Report: Home Finally Leaving Beta, "Is Not S**t"


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Report: Home Finally Leaving Beta, "Is Not S**t"

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Kirk Ewing, from PlayStation Home developer Veemee (who make virtual spaces and items), reckons Sony's underwhelming virtual network service will be emerging from its long-running beta at the end of this year.

Having entered an "open beta" in December 2008, Home has been in that state ever since, despite appearing for all intents and purposes to be fully armed and operational. While for some it's been a useful tool for chit-chat and furniture organisation, for most it's been a disappointment, Sony's original plan for an online "hub" central to both communication and multilayer gaming never really materialising in a world awash with soulless avatars and user-paid advertising.

According to Ewing, though, that beta phase will be coming to an end this December, when Home opens for real. He also has some words for the service's detractors, telling attendees at the Game in Scotland event in Dundee, "Most people think that Home is sh*t. I'm here to say that it's not."

Source: Kotaku

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What's going out of Beta? :s

I don't understand home... Saying that i never understood habbo hotel either...

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Ok. may be i dont understand the use of Home on PS3... what does it do? just get in an environment and run and talk to people.

what else would it do?

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Might have to take another look...but from what I can tell, the loading screens are what kill it.

It's a little different. A hell of a lot better than what it was when it was first released. Still not sure if I like it. But it is kinda cool how you can setup 'rooms' for people in your clans (mw2, KZ2, etc)

But yea the loading killed it for me too

Oh, and if you haven't been in a while prepare for a LOT of downloading. It's a huge update

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So a rep from a company that uses Home as a marketplace says that actually it's quite good, and in 6 months it will be, er, much better than it is now in some way?

It's coming out of beta. Well that's great, but so what? Really.

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You have to admit though, "It isn't" makes for a compelling arguement :rolleyes:

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Perhaps that's what they mean by "coming out of beta" - they're not doing any more development and are just going to let it stand or fall on it's own now :D

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I couldn't figure out how to get out of the first room. In the end I concluded it was some sort of metaphor or somesuch, only that it reached far, far beyond the grasp of my time and patience.

In my experience, then, it was indeed '****'.

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OK...just checked it out. They now have an XMB like interface to enter different rooms, still takes a long time to download and load though...

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He also has some words for the service's detractors, telling attendees at the Game in Scotland event in Dundee, "Most people think that Home is sh*t. I'm here to say that it's not."

The rest of the world say, "yes, it really is". It's nowhere near the level of interactivity they said it would bring or the features they promised.

I remember in 2008 when there was all this hype from former members and how Home was finally picking up pace. Has it ****. And no doubt it'll be the same in December. The most they've done the past year and a half is bring some very useless Home Spaces for games & opened it up for devs/studios to sell items. Which no one really cares about because no one uses it. If they could incorporate the Home avatars into the XMB somehow that you could even communicate/view/share things with people not using Home, I bet it would have sparked a little more interest.

I feel sorry for anyone that ever wasted money on digital clothes in Home. It'd be a different matter if it was on show, but it's not.

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It's been a pretty good platform to sell people imaginary clothes, every time they pimped some new update on the PS.Blog I would log in to check it out and there were always plenty of people standing around wearing clothes bought from the Store so Sony is at least seeing some revenue on it. Who knows what they spent developing it though, could be a long time before they see a profit.

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If they actually ever added the capability of being to join up with friends in a party type system and then being able to all join the same game, as they have been talking about doing forever now, I can see that as being a feature I would actually use, but that is truly about it.

With that said, I will say I had me and my wife laughing pretty damn hard for a good 30 minutes when it first came out making my virtual avatar start a dance off in the middle of the town area, it was amusing to say the least, but that novelty then quickly wore off.

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"Most people think that Home is sh*t. I'm here to say that it's not."

wow, really???? /me runs away to go hang out at the Home. NOT!

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