Official Sony E3 press conference thread

I didn't try streaming because I was working while the video was being downloaded. You have 14 days to watch your downloaded video. Once you started watching, it'd be gone within 24 hours.

 

I noted Sony has the headstart because it is already being used by real users today. There are third party content running in Home, with published API. In addition, it has been tested with relatively large number of users.

Sure... but Trophies are already here today. Home's trophies are simply 3D looks on top of the multi-level trophy framework.

What Avatars and Home add are personalizable items, and probably the ability to import them into games. The former is already in use in Home, while the latter is unclear.

In terms of impact, I'd say MS should be able to achieve greater coverage once launched because of its uniformity. In terms of first launch, if there are no major revamp, then I believe Home is already at least 0.9.4 (There have been multiple releases lately).

What lowest common user ? PS3 is a uniform platform. Everyone has a HDD. They related themselves to gmail beta, so it's not exactly traditional beta cycle.

Disagree with what ? I mentioned that there is no need to hype Home in E3. They do however need to keep people updated, instead of just showing a Home trailer. Based on what Capcom is saying, XMB integration is now a requirement. Old games obviously need to be patched.

As long as there are enough worthy exclusives for PS3, it will do fine -- especially when price drops. Avatar already bears resemblance to Mii.

 

1) yes and they have been in for what now a good 4-5 months and we will still be in the beta stage this fall. Thats my point , sony is building such a large thing that ms can stay more nimble and actually update faster.

2) in what 1 downloable game so far ? where are all the third party games coming out with trophies .

3) home still has problems and some things are still crashing users. its also (from the brief time i've used it ) very slow going from home to a full game.

4)I'm not talking about hardware , i'm talking about a user's ablity. Betas have bugs and issues , the common person will not want to deal with it or will get turned off by the bugs . Simply look at mmorpgs and the amounts of people who leave in the first month after launch.

5) talking about the xmb having upgraded functionality , its simply still way behind the xbox live feature and now it looks like we wont have home untill next year. When do we get feature parity with the old xbox live let alone the new one.

6)Mii's also bear resemblance to gamer tags and so does home . Its just a further way to to get your personality across in the games. its simple and apears fast and easy to use. It also doesn't use much resources so its easy to load up and load into games without much delay.

7) Watching g4 tv that oliva chick allways looks pissed off before she talks , whats up with that .

 

Isn't the Avatar stuff only available in the Fall update ? As long as Sony starts to expand its beta this Summer (as promised), especially to the media first. They should be ok.

Yes, Super Stardust is the only one patched now. The list of Trophy-aware games is here: http://kotaku.com/397437/list-of-first-ps3-trophy-supported-games. Capcom's future games will have trophy support too since it is part of the SCEI contract.

Which version did you try ?

Sure, but Home has been in beta for more than a year now. There are teething problems but I think they are getting there. I am also concerned with load speed, but we shall see.

XBL has a multi-year headstart. Microsoft excels in developer support. Sony is obviously playing catch-up or trying to leapfrog. Then again, the latest XBL enhancements are not out yet either.

Gamer tag exists long before XBL. Avatars is clearly inspired by Mii and some of Home (In 5 years of XBL, MS did not implement these concepts until now)

 

I cant see any movie related stuff on my US account, IP blocked i guess.

 

The absence of Home talk was surprising. 2D Home was talked about by N'Gai Croal on the GTTV show, where he was saying there is a simplified 2D version of Home for people just wanting to get in and do the network things without the 3D things. Makes sense, but Sony haven't publicly talked about it at all.

So, having announced the most ambitious and inclusive form of virtual social networking on any system, Sony look to be last to have anything out there at all!

And overall, quite an empty conference not showing much special excitement. And no fancy controller either.

 

Hm... I see. Then my doubt about Home has been addressed. I was most concerned about the load speed. The rest would be up to their execution.

EDIT: 2D Home mentioned: http://kotaku.com/397403/crecente-croal-and-totilo-pre+3-talk-part-2. Phew, this is the best news this E3 for me.

 

One of my qualms seems to be adressed - the E3 conference will be up shortly on PSN. Also, confirmation that my suspicion about the PSP firmware update not just being about music visualisers was correct

Also Super Stardust HD Team add-on is mentioned in the blog, and I already bought it yesterday on the EU store, so it was up there as well. It's just an unlock for the 4.00 version, so we already have it included, as expected, it just needed an unlock. I haven't had a chance to try it. I'll post it in the relevant thread so we can discuss it there.

 

Same here. Bastards! lol I just wanted to see it. It'd cost them lots of money to get all those movie and TV licsenes in all the EU countrys. That's why we're having PlayTV instead. Hey ho.

PS. Edge rates the three conferences. http://www.edge-online.com/features/we-review-e3-big-three?page=0,0 I tend to agree.

 

patsu

1) Home beta may be avalible , but avatars will be a full serivce offered to everyone in the fall , that is a huge diffrence

2) Not sure but my friend is in closed beta and I was on it the last week of june at his house.

3)There is alot of stuff to still work out , which is why i don't see it launching before next year and the public beta will (as it is now ) turn alot of people off because of load times and crashes .

4) Yes xbl has a multi year head start , but that isn't xbl's fault or gamers faults . The point isn't that hte xbl enhnacments aren't out or are out , its that ms has constantly delievered on the online experiance and sony hasn't. MS says it will be avalible in the fall and it will be . thats what 3-5 months after its first announced. Home was announced how long ago and we still aren't given a release date ?

5) gamer tags did not exist before xbl . At least not a name that carried over from game to game and allowed you to be acessible by people on other gmaes while you were playing a diffrent game . That is an ms thing with xbox and no one can take it away from them.

You say avatars is inspired by mii and home , however mii's and home were inspired by xbox live and by mmorpgs and second life . the question is which of these do we want .

Mii's are great but there is barely any pressence outside of first party apps and the online system is horrid . Home is interesting and seems to offer a really good second life experiance but its very complex for most . Avatars is a middle ground .

Who knows which of the 3 is the best way to go , mabye all 3 will end up suckin hard in the long run and next gen we all go back to gamertags only .

 

Edge didn't seem to stay till the end of MS's conference, given the biggest news of the show didn't get a mention

 

I agree more with penny-arcade then edge

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/7/16/

 

Probably not mentioned because it will have no impact on the next 2 years.

 

You don't think it's an odd omission from wrapping up the E3 conferences? Honestly?

 

Are you in the beta so you know first hand how Home actually feels or are you reading forums?

 

my friend is in the beta and i'm able to log in once a week or so (he is on vacation though so i haven't logged in since the 28th of june.

 

Sure. The Home open beta is said to be like gmail beta anyway. So availability-wise, the difference may not be that great. But the number of games supporting Home will definitely be small. Nonetheless Home is already in selected number of users' hands.

It would be at least 0.9.4. But I was told they had more releases after that.

I checked with a friend last week. He sounded happy with it. The latest Warhawk patch also improved on its game launching further: http://blog.us.playstation.com/2008/07/14/warhawk-v14-update-“free-gameplay-modes”/
"Updates for Home Game Launching:
Now players that are launching/connecting to Warhawk games from Home can designate which team they will be assigned to before the server is started. Warhawk’s Support of Home Game Launching now also supports the new Hero and Collection gameplay modes."

Sure, but Sony has finally delivered in-game XMB though. As long as they keep at it, we will see constant improvements just like the rest of the PS3 firmware. The release date for Home was given -- this Fall. They simply chose a gmail-style release so that it will keep evolving, like the PS3 firmware today. My original point was that the Avatar concept was introduced independently by Nintendo and Sony, which means they are innovating too.

Yes, single id for all games is introduced on Xbox. But single sign-on, even for multiplier ids, is not a new concept. I think XFire has similar service (later than Xbox though).

The point was not to trace the root. It was to show that other companies are innovating in this area too, not just MS. As you put it, Home has additional features. So naturally, it will take a longer time to develop... starting years ago.

Now that I know about this 2D Home. I think the complexity and potential speed issues may have been addressed.

Based on the ideas in Home, we have already seen some improvements (e.g., Live Party). The single id system provides the most simple user experiences, but it is also highly restrictive. I prefer an open system so that others can innovate; and MS can learn from them too (See Mii and Home).

 

I can wholeheartedly agree. The guy from Edge has probably been smoking something, I had a hard time just staying awake...

 

I certainly have my own preference, but the thread on voting which conference was best wasn't locked so that we could have this discussion in the individual conference threads.

 

The mainstream media from what I've seen seems disappointed with Sony's (and Nintendo's) showings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/arts/16games.html?ref=technology
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4343361.ece

Haven't read any mainstream reactions to Microsoft's yet...