.

I actually think they made Home more approachable to casual trial than they would have if it had been one huge download.

I saw, and I am totally serious about this, nobody doing any of these things.

I sat in front of the pond for half an hour, and saw lots of people doing all sorts of things including the stage dancing. I think you were probably on at a time when hardly anyone could get in, or shunted to some really unpopulated instance...

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. ....

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.

Actually it worked out pretty well for regular residents of Second Life, and for Linden themselves. Sure companies have pulled back out but it added to the environment and drew in new users.

While I myself do not find these virtual worlds very appealing at all, I do think there are a lot of people that are much more into random strolling around and chatting than you think. I think people who have been gaming for a long time find Home lame and useless, but I can see that there are probably quite a few other people for who that is not true, just judging by spending a half hour watching activity in the central hub. Although again I find nothing appealing in Home, I can look beyond my own interests and say that I think that Sony will actually have a decent amount of success with Home. Not wild success, not a system seller, but it will be popular and continue to be used by many and refined despite the scorn True Gamers heap upon it.

Just think of it as a game, that you have no interest in playing - a kind of Barbie Horse Adventure of MMORP. There will be many interested, but not everyone - and that is OK.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Rycross]

Right, so, basically its what the XBox already had, only it only works for 10 games as opposed to EVERY game, plus a shitty 3D interface (yes Virginia, "virtual worlds" are a terrible replacement for a good menu), plus some extra marketing crap that any non-brainwashed human being shouldn't give a crap about.

Yeah, sounds fucking amazing. You'd have to be drinking a long drink from the kool-aid to think that sounded appealing. The fact that you're calling it "staggering" and "amazing" makes me think you're either paid or got hit in the head a few too many times.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 overrated wii fanboi.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[pjt33]

And about 1% have even heard of Home..

Which becomes even more significant when you consider that the number of people who play WoW in a month is about 70% of 14 million, so it wasn't really an unprecedently "gigantic userbase" to start with.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[MikeBabcock]

The parent was more correct than you -- and while they had the expected open beta network issues, the system was quite usable once fixed.

Since I've been in the closed beta since summer, I can assure you it will probably not be empty anytime soon.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[MikeBabcock]

Actually, he's right -- the lashing against Home has been going on a while, mostly from people who don't want to like it or have never used it.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[MikeBabcock]

I highly doubt they will do anything of the sort, on the basis that Home simply isn't viable for people with low bandwidth limits.

Now, I can't see Sony replicating their "clubhouse" work in Home elsewhere, so it will probably be the only way to do things like that, but we'll see.

IMHO, Home doesn't appear to be designed around launching games as its primary function at all.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[MikeBabcock]

Go back to the arcade and get a decent score on the Echochrome game. Enjoy your tip of the day.

Unlockables aren't "giveaways" they're unlockables, like the hidden paths in Super Mario.

Also, I don't understand how you missed people doing what he described, every day I've logged into Home since joining the private Beta, people have been doing what was described, hanging out and dance partying and such.

Why? Who knows, its kinda neat. I've met a few new interesting people in Home myself.

Also, the downloads work in the background if you're willing to putter about somewhere else, and you can jump straight to other areas of home with the 'start' menu. Did you notice that the downloads only happen if the area's bee updated? Or consider that lots of updating will happen during a public beta's early phase?

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Opportunist]

You're right, @home feels a little like the ability to join multiplayer games is some sort of tacked on ability, the basic function is some sort of social virtual world. Problem is, I'd estimate the ratio of people who want a social fantasyland to the people who just want that crap to go away and let them play multiplayer games at about 1:10000. I base this on the population of 2nd life vs. the people playing different other multiplayer games that don't have an elaborate social component like Diablo, WC3, CoD and so on.

Bottom line, if you try to force people to do something they don't want to do when they try to reach something they do want to do, they get fed up. Sony probably tries to use this "pressure" to make people look around and wonder, and buy some crap for their virtual toons, but I think this would drive people away from their console towards consoles that don't force their users to do what they don'T want to do. I can only speak about myself here, of course, but I would consider the concept flawed and thus the console flawed that doesn't offer me a game lobby without the hassle of wandering around a virutal world.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[mollymoo]

If you look at the download size, the actual Home download was only 77mb. Similarly the central hub download was only about 24mb... from an observer using it now, yes there was an absurd amount of waiting (in particular the starting apartment felt more like a cell than a living area when I realized I could not leave until the download completed). But from a technical standpoint I think they actually broke it out pretty well so that in normal use a person would hardly notice a delay, even for a new area - under normal conditions the download of 24-77mb of content would be a matter of seconds.

Even if the download is pretty quick, the load times are very noticeable. 10 seconds or more to walk through a door to a zone you've already downloaded. The WWW and HDD icons aren't active for most of that time, so it's not a server load issue and the modest download sizes mean it's not loading vast amounts of data. Home is just slow to load, even if the downloads are tolerably quick.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Dr. Manhattan]

You could almost even make it work in the game world. When you get hold of one of the games, it rotates off into the wall, like the secret rooms in every old movie. An empty arcade machine pops out, so someone else can play it. It can still look kinda like the real world, but everyone can still get a chance at the fun stuff.

Of course, the question of why this would be compelling remains hard to answer.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Free the Cowards]

Don't care if he's right or wrong. Phrases like "insane amount of terror" when describing an online gaming system are ridiculous and indicate that this person is mentally unwell.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

that actually sounds fascinating, from a cultural perspective.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[gEvil (beta)]

I tried it out for a while. I ended up finding the "point" and "laugh" gestures and would randomly pick a spot, repeatedly point at nothing, then start laughing. People would walk by, stop, look where I was pointing, look at me, look back where I was pointing, then move on. It was kind of fun playing the random crazy person. But otherwise, yeah, I really didn't get the point of the whole thing.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Kattspya]

Do you type nigger so often you automatically bleep out part of the word?

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought he meant nagger!

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[SuperKendall]

Even if the download is pretty quick, the load times are very noticeable. 10 seconds or more to walk through a door to a zone you've already downloaded. The WWW and HDD icons aren't active for most of that time, so it's not a server load issue and the modest download sizes mean it's not loading vast amounts of data. Home is just slow to load, even if the downloads are tolerably quick.

It's true that there was some kind of "installation" time I had not accounted for there that was as you say some fairly noticeable pause - but that would only happen once as after being installed it would simply be there. After that there's probably a small delay but I don't think it would be as much as ten seconds (perhaps I am wrong since I've not tried to return).

Again, a ten second delay once is tolerable, but most people get a 20 minute delay at that point right now due to load that makes your "apartment" feel much more like a cell. I still think it's absurd you cannot (a) jump off the balcony, or (b) simply wander down to the docks...

Since the hub is so important and not that much more in content size it could be argued it might be better to bundle at least
that part along with the main Home. Perhaps they will later and the current breakout is a plan to handle the initial much heavier load.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[MikeBabcock]

I agree with your perception of Home, except that I have no idea what pressure you're talking about. Sony's not pressuring anyone, if anything, the public has been pressuring Sony for Home, not the other way around.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[MikeBabcock]

Your reaction simply indicates you have no understanding of hyperbole or phrase-turning in general.

He said that fanboys of other systems (who don't want the PS3 to do well because they dislike it for fanciful reasons) appear to be terrified of Home doing well and lash out against it in order to stymie any positive feedback it receives.

For similar fanboy behaviour, feel free to go look up the scores of Resistance 2 on several websites which permit user-submitted reviews and note that many many people gave it a rating of 'zero' weeks before the game had been released.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[Opportunist]

The pressure is that Sony doesn't allow you to simply hop into your game and play it but you ahve to wander around their swell fantasy land and look at all the pretty little things you can buy, hoping that you succumb and actually do sink realy money into their virtual crap.

Ok, pressure is not the right word. It's more going on your nerves, hoping it would convince you to buy something. Dunno why they think that would work, but appearantly they do.

Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming

[MikeBabcock]

I still have no idea what fantasy land you're living in.

Sony doesn't make you use Home for ANYTHING. Home isn't required for anything. And even within Home, wandering through Home isn't even necessary (there's a pause menu option to jump to any other area from any area).

So what's this pressure to do something you don't have to do at all? Just set your PS3 to auto-run discs and drop a copy of R2 in and you're playing, no Home, no pressure.

Bitter Fanboy Tears - Love It!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can just taste the salty and bitter fanboy tears from that post...

Re:Bitter Fanboy Tears - Love It!

[ElectricTurtle]

But the tears of unfathomable sadness are sweet and yummy!

Re:Bitter Fanboy Tears - Love It!

[rkanodia]

Actually, I'm a Wii fanboy. My wife wanted something that could play Puzzle Fighter, and the Wii release schedule has been pretty thin for several months.

Sony Is Teaching Microsoft How To Do Online Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

 

PS3 Fan

[Enderandrew]

I just bought my second PS3. I'm a PS3 advocate, but frankly Home is two years too late. I think Sony went into this generation expecting to coast on their reputation from previous generations, and didn't do enough to actually win people over. The PS3 is the best BluRay player on the market, and a solid console, but frankly I'm not sure it even matters anymore.

Re:PS3 Fan

[Anonymous Coward]

I sorta feel sorry for you being a ps3 fan, you'll be put in the same group as the deranged fanboy idiot who responded to you. it's sorta like the Muslim extremists blowing shit up for their religion; everyone starts to think Muslims are a bunch of deranged retards who blow shit up. the retards are really hurting the reputation of the fine upstanding ones.

Re:PS3 Fan

[Anonymous Coward]

Your analogy is flawed, there is no such thing as an upstanding muslim.

Re:PS3 Fan

[Anonymous Coward]

or an upstanding ps3 owner

Oh God...

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Oh God...

[Anonymous Coward]

Co-developed the most powerful consumer electronic chip on the planet along with IBM and Toshiba

Yet can't push out graphics that look any better than the 360.

Help push through the next gen media format BluRay and included it in the PS3

By paying off anybody that used the competing format. So much hassle, I can only imagine how much work went into writing all the cheques.

Massively upgraded their first party developer studio array to over 20 compared to only 10 for Nintendo and, lol, 3 for Microsoft

Yep, this is true - it was the only way they could stop most of the rest their developers going cross-platform. Squenix, anyone?

Developed the incredible and gigantic Home online service

incredible, adj: So implausible as to elicit disbelief. Yep, that about covers it, though I'm sure not in the way you'd like.

Branched out into smaller but high quality game development with PSN games

Wow, and the Xbox 360 has only had that since fucking launch. I bet it took a whole load of effort to copy that 3 year-old idea.

Created at movie download service for sub-HD movie purchases and rentals

Yawn. On the Xbox 360 since 2006 in HD.

Created the console with most enormous graphical power advantage over its competitors ever in console history

Yet nobody has managed to translate that 'enormous advantage' to a game that looks even slightly better on the PS3 than it does on the 360. In fact, GTA4 on the PS3 looks worse .

I'm sure Rockstar are MS fanboys too, of course.

Disclaimer: I don't have a next-gen system. There's a 360 in the house but I'm a PC gamer and I'm staying that way - but, I know bullshit when I read it.

Re:Oh God...

[TrancePhreak]

This list makes me lol hard, and it's from an AC too.

Re:Oh God...

[bluefoxlucid]

"Home is two years too late"

Looks at the entire PS3 community worldwide packed onto the Home servers...

I don't see it.

"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.

They tacked on a "controller gimmick" like Guitar Hero and Rockband... the new controllers coming out these days are actually fun and immersive, and have expanded gameplay from "jam on abstract function-linked buttons!" to "interact directly with objects in the game world, via advanced human interface methods or just using controllers that physically represent the object you're controlling in the game on a high-fidelity analog."

Let's see Sony since the PS2 has:

* Co-developed the most powerful consumer electronic chip on the planet along with IBM and Toshiba

They asked IBM to do this IIRC. Also: it's a pain in the ass to code for, and ROI is minimal if you're not writing high-budget scientific simulation programs. A lot of modern supercomputers still use current processors, some have tried Cell but it seems mostly experimental. This is a good field for Cell; game console... not so much. From a business and consumer perspective this was a mistake; too much expense (cost, price) for too little return, and much cost passed on to the consumer.

* Help push through the next gen media format BluRay and included it in the PS3

i.e. Marketing format war with HD-DVD, in order to push the PS3 and secure the rights to a licensing monopoly in order to rake in cash while making BluRay discs more expensive (no competition). They learned well from DVD+- and Beta/VHS; if you let competing tech get a hold, you'll have to price war with them and lower costs to consumers for the final product to gain market share. They raised costs for manufacturers by banning combined HD-DVD/BluRay as per agreement; and increased market penetration by pushing PS3 as an incidental BluRay player. If they had a legal monopoly in the game console field, they would have gotten a DOJ injunction for this stunt.

* Massively upgraded their first party developer studio array to over 20 compared to only 10 for Nintendo and, lol, 3 for Microsoft

Yet Nintendo puts out far better stuff... plus Nintendo intentionally broke up and spread their internal development worldwide. Division One brought us The Legend of Zelda and Metroid on the Famicom Disk System; they are now Retro Studios, a second-party developer created by Nintendo by shipping all assets related to Division One (prior and current projects at the time) into a second-party subsidiary. Nintendo has several of these.

* Developed the incredible and gigantic Home online service

It's been out for a day and has proven itself to be a piece of shit.

* Branched out into smaller but high quality game development with PSN games

Competing with WiiWare and XBoX XNA, but I don't know if Microsoft plans to ever develop its own first-party stuff on XNA.

* Created at movie download service for sub-HD movie purchases and rentals

Never heard of it.

* Created the console with most enormous graphical power advantage over its competitors ever in console history

Big deal. Have you seen Megaman 9? That's probably the most awesome game I've seen in a while. Tales of Symphonia 2 also is good. Lots of stuff out there is good... most of it's just "look we have shiny graphics" crap. Eye candy doesn't make a good game, it makes a good movie.

Yeah, they are just 'coasting' on their reputation...

They pretty much are. Most of the industry is coasting on good graphics and flashy technical specs, rather than anything substantial like fun or good games.

Re:Oh God...

[Darkness404]

* Co-developed the most powerful consumer electronic chip on the planet along with IBM and Toshiba

Not like it will actually be *used*. Its not based on the x86 architecture which eliminates it from being used on both Windows PCs and Macs. And honestly, the speed of the media the console is reading from is a much larger bottleneck than its CPU.

* Help push through the next gen media format BluRay and included it in the PS3

...And what is so great about BluRay? Honestly, I don't see BluRay lasting longer than DVD, and I imagine that 3-4 years from now there will be some other major new format. BluRay is good for today, but I don't see it improving anything in the long term.

* Massively upgraded their first party developer studio array to over 20 compared to only 10 for Nintendo and, lol, 3 for Microsoft

...And name me some of Sony's first party games. Nintendo has Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, and loads of other recognizable characters that are sure-fire sellers. Microsoft at least has Halo which is a sure-fire sale. But what does Sony have? Nothing.

* Developed the incredible and gigantic Home online service

...Which most people hate. Just look at this comments thread.

* Branched out into smaller but high quality game development with PSN games

...Just like MS and Nintendo did?

* Created at movie download service for sub-HD movie purchases and rentals

...*yawn*, does it even matter anymore? Most people would go to a physical location and pick up a $1 per night DVD, get the movie off of iTunes, or stream/order the thing over Netflix.

* Created the console with most enormous graphical power advantage over its competitors ever in console history

...Which looks no better than the 360 honestly. And only looks marginally better when compared to the Wii over a standard definition TV.

Face it, this generation Sony can't compete with Nintendo and MS.

Re:Oh God...

[Path3]

Stupid fanboys.

Cell is being used by:

Sony in the 140-150 million PS3s that will be sold over the next 7 years of its life. And in future Sony products like their TVs and other media devices.

IBM is using huge number of Cell chips in their servers for media, aerospace, and other high performance computing clients

And Toshiba is using Cell chips for their media hardware in many of the same ways Sony is for everything but the PS3.

It is funny to see Intel scrambling to come up with their own Cell type chips. From their roadmap they are only about 5-7 years behind STI. Really shouldn't have wasted so much effort trying to keep that Itanium junk alive.

"And honestly, the speed of the media the console is reading from is a much larger bottleneck than its CPU."

Boggle...

Re:Oh God...

[prockcore]

* Grown the most awesome marijuana in the world and given it all to you.

Re:Oh God...

[chaim79]

Had to fire back on some of these...

* Co-developed the most powerful consumer electronic chip on the planet along with IBM and Toshiba

Not like it will actually be *used*. Its not based on the x86 architecture which eliminates it from being used on both Windows PCs and Macs. And honestly, the speed of the media the console is reading from is a much larger bottleneck than its CPU.

Right, it's not x86, it's Power PC. That leaves Windows out of the running (who cares?) but Linux/Unix can run it no problem, IBM sells Bladeservers that run it, there are several companies trying to get into the daughter card processor market with the Cell processor. In theory OSX Leopard/Tiger could be modified to run on the Cell processor, both OS's are x86/PowerPC agnostic.

* Help push through the next gen media format BluRay and included it in the PS3

...And what is so great about BluRay? Honestly, I don't see BluRay lasting longer than DVD, and I imagine that 3-4 years from now there will be some other major new format. BluRay is good for today, but I don't see it improving anything in the long term.

yah.... I have trouble arguing with this... Mainly because the arguments you are trying to use aren't actually negatives... kinda like trying to argue against going outside because the sky is blue... Try again with an actual argument.

* Massively upgraded their first party developer studio array to over 20 compared to only 10 for Nintendo and, lol, 3 for Microsoft

...And name me some of Sony's first party games. Nintendo has Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, and loads of other recognizable characters that are sure-fire sellers. Microsoft at least has Halo which is a sure-fire sale. But what does Sony have? Nothing.

• Metal Gear Solid 4 (ign score 10)
• Resistance (9.1)
• Resistance 2 (9.5)
• Motorstorm (8.9)
• Motorstorm: Pacific Rift (8.3)
• Ratchet & Clank, Tools of Destruction (9.4)
• Little Big Planet (9.5)
• Grand Turismo 5 Prologue (8.5)
• Siren: Blood Curse (8.4)
• Valkyria Chronicles (9.0)

That looks like a bit more then just 'nothing'... in fact, those look like some highly rated games... what does Microsoft have again? Halo 3 rated a good 9.5, and how many of the above are rated at or above a 9.5? And that's all you could name for the XBox?

* Developed the incredible and gigantic Home online service

...Which most people hate. Just look at this comments thread.

Actually agree with you there, no interest in PS3 Home...

... the PSN store, while good, isn't spectacular, no argument there.

* Created the console with most enormous graphical power advantage over its competitors ever in console history

...Which looks no better than the 360 honestly. And only looks marginally better when compared to the Wii over a standard definition TV.

While your statement about how it compares to the 360 works, you comparison against the Wii is just plain dumb... Of course it looks no better on standard def! It's designed for High Def! That is one of the dumbest arguments I've seen, get a High Def TV and see how the Wii graphics suck in comparison to a PS3 or 360 running 1080i (can the 360 push it that high? not sure).

Face it, this generation Sony can't compete with Nintendo and MS.

Sony is competing, it's not doing the greatest but it's there and selling more. They've made some dumb decisions, (home), some smart decisions (BlueRay FTW!) and have made progress... who knows, they may just pull out in the lead this generation after all...

Re:Oh God...

[chaim79]

I keep wanting to see Apple make use of it in OS X Servers, since OS X is x86/PowerPC agnostic. However OS X Snow Leopard is going to be x86 only... bummer... "Grand Central" sounds like something perfectly made for the Cell processor.

Re:Oh God...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Grand Central" sounds like something perfectly made for the Cell processor."

It was.

All of the stuff they are doing now with GPU acceleration was originally going to be Cell based. All of that Core image stuff was essentially Cell wrapper code.

That is until IBM decided to dump Apple as a client after landing contracts for all three console makers. They were sick of dealing with Apple and that was a perfect opportunity to cut ties with the company.

Of course no one from Apple will admit any of this now since the official line is they 'decided' to move to x86. Just like someone telling everyone about a former girl/boyfriend "They didn't dump me, I dumped them" to try to save face.

Of course Apple knows very few people will remember Apple running to PA Semi after getting dumped by IBM to try to save them.

AMD wasn't a viable chip supplier for Apple.

So Apple ended up turning to Intel and x86 as their 'first choice'.

A G5 with multiple Cells on a daughter card was going to be the ultimate media workstation. Photoshop, Maya, etc would have been mind bogglingly fast.

Re:Oh God...

[ShakaUVM]

>>Yet can't push out graphics that look any better than the 360.

I've played the same games on my TV with both a 360 and a PS3, and the PS3 is hands-down superior, though that's probably because the 360 I have access to (my buddy brings it over sometimes on weekends) isn't the Elite version, and thus doesn't have HDMI.

Re:Oh God...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid console fanboys, whether you own a PS3, Xbox or Wii you are all gay. Get a decent PC to find out what true gaming is all about, suckers. Or better still, get a life.

Re:Oh God...

[TrancePhreak]

What were sales like for MGS4 again? I think if you added up half of the games you listed you'd make up Halo 3's sales.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21514

Sony is losing the game, they need to get back on track and stop fooling around with "no price cuts!" and Home.

And your comment about 1080i graphics is hilarious. The Xbox1 was able to do 1080i. The 360 runs rings around 1080p, unlike the PS3 with its limited graphics memory and non-unified limited shader units.

The PS3 is a tangled mess. They rushed it to market and are paying for it.

Re:Oh God...

[Brianech]

Guess you missed NPD numbers for the month of November.
Wii - 2.04 million
DS - 1.57 million
Xbox 360 - 836, 000
PSP - 421,000
PS3 - 378,000
PS2 - 206, 000

Gimmick or not, the Wii is still selling overwhelmingly well. Cant argue that. And the attach rate for the Wii is slightly higher than the PS3's (5.5 to 5.3) Personally I have played my Wii a total of 31 hours in 1.5 years, but it still sells well, so its not nearly a failure

The PS3 isn't bad, but like the parent said, Sony expected to ride the PS2 wave, and didn't spend nearly enough time getting a decent launch catalog. This wouldn't have been a problem, but the 360 had a year head start, so it became a determining factor for the early months of the PS3. I was able to easily buy my PS3 2 days before Christmas a month after launch. The only game I bought was Resistance (22 launch titles, but barely any exclusives that I couldn't have already gotten for my 360)

The 360 itself had fewer launch titles than the PS3 at 18 (22 for PS3) but over the course of the year, had an extensive library. The attach rate for the 360 is 8.1, but that's also because of the year head start. Its strong showing last month could be attributed to the massive price cuts, but even then November is the start of holiday shopping and could be a bad sign for the PS3. It will be interesting to see the holiday sales difference between the 2 consoles.

Sadly Im a tech nerd that "needs" to have the latest gadgets, and has a job that can support my habit haha. I personally like all 3 consoles, but the Wii is more of a party console, the PS3's online service sucks and Home just made it worse and forced installs bug me, and the 360 always has me fearing the RROD. That said I spend much more time on my 360 than the other two, but that could change when Heavy Rain comes out (previews look awsome, guess we'll know more as it comes closure to launch). But sadly there just aren't that many more exclusives coming out for it. All of my co-workers have 360's and only a few ps3's so part of the reason my 360 gets more use, is due to playing online with them. So all multi-console game releases that I buy, I buy for the 360.

This is just my take on all 3 consoles, I own all 3 and play all 3 (although mostly just the PS3 and 360). Im sorry I dont like Home, and you will probably call me a fanboy of Nintendo/MS for saying that. But lets face it, Home is a pretty large letdown, and the loss of many exclusive series for the PS3 is also a large hit (Resident evil for example). So from one PS3 owner to another, lets not pretend the PS3 has already won the generation, and just admit Sony hasn't been perfect.

Re:Oh God...

[prockcore]

The $200 arcade version you can go buy right now has HDMI. It's the first gen 360s that didn't have it.

Re:Oh God...

[Anonymous Coward]

* Metal Gear Solid 4 (ign score 10)
        * Resistance (9.1)
        * Resistance 2 (9.5)
        * Motorstorm (8.9)
        * Motorstorm: Pacific Rift (8.3)
        * Ratchet & Clank, Tools of Destruction (9.4)
        * Little Big Planet (9.5)
        * Grand Turismo 5 Prologue (8.5)
        * Siren: Blood Curse (8.4)
        * Valkyria Chronicles (9.0)

Hardly any of the above are first-party. Exclusive, maybe, but not first-party.

Re:Oh God...

[Anonymous Coward]

explain how this (the ps3's graphics card) NVidia RSX Reality Synthesizer has the

most enormous graphical power advantage over its competitors ever in console history

Over ATI Xenon Both cards have their advantages, and neither is a clear winner. I dont own either console so I dont give a crap, but I dont see either card having any sort of significant advantage over the other.

Re:Oh God...

[spectecjr]

Let's see Sony since the PS2 has:

* Co-developed the most powerful consumer electronic chip on the planet along with IBM and Toshiba

Yes. In fact, if you believed Sony's PR before the launch, the chip they developed is so powerful that it can send signals FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT.

No, seriously. They claimed that you could use others' PS3's extra power when they weren't using it to render frames in games. A quick back of the envelope calculation for that showed that yep, you could do that, if you could transfer the rendered frames at speeds in excess of 3x10^8m/s

Re:Oh God...

[Darkness404]

Right, it's not x86, it's Power PC. That leaves Windows out of the running (who cares?) but Linux/Unix can run it no problem, IBM sells Bladeservers that run it, there are several companies trying to get into the daughter card processor market with the Cell processor. In theory OSX Leopard/Tiger could be modified to run on the Cell processor, both OS's are x86/PowerPC agnostic.

Yes, but the problem is A) Most people won't use Linux/Unix and B) OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is rumored to be x86 only. Yes, servers will have the CPU, but for the average consumer, it won't benefit them save for the PS3.

* Metal Gear Solid 4 (ign score 10) * Resistance (9.1) * Resistance 2 (9.5) * Motorstorm (8.9) * Motorstorm: Pacific Rift (8.3) * Ratchet & Clank, Tools of Destruction (9.4) * Little Big Planet (9.5) * Grand Turismo 5 Prologue (8.5) * Siren: Blood Curse (8.4) * Valkyria Chronicles (9.0) That looks like a bit more then just 'nothing'... in fact, those look like some highly rated games... what does Microsoft have again? Halo 3 rated a good 9.5, and how many of the above are rated at or above a 9.5? And that's all you could name for the XBox?

I was talking about first-party titles. MGS4 is Konami, Resistance and Ratchet and Clank are made by Insomniac Games which after looking through the Wikipedia article I found no reason to believe they were owned by Sony.

The 360 and PS3 have a fair share of exclusive games, however most of them are not first-party like Nintendo's games.

Re:Oh God...

[MikeBabcock]

Aside from ports, the first-party "check this out!" games are what I compare between the two. Drake's Fortune, Ratchet & Clank? Looks awesome with true 720p output and true 1080i output too.

What about the 360? Well Halo 3 looks nice, at 640p upscaled. What's that say?

Re:Oh God...

[KDR_11k]

Wait, Resident Evil was a loss of an exclusive series for the PS3? The previous game in the main series was initially exclusive to the Gamecube but got ports to the PS2, PC and later the Wii too. Was RE5 ever announced as an exclusive? I seem to recall it being PS3/360 pretty much from the start.

Re:Oh God...

[Steveftoth]

FYI, Xbox360 runs windows, a stripped down version but it's still windows.

Windows NT originally ran on both PowerPC and Alpha CPUs as well.

Anyway, keep the flame alive.

Re:Oh God...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Yep, that's why they just tacked on a controller gimmick to their same old hardware...wait no that's Nintendo.

As opposed to shiny new graphics, which is never a passing fancy, and always adds immeasurably to gameplay.

Re:Oh God...

[TrancePhreak]

I actually find the Xenon seems to be the better pick, if only for the unified shader architecture. There are a few 360/PS3 games where some of the shader detail was weaker on the PS3 and my guess is because the shader units are bottlenecked. With unified shaders, you'd always be able to use all your shaders all the time.

Re:Oh God...

[Deadguy2322]

Insomniac is part-owned by Sony and had dedicated themselves to Sony platform exclusivity back in the PS1 days, before Sony invested in them.

Re:Oh God...

[ToasterMonkey]

They claimed that you could use others' PS3's extra power when they weren't using it to render frames in games.

It's still possible. I think you misunderstood though because that doesn't make sense for games. Maybe in a HPC environment, which Cell is also intended for, work could be sent to non-local SPUs. Obviously the latency between two game consoles on the internet is too high for offloading any game logic unless you're into some really funky math games.

Re:Oh God...

[spectecjr]

It's still possible. I think you misunderstood though because that doesn't make sense for games. Maybe in a HPC environment, which Cell is also intended for, work could be sent to non-local SPUs. Obviously the latency between two game consoles on the internet is too high for offloading any game logic unless you're into some really funky math games.

No, I understand grid/clustered computing alright. But they were explicitly talking about using it for games.

Other claims that didn't materialize: "Speaking of video, Sony Computer Entertainment's chief technical officer Masa Chatani was on hand to show off the PS3's panoramic video functions. Since the console has two HD outputs, it is can be hooked up to two side-by-side HDTVs to projecting video in a 32:9 extra-widescreen format (think Cinemascope in your living room). Like a gigantic version of the Nintendo DS, the dual digital outputs also allow for an extended game display, with the action on one screen and either game information or video chat on the second."

Re:Oh God...

[Gizzmonic]

I've played the same games on my TV with both a 360 and a PS3, and the PS3 is hands-down superior, though that's probably because the 360 I have access to (my buddy brings it over sometimes on weekends) isn't the Elite version, and thus doesn't have HDMI.

Component vs. HDMI shouldn't make a big difference unless you're talking 1080p, and if both consoles are pumping the native resolution to your display (720p if he has a 720p display, and 1080i if he has a 1080i display) you should be able to get a fairly accurate representation.

Re:Oh God...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course no one from Apple will admit any of this now since the official line is they 'decided' to move to x86. Just like someone telling everyone about a former girl/boyfriend "They didn't dump me, I dumped them" to try to save face.

IBM and Motorola couldn't make a laptop version of the G5. That's the only reason Apple went to x86. IBM and Motorola should be ashamed they couldn't do it.

Who cares about 'egos,' that's simply a market reality.

Re:Oh God...

[ShakaUVM]

For TV maybe, but for games with a lot of straight edges, the difference is noticeable. At least it was when I switched my PS3 back and forth between component and HDMI to test it out.

Component was a lot better than the other analog options, but still not as good as HDMI.

Re:Oh God...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's that say?

That most exclusive AAA games on the PS3 look better than a given exclusive AAA game on the 360, while cross-platform games which are generally written to the lowest common denominator look equally good on both consoles because the 360 can only do "so much" and the developers:

1) don't want to spend extra time customizing for the PS3

2) don't want to listen to the 360 customers complaining they "didn't take the time to finish the game" if the PS3 version looks better ... even if the developers couldn't have made it look any better.

Re:Oh God...

[Gizzmonic]

Did you have the component set to 720p or 1080i? A lot of times, the PS3 will set it back to 480i if you don't specify. Anyway, the most important thing is matching the native display of the device, and if it's a digital display (LCD, DLP) HDMI will almost always be better. This won't necessarily be the case for CRT or plasma TV. Proper calibration is essential...and remember, don't get covered with scorpions!

Re:Oh God...

[ShakaUVM]

My LCD TV handles 1080p over component inputs, so it was running at whatever the highest output the PS3 was running on that setting. While it still looked not bad (especially when playing non-blu ray DVDs - the difference was insignificant), when running games like Tekken with long straight lines, with HDMI, the lines precisely followed the pixels on the LCD TV, but on component they bleeded a bit, and looked a lot less precise.

Re:Sony Is Teaching Microsoft How To Do Online Gam

[mollymoo]

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.

Fabricating Lies To Try To Make Your Point

[Anonymous Coward]

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

 

Re:Fabricating Lies To Try To Make Your Point

[Anonymous Coward]

Something doesn't become a lie simply because you say it's a lie. No one wants to waste their fucking time with pointless advertisements, or lineups for crappy arcade games.

There is comedy to be had though. A friend of mine walked around with a female avatar, and was quickly swarmed by males and friend invites. Even when he decided to talk his manly voice did not detract.

Re:Fabricating Lies To Try To Make Your Point

[Anonymous Coward]

??? So then the updates I too had to download to put up with Home didn't exist? Reading his post it pretty much summed up my experience with it today. I just dont see the point of entering Home, finding my buddies, and then launching a game together when, without using Home, I could launch the game and invite people right away. Penny arcade really nailed it when they compared the arcade games to something you'd find on a flash site. Its like "this is sorta fun for 5mins, but why not do this from a web browser on my comp and save myself a lot of time."

Xbots Embarassed By Their Own Online Service?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: I also saw

[cloneofsnake]

virtual bootlegging at the theatre

and rsmith-mac terminated them

Dreamcast Fanboys Became Xbox Fanboys

[Anonymous Coward]

1999:

Dreamcast Fanboys: "Teh Dreamcast is just as powerful as teh PS2"

2008:

Xbox Fanboys: "Teh 360 is just a powerful as teh PS3"

Hilarious losers.

Even the piece of shit Dreamcast put up more of a fight than the wimpy 360. But it wasn't designed by idiots rushing something out the door because of the marketplace flop of their current console.

Three years into the 360's sad life and the only thing it has to show for itself is an fucking outdated crossplatform engine as its 'graphical highpoint'

2008 and Xbots are still impressed with Bumpy Shiny Normal Maps everywhere...

PC gamers: Oh god not another crappy looking UE3 game...
PS3 gamers: Oh god not another crappy looking UE3 game...
360 gamers: Oh my god! Best graphics evah!!!!!

What a bunch of retards.

Re:Dreamcast Fanboys Became Xbox Fanboys

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done for quoting completely mythical 'fanboys' who bear no relevance to the points that I raised.

Care to actually answer a single fucking thing I said?

Re:Dreamcast Fanboys Became Xbox Fanboys

[bluefoxlucid]

The Dreamcast had better graphics capabilities, mainly due to vastly more texture memory. Sega went out of its way to show this off a lot by making stuff in Sonic Adventure rather non-repetitive.

Re:Dreamcast Fanboys Became Xbox Fanboys

[Path3]

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.

 

Re:Dreamcast Fanboys Became Xbox Fanboys

[compasseng]

Xbox Fanboys: "Teh 360 is just a powerful as teh PS3"

Hilarious losers.

No one ever says the 360 is just as powerful as the PS3. It's not. What I find interesting is that you'd never know the difference unless you read the specs. The PS3 is a engineering gem and a marketing disaster.

Re:Dreamcast Fanboys Became Xbox Fanboys

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this sounds ridiculous, but just hear me out.

What if we just like the game selection on the 360?
What if we didn't buy our console to get into some e-genitalia-measuring contest with random people on the Internet?

Re:Dreamcast Fanboys Became Xbox Fanboys

[compasseng]

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.

And what does that tell you? If you were a third party developer what would that tell you?

Re:Dreamcast Fanboys Became Xbox Fanboys

[Anonymous Coward]

That the Xbox is a dead end market with a massively inflated installed base of people who wont be buying multiple copies of your games like they are willing to with the defective console.

And that not only are your games not going to sell as well due to the absurd numbers of people with 3,4,5 or more consoles those people aren't going to have the cash to buy as many games due to wasting hundreds of dollars on replacement hardware.

And that your longterm installed base has an very low limit due to there not being that many people dumb enough to buy a console that is defective by design.

Which is exactly what we are seeing in the worldwide sales figures for the 360. The 360 is selling at almost exactly the same rate as the first Xbox marketplace failure - no matter how hard the idiots at vgchartz try to make it look like it is outselling the first Xbox.

The 360 will barely outsell the Xbox worldwide by the time it dies in the market late next year or early 2010. Maybe it will get close to 30 million compared to 25 for the first Xbox marketplace flop. Not much to show for wasting 7 years and 8 billion dollars for Microsoft.

Crossplatform titles are already selling better on the PS3 even in the US which is the 360's only real viable market due to the massive numbers of people with multiple consoles inflating the installed base.

Re:Dreamcast Fanboys Became Xbox Fanboys

[mollymoo]

It tells you that gamers have a significant investment in their gaming system beyond the hardware. They own a number of games and peripherals and have a number of friends online. It says nothing specific about the quality of the 360 experience, but says a lot about the barriers to switching systems in general.

Re:Dreamcast Fanboys Became Xbox Fanboys

[Anonymous Coward]

So if all the comparisons that favor the 360 are faked and rigged, do you have any non-rigged comparisons that show the PS3 games are superior? If not, why not? I'd expect at the very least someone would fake/rig a few pointing the other way.

Re:Dreamcast Fanboys Became Xbox Fanboys

[Anonymous Coward]

If the graphics of the PS3 are so superior to the 360 then why do almost all reviews for cross platform games mention that the PS3 version is inferior in graphics and/or framerate? Or are Gamespot "fanbois"? GS suck for many reasons but I don't think platform bias is something they can be accused of.

I can't be bothered to do a step by step through all your utterly ridiculous comments (that has been done very nicely below here anyway) I will just finish by saying you are either a colossal tool, paid by sony, or one of the best trolls that has ever graced these boards.

The only thing you are right about is that Halo 3 is a joke of a game.

Re:Dreamcast Fanboys Became Xbox Fanboys

[Colourspace]

I echo the above post. I' be owned all three, with an attach rate of no less than at least 15 titles each platform . I wish I had gow2, but I still have no regrets about trading the 360 in for the ps3. A) as above, it's one of the most advanced pieces of engineering a consumer can currently own and b) to justify a) we ain't seen nothing yet. If the ps3 stays afloat (sometimes I'm doubtful it will) it will start to piss over the competition in the next 18 months... If not? Intellivision vs atari? Dreamcast vs ps2? The technologically superior console is never the winner. But in the case of the ps3 it's damn nice to have one

It's a step forward in the genre

[Carbon016]

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.

Re:It's a step forward in the genre

[Anonymous Coward]

At least when you get dumb fanboys trying to play flame the stuff not on my console it is at least funny in a sad sort of way.

Whatever the fuck you wrote is just sad.

Re:It's a step forward in the genre

[Anonymous Coward]

the desperation of you sony nuts is hilarious. so very, very defensive. the GP said home was a solution looking for a problem and you somehow interpret that as "it sucks because it's not on my console" when for all you know the guy has a ps3 and still thinks its lame.

Re:It's a step forward in the genre

[Anonymous Coward]

No furries.

I have only 2 words for you sucker:

100M GET

Re:It's a step forward in the genre

[Hal_Porter]

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.

It would have been better to create the world with a few computer controlled furries and reward people for killing them. It would create a sense of community for one. The leaders of the lynch mobs could become important political leaders of the virtual world, massive photos of them would hang from buildings, lesser minions would get stuffed furry heads to decorate their apartments. Later on you could have plagues of Miis too, which would need to be eradicated to encourage patriotism toward the platform and hatred of its competitors.

Re:It's a step forward in the genre

[Carbon016]

Oh my god, fund this.

Re:It's a step forward in the genre

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a furry, you insensitive clod :-(

We'll be there, our avatars will just be dressed as hyoomans :3

Re:It's a step forward in the genre

[Ash-Fox]

No furries.

I do find it funny that people cry over other people having furry characters.

I guess it's more of a "They can't have fun like that! It's stupid! If I can have fun like that, NOBODY SHOULD!" kind of logic.

Re:It's a step forward in the genre

[Anonymous Coward]

it's more like a "stop fucking my dog" sort of logic tbqh

Re:It's a step forward in the genre

[Ash-Fox]

it's more like a "stop fucking my dog" sort of logic tbqh

No, not really. Most furs wouldn't even dream of touching a regular old animal for sexual purposes.

Re:It's a step forward in the genre

[Anonymous Coward]

Your name is Ash-Fox. Maybe you shouldn't be referring to "furs" externally? :3

You're right, though, we're a completely different group from zoophiles and the two rarely intersect.

Re:It's a step forward in the genre

[Ash-Fox]

Your name is Ash-Fox. Maybe you shouldn't be referring to "furs" externally? :3

What's wrong with my name?

Holy Shit! An Actual Dremcast Fanboy

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that is a rare sight.

It's like those stories back in the decades after WW2 where people would find lone Japanese soldiers on tiny islands alone who didn't know the war was over and their side had lost.

Re:Holy Shit! An Actual Dremcast Fanboy

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that is a rare sight.

It's like those stories back in the decades after WW2 where people would find lone Japanese soldiers on tiny islands alone who didn't know the war was over and their side had lost.

You sir, have just won the internets.

The problem is, there's no Second Life

[SuperKendall]

I may be speaking out of turn as I've not had a chance to run Home yet, but the thing that killed it long ago for me is the lack of user programmable elements. That was the pony that tricked out Second Life, the entire reason for its popularity.

That is the reason why the world is as sterile as Penny Arcade has noted. I'm going to check it out just to see what they have done, but without REAL user customization I can't see ever spending much time there.

And I'm not a Second Life devotee or anything along those lines - I just observe what kinds of things draw people in.

Re:The problem is, there's no Second Life

[Zwicky]

but the thing that killed it long ago for me is the lack of user programmable elements.

I hear that's going to be one of the major features of Playstation Ultimate Beta. You may wish to wait for that.

BluRay is PS3's saving grace

[compasseng]

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.

Re:BluRay is PS3's saving grace

[ionix5891]

Dude...

1. fire up bittorent/usenet

2. download a 1080p mp4 movie

3. put it on usb drive

4. plug drive into xbox360

5. play movie in all HD goodness via HDMI cable to your expensive HDTV

oh did i mention its free?

Re:BluRay is PS3's saving grace

[dangitman]

But those "HD goodness" bittorrents are highly compressed, and look (and sound) nowhere near as good as Blu-Ray/HD-DVD content.

Re:BluRay is PS3's saving grace

[Anonymous Coward]

BD doesn't use x264

so it may be more compressed, but a x264 at 1080p can look very close to a BD at a fraction of the bitrate.

Re:BluRay is PS3's saving grace

[dangitman]

Not at the file sizes you get on typical torrents. Also, they have been re-compressed from already compressed sources, not from the original footage.

Microtransaction hell

[Ender77]

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. "
------------

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.

Re:Microtransaction hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, do you not already get enough advertising in your life that you want to voluntarily sit through more of it for a free virtual tshirt with a logo of the sponsor on it??

Back in the day, a company would have put as much kick-ass free stuff in it as possible, in order to entice people to buy PS3s

(posting anon as I don't want to waste existing mods)

Re:Microtransaction hell

[BeanThere]

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.

Wait ... double-take ... what kind of person who is in a "financial bind", to the extent that he is worried about saving for food, is sitting around playing games on a PS3 over a broadband connection!? No wonder the economy is the way it is and these people are in financial trouble ... get off your bums and do something constructive. I hope you're not one of those in a "financial bind" - the fact that you're then sitting around posting to slashdot about it just makes it even worse.

Re:Microtransaction hell

[Ash-Fox]

Wait ... double-take ... what kind of person who is in a "financial bind", to the extent that he is worried about saving for food, is sitting around playing games on a PS3 over a broadband connection!?

Your average university and college kids, young adults who have crappy jobs and nothing better to do etc.

No wonder the economy is the way it is and these people are in financial trouble ... get off your bums and do something constructive.

So, they have to do some constructive during their own 'pleasure' time? Why? What more constructive thing could they do?

I hope you're not one of those in a "financial bind"

I am, but not worried about food, home etc. - I have that. I just don't have the money to do anything or money to move to a better town/city.

the fact that you're then sitting around posting to slashdot about it just makes it even worse.

Could you give a reason? I honestly don't understand your logic.

Re:Microtransaction hell

[BeanThere]

I honestly don't understand your logic.

Then you're part of the problem too; the OP specifically was referring to people who were basically worried about simply having the money to pay basics like foods/gas etc. ... don't you see the connection? Remarkable.

Re:Microtransaction hell

[Ash-Fox]

Then you're part of the problem too; the OP specifically was referring to people who were basically worried about simply having the money to pay basics like foods/gas etc. ... don't you see the connection? Remarkable.

No, I don't. The circumstances don't change whether or not they play on it or not in their free time. The money difference? Well, generally people buy things like PS3s etc. when they can afford, not when they can't. What the OP was referring to was people hitting hard times like now.

Now there you are mistaken

[SuperKendall]

I don't like Home at all, but you seem to be the typical Sony Hater who is using the opportunity to spread a lot of your most favored misinformation.

Not like it will actually be *used*. Its not based on the x86 architecture which eliminates it from being used on both Windows PCs and Macs. And honestly, the speed of the media the console is reading from is a much larger bottleneck than its CPU.

Except by tens, and eventually hundreds of millions of PS3s... that is not a negligable number, and it is even doing some practical good for things like Folding At Home. ...And what is so great about BluRay?

Obviously not much of a movie watcher. The increase in quality across the board (sound, resolution, color) is well worth the format.

I think a replacement is at least ten years off, the industry cannot switch sooner even if some other far larger format arrives.... but with BluRay expanding to 400GB discs that the current PS3 can read, just when is that supposed to happen? ...And name me some of Sony's first party games.

You are joking, right? Right?

Because surley anyone even a little close to gaming could name some really beloved and well-known titles like God of War, or Ratchet & Clank. Going down the list of newer stuff there's Resistance, or the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus series. Or the monster that is Metal Gear Solid (and I don't like it at all myself, but tons of people are drawn to the thing like flies). Or Gran Turismo.

The PS2 had a wealth of great first party developers and they are going full steam on the PS3 now. I didn't even mention things like the upcoming Killzone 2, since I don't think anyone really had much attachment to the first episode (I never played it). ...Just like MS and Nintendo did?(smaller high quality PSN games)

Now Microsoft kind of did that first, but I would argue Sony did it much better. From the lack of download sizes, to the quality and range of stuff they offer I think PSN is well ahead of either platform in that regard.

Microsoft has made a good move with XBA, but I don't know in the end as a gamer I would be better served from the output there compared to somewhat fewer, but much better polished PSN games that are numerous. In fact most of the gaming I do on the PS3 is PSN game related.

Face it, this generation Sony can't compete with Nintendo and MS.

What you should probably face yourself is that they are catching up rapidly. Not that Home will help in any way I think, but in all other things the PS3 offers it makes for a great all-around gaming package in a way the other systems do not.

I do think the Wii will probably hold the lead the entire generation though, it seems unlikely anyone could possibly surpass them.

Re:Now there you are mistaken

[TrancePhreak]

MGS4 is third party and Konami pretty much took a dive because of it. You can find it in the cheap games bins in Japan. PSN has a large variety of games... like that shooter game, or that other shooter game... Warhawk, the shooter game. You will likely never see a game on PS3 with a 400GB Blu-Ray disc, unless all that content is video. It has trouble enough reading the discs as they are that almost every game has mandatory installs. You say Sony is catching up, yet November numbers show 360 sold 2x or more than PS3, and the Wii sold at an incredible >4x the PS3.

Re:Now there you are mistaken

[SuperKendall]

PSN has a large variety of games... like that shooter game, or that other shooter game...

You sure you haven't got the 360 mistaken there by chance? I have no interest in Warhawk.

No, instead I can download a whole Ratchet & Clank game that wouldn't even fit on Live. Or play Pixeljunk Monsters. Or play really one of my favorite games, Eden... FlOW was cool but really a tech demo, Eden is a real game.

They also have a lot of other stuff, like Pain or various re-workings or original versions of stuff like Megaman or whatever (some of that also on Live I believe). But there is a wide range of very good titles.

You will likely never see a game on PS3 with a 400GB Blu-Ray disc, unless all that content is video. It has trouble enough reading the discs as they are that almost every game has mandatory installs.

"50GB is enough for anyone", eh? I guess you can always just get a new user ID in a few years.

You say Sony is catching up, yet November numbers show 360 sold 2x or more than PS3, and the Wii sold at an incredible >4x the PS3.

Unlike you I'm smarter than to cherry-pick one month and say anything one way or the other. Look at the long term trends.

Re:Now there you are mistaken

[TrancePhreak]

How big is Ratchet & Clank? Is it the 8 gigs that is Halo 2 or Fable that are available on XBL?

Flow is not very different from the free flash version, so why did it cost so much on PSN?

PixelJunk Monsters/Eden while charming, did not seem any better than [random flash game] that you can play on the web for free... On the PS3's browser even. Expecially monsters, that game is so dull one of the better strategies is to just stand in one place for most of the level.

Re:Now there you are mistaken

[LKM]

The PS3 will not sell even a hundred millions.

Re:Now there you are mistaken

[Kneo24]

Unlike you I'm smarter than to cherry-pick one month and say anything one way or the other. Look at the long term trends.

Generally speaking, the 360 has outsold the PS3 month by month. The long term trends are going to be irrelevant if you look at it from a generation point of view, which almost everyone does. Now if you want to combine PS2 and PS3 sales, then yes, Sony is beating Microsoft, but look at that, they need the power of two consoles, one a whole generation behind, to try and stay relevant. The PS2 just isn't relevant. You rarely hear anything about PS2 games still being made (some studios still do it...). This is actually how it's been for Sony for at least a year, if not longer. It's just not cherry-picking one month, the trend is there. The Wii continues to outsell the 360, the 360 continues to outsell the PS3, and the PS3 barely manages to outsell the PS2.

Newer PS3's don't officially support backwards compatibility, which in of itself is going to be cumbersome for developers. Do I develop for the PS2? For the PS3? For both? Do I ignore Sony all together? How many people bought their PS3 just for blu-ray?

And what's even more sad about the PS3 is that it's selling less units in a sales heavy month than it did the previous year, while the other two competitors have sold more. This is just in North America alone. Sony needs to address why the sales of their current generation console are barely outselling their last generation console. People might think that the long term sales is a good thing, but I'm not entirely sure it is in this scenario. Sony has a bad name for themselves for everyone else but Sony lovers, and the number of those people are dwindling, if NPD numbers are any indication here.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/12/november-game-s.html

Re:Now there you are mistaken

[mollymoo]

Generally speaking, the 360 has outsold the PS3 month by month.

In the year to September, the 360 took 18% of console sales and the PS3 24%. The 360 did indeed overtake the PS3 by a small margin again last month, though people holding out for the release of the 80 GB PS3 and the boost Gears of War 2 gave to 360 sales figures undoubtedly skewed things. For the calendar year, the PS3 is well on target to have outsold the 360 overall.

Re:Now there you are mistaken

[KDR_11k]

Hundred million PS3s? Have you checked the sales numbers? The thing's going over like the Gamecube or something. November 2008 sales were 378k, at that rate it'd take them about 18 years to hit 100M.

Or the monster that is Metal Gear Solid

First party means developers owned by the console manufacturer, not just an exclusive release. MGS is made by Konami, not Sony.

What you should probably face yourself is that they are catching up rapidly.

NPD:
Wii 2.04m
DS 1.57m
XBox 360 836k
PSP 421k
PS3 378k
PS2 206k

That doesn't look rapidly, that doesn't even look like catching up.

Re:Now there you are mistaken

[Kneo24]

Looking at Wikipedia here, as of Septmeber 2008, world wide sales figures between the two:

PS3 - 16.84 million
XBox 360 - 22 million

If you look at the Wii's numbers, it's almost sold as much as both of the PS3 and the 360 put together. (34.55 million) And the Wii has been available as long as the PS3.

I realize that the 360 has been out longer than the PS3 by about a year and a half, but the PS3 sales are dropping at this point. In a month where it should have sold big in the U.S., it couldn't even double the sales, while the 360 and the Wii (which has very surprising numbers) sold by a factor of 2.5 over the previous month.

It would be faulty to call the PS3 a failure, but it just looks like interest in it is starting to wane. I wouldn't consider anything long-term with the PS3. Sony needs to go back to the drawing board and look at what made the PS2 so damn popular that it's still selling two years into the next gen cycle (and selling nearly as much as it's current gen counterpart), and duplicate that success with the PS4.

Re:Now there you are mistaken

[SuperKendall]

How big is Ratchet & Clank? Is it the 8 gigs that is Halo 2 or Fable that are available on XBL?

Sorry, I could have sworn they had a limit of 512MB on Live content. But obviously if they have large material, they must have lifted that...

Flow is not very different from the free flash version, so why did it cost so much on PSN?

Having played through both, the Playstation version is much, much nicer.... worth the small amount it costs. But like I said Eden (from the same people) is really a full game in a way that FlOW is not.

PixelJunk Monsters/Eden while charming, did not seem any better than [random flash game] that you can play on the web for free... On the PS3's browser even. Expecially monsters, that game is so dull one of the better strategies is to just stand in one place for most of the level.

No way you finished Monsters (much less the followup) if that was your plan.

Eden Is far, far deeper than any flash game once you get into it. If you look beyond the graphics at the gameplay, it's quite deep and in later levels has a great variance in gameplay elements. I like it much more than Monsters, which was fun but in the end as you say similar to other tower defense games you can play elsewhere (although again with more polish and depth than the flash games will offer).

Re:Now there you are mistaken

[ToasterMonkey]

He was referring to the number of consoles sold Sept 2007 to Sept 2008, not the grand totals

Why is Wii ever compared to the other consoles? It's in a league of it's own, with no HD, no DVD, no next gen media format, entirely different price point, different audience, etc.
You might as well be comparing iPhones to GameBoys. Maybe Microsoft is trying to go there with low end XBox models, but for damn sure, a discussion of PS3 vs. 360 has no room for the Wii.

Re:Now there you are mistaken

[Kneo24]

Ah well, even given that, the only numbers I can readily find are NPD numbers, and they indicate something quite different. It looks quite more favorable if you look at October to October numbers, as the PS3 is barely lagging behind there... However if you look at September to September, the 360 comes out pretty far ahead.

September to September

October to October

Anyways, my point is I call bullshit on what they've stated. While in some territories at certain points it has outsold more, sales of the PS3 seem to be dwindling.

I threw the Wii in there for fun, showing that even though it is a current gen console with last gen hardware, it can manage to crush what people perceive to be power houses.

You're Joking Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if it was for 'teh BluRay' those 140 million PS2 owners out there would of been glad to have instead:

Wii
A fucking GameCube with a novelty controller bolted on

or

360
The worst console hardware in history
The noisiest console in history
Drives that scratch or destroy their disks
No way to easily upgrade their harddrives without massively overpriced Microsoft only drives
No keyboard and mouse support
50 dollar a year online fees
No dedicated servers for games
Crappy P2P online gaming with games that can only hand 8 to 16 or so players per game
Shitty 360 level graphics - a fucking Unreal Engine game would be the 'best looking' game, lol!
The first console to have a smaller storage format than a previous gen with only 7GB per disc vs 8.5 last gen

And of course the big one,
The massive number of Sony first party games that they all bought those 140 million PS2s and 105 million PS1s for

Phew, good thing Sony put those BluRay drives in the PS3...

Re:You're Joking Right...

[KDR_11k]

Yes, if it was for 'teh BluRay' those 140 million PS2 owners out there would of been glad to have instead:

Wii
A fucking GameCube with a novelty controller bolted on

Apparently yes because the Wii stole the PS2's position in the market. If you think the Wii is just a Gamecube with a novelty controller bolted on it's no surprise that you have no idea why it's dominating the market.

Re:You're Joking Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

what a fanboy.

I owned a PS2 and now own all 3 systems and i can easily say the 360 gets the most use. yes it may not be reliable; but it's fun. and thats what matters when you're playing games.

also if you visit eurogamer and beyond3D it becomes very clear in cross console comparisons that the 360 is just better techincally (despite the cell). It has better fps, better AA, and higher res textures 99% of the time.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are really boring. ok, it's something new different, not quite the coolest thing you've ever seen, but since it's SONY I guess you're going to rip it apart no matter what it actually is.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Paradigm_Complex]

A large part of why we're complaining is that it is not necessarily new (Second Life being the most obvious thing to compare it to), and the different things - like waiting in a virtual line - are just plain horrible. The fact that it's from SONY isn't exactly why we're ripping it apart. There's plenty of other aspects to burn.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are really boring. ok, it's something new different, not quite the coolest thing you've ever seen, but since it's SONY I guess . . .

. .. IT'S GOING TO BLOW UP!!!2!#!

The Fanboys Are Pissing Their Pink Liddle Panties!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are absolutely terrified of Home.

That is so fucking awesome!

I do miss Zonk though. A good Slashdot Sony/PS3 shitfest like we have going on here just isn't the same.

Did someone take the pathetic little shit out back behind the Slashdot shed and put him out of his misery?

Trolls + Fanbois make moderating pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm modding and this whole discussion on PS3/Home is totally pointless as there doesn't seem to be anyone who has got any objectivity about this.
Is Home worthwhile?
Is there a good chance it will improve over time?
Will it sell more PS3s?
What's lacking?
What's good about it?
Is there a point in Avatar style virtual worlds?

So I'm leaving this idiotic troll fest and modding elsewhere.

Buy a PC, no vendor lock-in

[Dan667]

No DRM. Why even worry about crap consoles.

Scrap it for a real game

[MassiveForces]

The largest unsharded MMORPG - EVE-Online, could have been a much better choice to implement a socializing system. Eve has been talking about having space stations where people can actually get out of their ships and walk around, do buisness. I would imagine a situation where "Home" is actually situated on populated planets and in addition to whatever BS sony fills home with currently there could be a system of opening businesses to trade with EVE pilots, and for those who actually have subscriptions to EVE to leave planets etc. Then it would be huge.

Why? Bugs and price.

[TFer_Atvar]

It's extraordinarily difficult to code games for a virtually infinite number of software and hardware configurations. That leads to all sorts of bugs and problems that usually aren't fixed on a PC game until after the first or second round of patches. With a console, I know that things are going to be pretty darn good out of the box, since there's only one configuration that programmers have to deal with.

In addition, I never have to worry about upgrading my system to ensure that I can play the latest game with all the graphics options turned on. Because every console edition is the same, I don't have to worry that I don't have the XX37 uber graphics card on my Xbox360. Sure, there's things like a hard drive to worry about, but that's a massively smaller problem than the infinite number of PC configurations out there.

In short, I like my console more for gaming because of its simplicity. By releasing Home, Sony has tried to make the console more complicated, more like a PC. And that's not what I want.

Re:Why? Bugs and price.

[Ash-Fox]

It's extraordinarily difficult to code games for a virtually infinite number of software and hardware configurations.

Fortunately, there are things like AGAR that make it almost just as easy for developing on one platform, one set of hardware.

In addition, I never have to worry about upgrading my system to ensure that I can play the latest game with all the graphics options turned on.

I don't either, I just buy a very good computer initially and after several years, a new one, also very good.

In short, I like my console more for gaming because of its simplicity.

I've avoided consoles because they were often the worse deal.

Currently with the games I am interested in and own, which have console versions, perform, look and work a lot better on the PC than on the consoles. They don't have the numerous issues or the lagg issues from not running dedicated servers etc.

Orange box is a biggy when it comes to issues, lack of updates, worse graphics, insane amount of bugs, barely anyone seems to play it anymore on the consoles due to the bugs. UT3 doesn't work as well on the consoles (annoying irritating bugs) while the PC version is fine, the graphics are slightly poorer, Left 4 Dead - it's really poor on the consoles in terms of how the AI screws up, multi player is horrendous with lag issues and visually, on my laptop it still looks better. Call of Duty 4, having to pay to get the console updates for the new maps while PC users get free copies - I don't want to do that. The graphics in that case were still, also superior on my laptop...

Don't mistaken me for a graphics freak, having slightly lesser graphics doesn't bother me -- but when I have to compare having a portable system (laptop), spending less money by spending a bit more on a PC, not forced to upgrade every five years to play the latest greatest title, getting often superior graphics (as was in all the cases above) and usually not being on the short end of the stick when it comes to the games working on a certain platform and the capability to have all these wonderful mods people create....

I don't have to pay silly subscriptions to use my own hardware as a server on my own internet connection I paid for (see xbox live), I don't have to pay to get trivial features that should be free. I'm not restricted in what a single company decides (Microsoft, Sony) I should be able to run.

On top of that, we have the console creators (Sony, Microsoft) who charge the developers for releasing various updates to their games. Requiring numerous things like having to pay for certification (which obviously don't filter bugs or improve the game quality) to paying for just having a download available, this causes the developers to stagnate greatly on updates or just simply not release them because it's too much effort. Meanwhile, the PC versions of the game are kept fully up to date with fixes etc.

Sony has tried to make the console more complicated, more like a PC.

You know, before Microsoft came on the scene, people were joking that if Microsoft ever made a console it would crash, have numerous hardware issues. The sad thing is that when they did come on the scene, they brought it all. Crashes, hardware failures (red rings of death - really a high failure rate), it's incredible. Sony's own agenda with the PS3 was not to make it PC-like, but to push bluray on everyone.

When it comes to a choice between consoles or PC... There really isn't a choice when I look at both of them logically.

"Flawed business model"?

[jlarocco]

That a pretty bold statement given that the business model hasn't actually been tested yet.

Do not think it will ever replace the store...

[SuperKendall]

There's no way that Sony would drop an efficient way for you to spend money, as such I'm sure the store will always be there.

Having online matchmaking move to Home only, seems very unlikely to me but not as much outside the realm of possibility...

I find spaces like this pretty annoying since all anyone wants to do there is giggle at sexual innuendo (or simply crude remarks). I'd be pretty put off too if I had to go there to do anything.

I am not sure it will really be ignored as much as I thought it would be, once the servers speed up a bit I can see a lot of people using it as a sort of casual chat room when bored, I think it has a few things going for it that other virtual environments failed to do well. It's not a space traditional gamers would find much of interest in, but perhaps the game specific places are better that way.

Re:Do not think it will ever replace the store...

[mollymoo]

Having online matchmaking move to Home only, seems very unlikely to me but not as much outside the realm of possibility...

It would seem unlikely to me too, but I'm worried about the fact that the closest equivalent to XBL's party system on PSN are the Clubs in Home (it costs money to set up a Club *sigh*). A Club does more than just allow you to handle group gaming, but that's currently the only PSN-wide way to have a group, though there are some game-specific group mechanisms. You don't need a Club to play with your friends, but if you wanted an evening where you play a few different games it's currently the most efficient mechanism (or will be once the Home patches are out for more games).

Simply Pointless

[LKM]

I own all three consoles, I love Little Big Planet, I think Motorstorm 2 is the best arcade racer ever, and I was pretty hyped for Home. I got into the Home beta a few weeks ago, and I think it's the most useless and boring and pointless thing I've ever seen. I'm beginning to suspect that Sony has continued to delay this thing since PS2 times not because it was hard to implement, but because they were desperately trying to find a reason for it to exist. They still haven't found one, and neither have I.

Second Life vs. Home

[LKM]

I don't want to defend Second Life here, but the one redeeming factor it has is user-generated content. Home lacks that. It's like Second Life without the only thing that made Second Life marginally interesting.

Re:Second Life vs. Home

[arb phd slp]

I don't want to defend Second Life here, but the one redeeming factor it has is user-generated content. Home lacks that. It's like Second Life without the only thing that made Second Life marginally interesting.

I feel the same way. There is one (1) thing out there that makes me think "Hmm, I wish I had a PS3" and that's Little Big Planet. The major selling feature of LBP is the user-generated content.

Cut the censorship bullshit, Sony.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hello" gets filtered because "Hell" is in it. "Something" does too, because "meth" is in it. This was annoying and unnecessary when you did it in Everquest Online Adventures, and it's annoying now.

If anything, make it an option the user can toggle.

Re:Cut the censorship bullshit, Sony.

[Zwicky]

Hell^H^H^H^Ho Mr Coward,

We have in^H^H^H^Hvestigated your complaint and, while we agree fer^H^H^H^H^H^Hocious filter controls can be frustrating, we don't understand what the prob^H^H^Hlem is here

Our censorship filters are highly-sophisticated, subtle and non-intrusive. They are sturd^H^H^H^Hy and not in any way prone to false positivies. They are most certainly not a hindrance to the users of Ho^H^Hme or their ability to create a Ho^H^Hme identit^H^H^Hy.

We would put it^H^H^H to you that you are creating a prob^H^H^Hlem where there really isn't one. We fail to find anyone else who re^H^H^H^H^Hally feels as strongly about this as you do.

We are high^H^H^H^Hly confident that Ho^H^Hme will grow into something that will ultimate^H^H^H^Hly enjoy a timeless ex^H^H^Histence, but we need people like you to stop being so tightfist^H^H^H^Hed and give us money. Be sure to look out for new features in^H^H^H^H^H the coming months: Ho^H^Hw would you like to purchase a hot sports car? A Filipino wife? Or gasm^H^H^H^H^H^Hasks with diamond-rimmed^H^H^H^H^H^H visors? These and more are fully mapped o^H^H^H^Hut for subsequent updates. Rest ass^H^H^Hured we are not performing mediocre tin^H^H^H^H^H^Hkering here. Ho^H^Hme will change the way everyone thinks about socializing.

Thanks for your understanding in this matter.

Sony Computer US^H^H^H^H^H^HA
Saturd^H^H^H^Hay December 13 2008

Obligatory XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

http://xkcd.com/471/

Look at me, I'm different

[Anonymous Coward]

I kind of like Playstation Home. It's not a gee-wizz-bang feature, and I don't use it much. But when I do, I enjoy the experience. It's a pretty neat idea, and I'll be using it to look for people who can help me if I get stuck in a game. Oh, and look at game presentations, if they start using it for that.

It's interesting though to see that the people who "don't like it", actually hate it so much, and that they can spend a lot of time and energy complaining about it (most rants make their point at the first paragraph, and the following 10 paragraphs are just to reinforce how important the first paragraph is to them). One can not help wonder why it's such a big deal.

Re:Look at me, I'm different

[cyberworm]

I kind of like Playstation Home. It's not a gee-wizz-bang feature, and I don't use it much. But when I do, I enjoy the experience. It's a pretty neat idea, and I'll be using it to look for people who can help me if I get stuck in a game. Oh, and look at game presentations, if they start using it for that.

It's interesting though to see that the people who "don't like it", actually hate it so much, and that they can spend a lot of time and energy complaining about it (most rants make their point at the first paragraph, and the following 10 paragraphs are just to reinforce how important the first paragraph is to them). One can not help wonder why it's such a big deal.

I totally agree with you. It's still in beta so there are bound to be a myriad of things going wrong with it. They weren't even on time for the opening of it, what do you expect? If you look at sony's "Home" forums before they announced this open beta launch, people were clamoring for closed beta invites. Everyone wanted to be a part of it and see it. Now that it's open everyone and their mother seem to be coming out saying, "it stinks."

It was really funny to watch the "Home" forum and all of the spam topics that kept coming up baiting home users and such on the leadup to what was supposed to be the 7am est opening.


My opinion of it from the closed beta to the open beta is the same. "This is neat, but what am I supposed to do with it?"

There was really nothing there for me to give an opinion about it. I don't have a keyboard attached to my ps3 and I don't have or want a headset (I like listening to music instead of braying jackasses) so chatting with people was pretty much out.

I think I would buy a new outfit or something to distinguish my avatar from other people a few times until I'm happy. It's a customization feature and it's certainly not like you have to change clothes everyday. Who knows, maybe they will give out shirts in contests or for special trophies or a free shirt for each game you have etc... I don't know. Sony says it will be constantly changing so they've left the doors open for pretty much anything.

The purchasing of clubs is an interesting idea also. The fee is probably to keep spam down so that more focused and well run clubs (clans even?) emerge. You could meet up at the video game of your choice with your clan and wait for another clan to show up or pre-arrange a meeting.

It will be interesting to see what is coming along, if it will always be in beta, and how people react as it changes.

Re:Look at me, I'm different

[elrous0]

I like it too. I've always wanted a place where I could socialize with other online gamers outside of an actual game.

People who don't like it don't have to use it. I don't understand all the hate for something that's completely optional. It's not like Sony is MAKING you use it (unlike the new 360 interface and those lame Mii's).

Re:Sony Is Teaching Microsoft How To Do Online Gam

[Rycross]

XBox Live has nothing to do with whether a game uses P2P or dedicated servers. Left 4 Dead, for example, uses dedicated servers on XBox. Developers tend to use P2P because its cheaper than dedicated servers and, contrary to popular belief, is usually pretty good.

Re:Sony Is Teaching Microsoft How To Do Online Gam

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't you just get a 360 then? I mean, both companies are douchebags so the "Microsoft sucks" meme really doesn't apply. Unless you wanted a BD player.

Re:Sony Is Teaching Microsoft How To Do Online Gam

[mollymoo]

I've been a Gran Turismo and Metal Gear fan for the best part of a decade, I bought my PS3 when GT5p came out. I like driving games and while Forza seems pretty decent (and is way more complete than GT5p), the Xbox wheel is garbage. The 360 is pretty cheap now and there are rumours of a price cut, which would make it absurdly cheap, so I may get one eventually.

Sony are douchebags, but I've never been forced to buy Sony kit due to their illegal abuse of market dominance. For a long time I had no choice but to run Windows if I wanted to work. I've found it pretty trivial to avoid Sony's attempts at lock-in, but until fairly recently found it impossible to avoid Microsoft's.

Language filter

[edmazur]

The language filter is quite primitive. Words like "hello" and "something" become "****o" and "so****ing".

NXE Home, amirite?

[Tarmus]

We get it already. :rolls eyes:

Re:The Fanboys Are Pissing Their Pink Liddle Panti

[Gizzmonic]

Did someone take the pathetic little shit out back behind the Slashdot shed and put him out of his misery?

The PvP Slashdot shed on PS3 Home is under beta testing. We'll get back to you.