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PlayStation Home Beta Opens to the Public
Yesterday Sony launched the open beta for PlayStation Home, the virtual world designed for PlayStation Network community members. Eurogamer has an in-depth look at the features of Home. They point out some glaring weaknesses, such as a poor communication system, a flawed business model, and the inability to form groups without entering games, something the recently revamped Xbox interface does better. "It's not alienating, it's easy to identify with, and the socialising and advertising are entirely in context. But you're left pondering the inevitable question: why would you want to spend any time here?" Home's debut to the public saw a few typical launch-day problems, but Sony was quick to address them and get things back on track. Gizmodo has some screenshots and basic information available.
it's like Myspace. Let's see if the same model works more than once.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/12/12/
Makes you want to rush out and get a PS3.... NOT.
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http://penny-arcade.com/ has an extremely critical take on it.
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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:
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.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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.
Overclockers
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!"
It seems you are one of the guys defending their flawed business model.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
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.
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.
Why would you bother calling someone else a fanboy?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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.
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.)
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
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.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
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
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.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
*looks for the "Disclaimer: I am employed by Sony" and finding none assumes it was a forgetful mistake and moves on*
Where are the dedicated servers for Call of Duty 4 & 5, GT5p, RSV2? Warhawk is the only game I've played on my PS3 which had dedicated servers.
I have a PS3, but I play on a friends' 360 regularly. Live is so good I've got a Live account even though I don't have a 360 myself. It's just better than PSN - it's faster (updates, menus, messaging - Live itself, I don't mean the games), people actually have mics and use them, you can form groups (parties), you can see what your friends are playing, the reputation system means you can prefer and avoid players and the player matching will take that into account, the list goes on and on. PSN is lacking so many features Live has had for years it's pretty embarrassing. It does cost money, but Microsoft use that money to ensure the Live servers are fast (PSN takes an age to show your own trophies, Live is virtually instant) and they can shove money at game publishers and get early releases and exclusive content.
I fucking hate Microsoft and think the 360 isn't particularly impressive - DVDs and no mandatory hard drive sucks, everybody with a 360 I know has had the RROD at least once and worn out many controllers - but even I can see Live is just plain better than PSN. The only people who don't think so are fanboys and people who've never used it. A few games with dedicated server doesn't make up for the deficiencies, even when you take the price of Live into account.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
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.
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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.)
:) 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...)
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.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
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.
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This list makes me lol hard, and it's from an AC too.
-]Phreak Out[-
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.
"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.
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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.
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* 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
* 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
Face it, this generation Sony can't compete with Nintendo and MS.
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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.
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.
* Grown the most awesome marijuana in the world and given it all to you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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).
* 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
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
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
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
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...
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AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
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.
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
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.
>>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.
But the tears of unfathomable sadness are sweet and yummy!
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
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.
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.
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.
-]Phreak Out[-
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That a pretty bold statement given that the business model hasn't actually been tested yet.
Maybe not
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.
I was once a horse.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The $200 arcade version you can go buy right now has HDMI. It's the first gen 360s that didn't have it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
-1 overrated wii fanboi.
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.
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
Coming soon - pyrogyra
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.
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo
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.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
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.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Of course, the question of why this would be compelling remains hard to answer.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
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
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo
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.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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.
As opposed to shiny new graphics, which is never a passing fancy, and always adds immeasurably to gameplay.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
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.
-]Phreak Out[-
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.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
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.
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.
This guy's the limit!
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.
Do you type nigger so often you automatically bleep out part of the word?
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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
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.
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.
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.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
The language filter is quite primitive. Words like "hello" and "something" become "****o" and "so****ing".
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."
Coming soon - pyrogyra
We get it already. :rolls eyes:
Punch drunk, and without bail.
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).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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!
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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.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)