everyone in the fall , that is a huge diffrence
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.
2) Not sure but my friend is in closed beta and I was on it the last week of june at his house.
It would be at least 0.9.4. But I was told they had more releases after that.
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 .
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."
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 ?
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.
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.
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).
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 .
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.
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 .
Now that I know about this 2D Home. I think the complexity and potential speed issues may have been addressed.
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 .
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).