[Official] Playstation Home

[.Blaze]

applied for the neowin club :)

As did I!

[HTF]

wow i got in!

i sent an invite to join the club

[FiB3R]

I see Audio has been busy tarting up the Club House LOL

[-Nic-]

So is this supposed to be actually cool/fun?

Let's see:

-Load Times are horrible

-I couldn't bowl because all the spots were taken up.

-People constantly repeating "dude, can you hear me?"

-Everyone looks the same

-I can't make the person look like me unless I want to fork money out.

Maybe I expected more, but even for it being a "beta," it's quite bland.

I'll try it out with DM and Audio, but I don't see how Sony can ever expect this to have any sort of lasting appeal.

:::Teabagging someone was pretty entertaining :p

Edited December 12, 2008 by -Nic-

[AbandonedTrolley]

Not had a chance to log into Home for a while, too busy outside the house.

Should be about tonight to take a look at any changes. Wouldn't mind a spot in the clubhouse if there are any going :) Will apply when I get online tonight. Does anyone know if our BETA items we unlocked before it went public are still on our accounts?

[Pheee]

All the stuff we bought from the store when free are still there, and I think the trophies etc are all there, just not the clubs, they were reset. But AB put up his own money.

[speedy_kevin]

Don't have time to come visit you guys in Home today. But when i'm free saturday i'll be there!

Is it any good? Or just a one time thing?

[dreamsINdigital]

Don't have time to come visit you guys in Home today. But when i'm free saturday i'll be there!

Is it any good? Or just a one time thing?

When I first got the Home beta a long time ago, there wasn't much reason to keep visiting. Now that there's a lot more people in it, there's more reason for me to spend time in it. Once games start to support launching and 3rd parties get their content in Home, it should really start to take off.

[Flash]

Wow have you noticed there's a lot of hording going on. I always see girl characters surrounded by guy characters. If you make a girl character you are getting a lot of attention :laugh:

[crazzyyfool]

Not only that I saw one girl on her knees doing the business to some other chick with a circle of guys round them watching. I was sitting down on some stairs in the Mall and a guy came and stood right up close and wanted me to give him some head. Wouldn't have minded but he wasn't my type. :laugh:

[Rookas]

I haven't turned my PS3 on for a while. I'm off today, may check it out. The first thing that came to mind when I read that Home was available was "meh". Reading some of these posts is just confirming my suspicions that Home is just boring.

[Brad.]

Not only that I saw one girl on her knees doing the business to some other chick with a circle of guys round them watching.

What.... The... ****....

[Flash]

It scares me when people think they can get a girlfriend from the playing a social game...

Seriously though, make a girl character. It seems fun at first but then it gets very annoying when people keep talk to you and dancing around you. It's an amusing experiment indeed

[Ricardo Gil]

I'll give it a try tonight if I get the chance, didn't even bother yesterday seeing all the trouble you guys were having with the timeouts and all.

[DrCheese]

It isn't just boring, it's down right rubbish. It has 4 zones all of which are pretty dull. The arcade for example forces you to queue to play games, bowling and pool. The cinema is just full of trailers. The main area is full of annoying big screen adverts and the shopping centre just tries to get you to part with your cash.

In short, the entire thing feels like one big advert/cash cow with a few mini games on the side. How this took them nearly 3 years is beyond me.

[BGM]

the main thing i am looking forward to is game matching and club/clan houses to hang out in

should be good fun... keyboard ordered :)

[Ch33kym0nk3y]

Played it lastnight, really is fun, i can see it being a great great feature, with lots to do and stuff.

Still very limited, but it is a BETA still, so people should make note of this, because I have seen lots of people moaning!

Keyboard needed, get a Microphone for fun too! :-)

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Okay so my opinions on Home.

In some way congrats to Sony for finally getting this into the open beta :laugh: It's a very ambitious project. I certainly would not liked to have been on the team designing this, or the guys having to wade through legalities/contracts and all the paper work necessary for rolling out such a service in all the countries. Then handing out SDKs/recruiting all the 3rd parties to design content on a completely new service, one of which many were probably wary about risk wise.

They took a bit of time developing it, the delays hurt the image, but the actual development timescale for such a project doesn't surprise me to much. It's come just over 2 years into the lifepsan of the console itself, and should remain from now until well, the servers get shut off - If that ever happens so to speak.

Bit of a rocky release server wise, but I kindly point everyone to any massive MMO game or virtual service of the past. You can do a ton of stress testing, but nothing really compares to the day you actually let hundreds of thousand of people in, if not millions. It's still classed as a beta, and I expect the next few days/week will be focused heavily on the networking side of things. I do admit, I expect improvements to be made to loading/lag, connectability and those sorts of things. There has to be :yes:

Next up is the content. It is pretty empty right now. Content will be what the service lives on, without it, it will suffer. We have many many years of content ahead of us, there's no way a service like this is anything like what it's like on day 365, compared to day 1. Again I point you in the direction of things like WoW and other MMO's. I understand the complaints about the lack of content right now, but unless you plan on selling your PS3 next week, I know everyone will keep track of changes and content updates. There's no reason not to?

Now for the scope of the content, this is what excites me most. Due to how organic the application is, with there being no other sandbox like it on any other console, I know from experience of being involved in projects like this we're going to see a lot. Custom game spaces/events/E3/game shows/developer Q&As/mini-games/clan face offs/media sharing/etc.

E3 being something I'm really looking forward to. It'll be a different atmosphere to go into Home for the Sony press conference, or for Sony related games and see things with other PS3 owners, and get to discuss them. Sort of like a virtual message-board, and many of us get excited coming on NW for our games shows, why would we not? We're gamers.

It's that sort of community atmosphere that will spill over into the club houses, having 32 Neowinians meet up at Christmas to chat, play some games, and probably go unlock/hunting for Home santa hats and other crap like that :laugh: I actually do love seeing how things change for Holidays, like being in WoW when Halloween/Christmas hits.

It isn't a game to me, I don't expect to be in Home more often than I play games on my console (so to speak :laugh:), but having such a sandbox environment there at my disposal is a fresh idea, I want to watch this project to see how it evolves. I relish the idea of comparing day 1, to even say day 45, or a couple of months down the line. Then obviously years later.

Many comparisons are made to MMO's/Second Life/Sims and a whole host of games/applications where you virtually represent yourself. On the face of things these comparisons are true for relevant areas, but Home is built for PS3 owners first of all, gamers secondly. The streams of content will all be in some way relevant to your interest in the console/games, therefore it's a focussed service. Things like Second Life are built to appeal to millions of "general" people - There's no set focus as such. Home is built to support the Playstation only, so if you have an interest in your PS3 and the games appearing on it, there's bound to be times over the days/weeks/months/years where you hear about things in Home and want to go check them out.

That's what the service is there for! Very few of us are suddenly going to abandon playing games and spend all of our time in Home. We'll meet up from time to time, check out the content, attend large gaming events, be there for when free crap is handed out, etc.

I'm adopting a positive outlook for the service, it's ambitious and something a little bit different for a console. I don't want to see it do badly, I'm sure some of the folks over in SCE have put a lot of effort into this, and for their sake I hope they can keep delivering fresh content and new ideas to do justice to the project they're attempting to integrate into the PS brand. I know it will change a hell of a lot over the upcoming years and I hope the journey is enjoyable (Y)

Edited December 12, 2008 by Audioboxer

[kyro]

yes, Sony has built a good foundation so to speak , people saying "Wow is this it?...bored" are rushing judgment but thats understandable given the fact that we have no future plans talked openly by Sony which leads us to stretching our imagination, I can say given the economic times now, sony and others can really take advantage of this "Home" foundation so-to-speak and bring out some interesting concepts/games/adventures , if its good, people will play it and pay for it.

lets see how this goes.

[Michael1406]

A 3D chat room where you can discuss a game and then play it as a party is a good idea. When that kicks in, it'll be cool. But until then, I don't fancy standing around doing nothing whilst a lot of people play with bubbles and use those stupid dances.

[-Nic-]

*snip*

There's two factors you are not taking into account though.

1. It's going to cost developers $$$ to make these places.

2. If Home fails before it can even take off, all your speculation is pointless.

I understand your excitement, but everything in Home either costs money to develop, or costs money to buy things. Not to beat a dead horse, but with the current economy, what developer is honestly going to want to spend money on something that will only attract a niche group of fanboys? If I was the developer, I would wait for statistics from Sony and see if these custom themed levels will do anything for their business.

Would you be more compelled to buy a game if there was a Home feature? I wouldn't....I could care less. I'm sure there are many like me.

[Pheee]

Has anyone been able to get into Home today from UK?

I tried a few times, but nothing.

[Sethos]

Well, since the previous few posts were removed I'll give my own tiny review of "Home".

The first 30 minutes of Playstation Home, it actually feels pretty exciting. Creating the avatar and walking around the apartment overlook the harbor and it feels like a quality product but then the fascination stops right there. You quickly realize how utterly boring this social software is, it lacks purpose and the feel that you have an honest product in your hands. You walk around seeing people type 50 different languages, hear kids screaming to the left and right and you don't meet new people in Home, you walk away from them. Looking from the other side of it, would you really be friendly towards some guy who walks up to you and start talking to you out of nowhere? If someone did that to me I'd probably say "Yeah ..." and leave.

By product honest I mean, does it feel like it was developed to provide me with entertainment? No way in hell. This was produced to lure in some more segments of the gamer crowd and to squeeze money out of users plus take advantage of them. You have to pay for everything remotely interesting plus you get ads thrown in your face everywhere, it feels like a huge advertisement and you were invited to look at them.

What does this thing offer to the general gamer? Oh yes, those clubs ( YOU HAVE TO PAY TO CREATE ONE :| ), you can meet up with a clan or some friends and talk ... like a chat-room?! What's the point in running around a sterile, boring virtual world looking at some ugly "avatars" in order to talk to each other.

Oh and the cinema, I can view trailers ... TRAILERS! Uh how jolly exciting, never had a place to watch my trailers ( And there's like 4 available, woop! ). Activities are constantly full instead of doing a 'private' session where you won't show up to the other Home users but still let you play with the activity in case it's already in use.

This started development in early 2005 ... that's 2006, 1 year, 2007, 2 years, 2008, 3 years and now coming up on 2009 that's 4 years ... THEY SPENT ALMOST 4 YEARS DEVELOPING THIS?!?! They must have started over once a month because that is downright pathetic.

Future doesn't even bode very well for this virtual turd, more items we can pay for, exploring more COMPANY SPONSORED areas with tons of ads everywhere and only Sony's imagination on stuff we can pay for is the limit.

It's epic fail and is the worst product in Playstation's history hands down.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

There's two factors you are not taking into account though.

1. It's going to cost developers $$$ to make these places.

2. If Home fails before it can even take off, all your speculation is pointless.

I understand your excitement, but everything in Home either costs money to develop, or costs money to buy things. Not to beat a dead horse, but with the current economy, what developer is honestly going to want to spend money on something that will only attract a niche group of fanboys? If I was the developer, I would wait for statistics from Sony and see if these custom themed levels will do anything for their business.

Would you be more compelled to buy a game if there was a Home feature? I wouldn't....I could care less. I'm sure there are many like me.

1. Sony actually have a dedicated team within Home who will make these places for developers and also a team they outsource to. The Uncharted/Warhawk spaces weren't actually made by the games devs. Of course the game devs can opt to make the spaces themselves.

2. Well today is day 2, so it can hardly really fail this shortly after release. This one needs time, so right now speculation either way is fine.

It was never suppose to be a service with everything ready to go day 1, it's an evolving service that will be with us the whole of the PS3s lifespan. Many of the things it needs naturally come over time, like game spaces - You can't have every game space day 1, as so many games aren't out or even in existence yet!

Would you be more compelled to buy a game if there was a Home feature? I wouldn't....I could care less. I'm sure there are many like me.

Well people buy games for trophies/achievements, Home takes them both to another level if you're actually getting rewarded with physical things.

For everyone like yourself, there's a counterpart who enjoys unlocking things in games and getting some sort of "reward".

what developer is honestly going to want to spend money on something that will only attract a niche group of fanboys

Like I said to Sethos earlier I think it's a bit unfair to call anyone with an interest in PS3 related things a fanboy, just because he/she likes Home.

There's many people interested in games or things on the PS platform that want to talk to others sharing those interests. It's all good and fun talking with others with opposing opinions, but it's also nice to talk to folk sharing similar interests with you as well.

Something like an E3 gaming event will capture many people within Home, not just "fanboys" as you put it.

All in all, I just don't see the reason to be boarding the train of doom on day 1, give the service a bit of time at least to see what Sony do with it. Although I can totally understand the skepticism, its up to Sony to either convince you, or you avoid Home and just use the XMB - Which is why it's fine as an additional service, if it had replaced the XMB, there would be all sorts of hell.

Edited December 12, 2008 by Audioboxer

[Pheee]

@Sethos, why dont you sell your PS3?