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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.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/12/12/
Makes you want to rush out and get a PS3.... NOT.
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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:
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!"
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.
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.
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.
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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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
You zap the moderators with a wand of humor! The moderators resist!
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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* 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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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.
* 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.
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.