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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.'"
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...
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.
EVERYONE STOP WORKING! Security needs to be hardened and the UI needs some polish. Home team get on it.
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.
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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,
The gigabits are overclocked so much that they improved his daughter's vocabulary and grammar beyond the norm for a 4-year old!
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.
because currently it's pretty useless.
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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.
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.