Slashdot Mirror
PlayStation Home Transforming Into Social Platform
donniebaseball23 writes "Sony's virtual world, PlayStation Home, has seen over 23 million users since launching in December 2008, and now the service is about to undergo its biggest change yet. Jack Buser, director of PlayStation Home, says Sony is planning a 'total redesign of the heart of PlayStation Home' for this Fall. The idea is to put games (particularly free-to-play games) front and center on Home, utilizing a central Hub with a theme park design. The Hub will 'integrate games, quests, community events and user-generated content, while providing players with additional navigation, shopping, socialization and entertainment options.'"
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A few days ago, it finally happened to me. Being an experienced PC user, I was shocked that I had been infected with a computer virus. This wasn't just any virus, however. It held my computer hostage and wouldn't go away unless I paid the creators $80! I thought I could get rid of it myself since I was an experienced PC user.
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Look, this is great and all (at least, I think it is - I've never used Home and have no interest in starting), but I'd much rather Sony focussed on a few other issues around the PS3's online service. Let's try these for starters:
- Making very, very, very sure that they have decent security around any and all personal data they hold.
- Reducing the number of mandatory firmware updates to something sensible (one every 4 months or so at most), so that my PS3 actually feels like a "switch on and play" console rather than a Windows 98 machine that needs a (lengthy) reset process every few days whenever there's an update.
- Getting a UI for the Playstation Store that can be navigated at a sensible pace. At the moment, the storefront is so far behind the Xbox Live storefront (which is not part of the subscription package over in Xbox-land) that it's just ridiculous.
- Upping the game on Playstation Plus a bit. I actually picked up a 1 year sub for this on a "give it a try" basis and it is wildly inconsistent. There's been some good stuff available, but it increasingly feels like another avenue for pushing demos, with a few mobile-phone style games thrown in around the margins. Sony needs to prove that this wasn't a bait-and-switch.
Still, at least it's better than the 3DS online services...
A few days ago, a customer brought in their PC for repair. They told me that they had a very nasty virus that was holding their computer hostage and wouldn't stop unless they paid the creators $50. "Alright," I thought. "That's pretty standard."
But, soon enough, I found that I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of this virus. I had never seen a virus this bad before. Reformatting and using all of the usual software to try to remove the virus didn't help at all!
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If you're having computer problems, then as an experienced PC repair technician, I wholeheartedly recommend using MyCleanPC. Your gigabits and speed will be overclocking and running at maximum efficiency!
But, in my experience, even if you're not having any visible problems, you could still be infected. So get MyCleanPC and run a scan this minuteness so you'll be overclocking with the rest of us!
Watch their commercial!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
This pays the bills for the free users, same as Facebook, you are the product on Playstation Home and so it has to succeed for Home to stay free and has to succeed for pay for the necessary improvements in security.
....I'm just sayin'...
In other words, no one uses Home past their first pitiful try-out, so they're rewriting it to try to make it suck less. Which means, turning it into something completely different.
Fuckwits, try putting more content servers online and improving the fucking store UI, if you want to make money.
so that the1r big deal. Death things the right
EVERYONE STOP WORKING! Security needs to be hardened and the UI needs some polish. Home team get on it.
If we can get consoles into the same group as social networking... When that fails because it got old and boring we can wipe out the consoles too!
I've never gotten the appeal of the Playstation Home - it always felt like a heavily commercialized and far more limited version of Second Life. Personally, I wish Sony would prioritize their approach with their PS3. Rather than offering something gimmicky like Home, why not upgrade the ancient browser? How about having an app store for cool PS3 apps? How about putting a few bucks towards real security?
The PS3 always feels like a machine with a lot of potential. But Sony's obsession with locking down and controlling the experience meant that the PS3's potential will go untapped. And when Sony does decide to do something, it's usually something nobody wants.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
What does "has seen" signify? I suppose it "has seen" me as well, when I spent 5 minutes there, doing nothing.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Every year Sony comes up with some lame bullshit plan to make "Home" your social hub. How does that meeting go? Some new guy says "Wait,
I've got the fix for Home but it might prove still impossible in this day and age.....
It *needs* to be able to be fully up and running within 10 seconds of it being initiated.
that's right.
that's it.
Once that happens it can be the alternate hub that it always wanted, begged and pleaded to be.
Imagine if Home booted that quickly and you instantly saw your avatar maybe in a games room, populated with armchairs and games systems. Sitting at these stations could be all your PSN friends with "now playing xxxxxx" floating atop them, on a table to your right a display showing recent events including friends that have recently topped your highscore in a load of games. That should be the beginning of Home, but its gotta minimal wait.
Don't we have enough of these social services already?
And more importantly, when will we get our own SlashSpot?
That's right. We have enough social services already. But they—the marketers and salesmen who want more channels to push their product through in order to make a sale—won't rest until you can't spit in your online social space (so to speak) without hitting an advertisement. And if this means creating more social spaces then so be it: Let a thousand cheesy Facebook-knockoffs bloom!
Because we are groaning under social internet overload, there's a good chance that those newer services won't be looked at, much less taken seriously.
That said, there is one thing Sony has going for them in this case: it's a community social network. It's a PSN thing, so it's safe to say that everyone going there, if they choose to, has common ground: more desire to play multiplayer games than they have real-life friends with PS3s. In the modern "social overload" network, that kind of commonality is a necessary ingredient to building a community online.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Still waiting on this "Second life killer" that was gloated about before it was launched.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I've always had high hopes for Home. Social worlds are one of those areas (along with MMO's) where consoles have always lagged WAY behind PC's. Personally, I think that consoles need to move beyond the same-old FPS-with-a-slightly-new-skin strategy and expand the horizons a bit. Unfortunately, Home in implementation was pretty weak tea. In typical Sony fashion, they locked it down early on to where there wasn't a whole lot to do (cutting off voice chat, for example, and limiting customization) and, of course, commercializing the hell out of it (why not let me create my OWN furniture, instead of just buying your crap, Sony?).
I am interested to hear him mention "user-generated content" in the announcement. But, this being Sony, I expect all this means is that there will be even MORE ads and blatant commercialism, taking it even farther away from social worlds like Second Life than it already was.
Oh, and for you naysayers, you should note that social worlds are one of the few online gaming areas that attract women in DROVES. Second Life is a great place to meet women who are ACTUALLY women.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You'll be sorry you installed that shit on your machine. And i hope your local 'guy who knows computers' bitchslaps you upside the head for it too.
You deserve it.
When people started going to the movies, marketing ran ads before the movie starts
When people started using fax machines, marketing send ads via fax
When people started using email, marketing send ads via email (aka spam)
When people started playing video games, marketing jumped on making video games (and is stated to be one of the reasons for the great video game crash of 1983, when every other company makes [pathetic excuses for] video games that advertises their product)
When people started watching TV, marketing ran ads on TV, and funded TV shows which are little more than "30 minute toy commercials" (but I bet many older nerds love them, and love all the "revival" of those old franchises from years past... which reminds me, I gotta go watch the latest episodes of Thundercats!)
the developEr
because currently it's pretty useless.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Home is by far one of their best revenue generators. It's literally a free-to-play MMO with tons of paid virtual content that people actually buy.
I find that incredibly difficult to believe.
Would you believe "moderately popular time-killer with great potential"?
Bow-ties are cool.
That was my first (similar) thought as well. I know this much : this is about control, nothing else. SONY somehow thinks it will be useful for nailing its customer base down a little harder.
Missed one. When people started driving they built billboards.
I'm both looking forward to and dreading the day they figure out how to advertise in our dreams. It could be terrible for people with no willpower as they'd just buy everything that was subliminally advertised to them. Me? I don't waste my money, but I'd be willing to stomach some ads in my dreams if they also let me use the system to dream lucidly. That'd be a pretty fair trade.
Cool post bro, highfive \o
Sounds a lot like a reintroduction of TSN/INN (The Sierra Network. ImagiNation Network - pre-Internet) and CyberPark. With updates for newer technology of course.