The key word is current.
Do you expect the to be really hammering their server during a very limited closed beta test version?
Phil Harrison's GDC keynote - Home, LittleBigPlanet & more
- Thread starter Titanio
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Do you expect the to be really hammering their server during a very limited closed beta test version?
Why do you assume the current implementation lasts forever or they can't have a special server for a special occasion?
I'm thinking bigger picture of Sony's promises and then what they deliver after. I'm not sure what they said pricing would be for Playstation online games, but I am certain that my PS3 doesn't look better than my Xbox 360, it doesn't have dual HDMI ports, and it's missing two of its gigabit ethernet ports, and UPS must've lost it because it came six months late.
The only valid point of your list is being late, 2 HDMI ports, well they moved one of them to the Cheap PS3 (ohh and removed a point that would have been on your list i bet). Who needs a GB switch in their Console, honestly? And finally, the 360 games are gonna have a battle to be fought in the future if they want to keep up with the PS3 games in looks. You forgot having a online service that challenges XBOX LIVE in some places and clearly surpasses it in vision and it´s still FREE.
woundingchaney
Regular
I dont know. At this point I think that it may be valid to not take everything Sony says at face value (although I would suggest this for MS and other companies as well). As far as future MS and PS3 games they both have some very stunning titles on the horizon and Im hard pressed to say one definetely has the hands down more impressive titles (although some of the PS titles intrigue me more than the 360 ones even me being traditionally more MS oriented).
I do agree that at this point the vision behind "Home" and PSN for this matter is not rivaled, but at the same time vision and reality dont always coincide.
since Day 1 of the 360. They were not part of Xbox 1 Live. It was designed into the 360 system.
They are running in concert with every game. Each game dev just has to hook into the features that are part of the Live OS on the hardware to utilize as part of the game rather than having to design each of these components (time/money/resources) into their games. This is one reason allegedly, that some versions of 360 games will have a robust online component compared to their PS3 counterparts which may have little to none (ie, Virtua Tennis 3)
An example of this integration is if I'm playing GRAW and a friend sends me an invite for CoD3, I simply chat him while playing GRAW using the 360 voice system (while still playing the game) telling him I'll be there in a few while I finish what I'm doing. I then accept the invite, eject the GRAW disc, insert the CoD3 disc and I am automatically inserted into his lobby of the CoD3 game. When done i can leave feedback for users, mute them (a headset comes with every 360 so this is a necessity
) which is universal across all sessions and games and tell the matchmaking system whether I prefer to play again with or avoid certain players in the future. That works like that for EVERY game.One of the reasons I am sharing this is I find many people have no idea the extent of the depth of the system as it was designed and implemented since day 1. Background downloading was the only significant online feature added after launch and that is not related to online gaming as I am discussing here.
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Which is how it should be done, and can be done, and there's no logical reason why PS3 can't do the same through it's OS. Sony have had a year to see how to do it properly, and already reserved loads for the OS. Why not put it to use...?
NovemberMike
Regular
On a more practical note, the PS3 comes with neither a mic or keyboard. How do they expect a majority of people to actually buy these so they can use the service?
It´s not required.
ManuVlad3.0
Regular
Maybe cause PS3 supports any ordinary (and cheap) usb keyboard and the same for bluetooth headsets. There are bluetooth headset models compatible with PS3 for less than 10 dollars in e-bay.
I think the main difference here is that some people look at Home as a framework for lots of new revolutionary things; and others look at it as a superficial layer over common features...
And no, I don't think they'll significantly improve the 64 user limit; where I mean several orders of magnitude increase. And I won't do your search for you, Bad boy, you can easily read the past few posts from DemoCoder yourself, just look for his username...
And no, I don't think they'll significantly improve the 64 user limit; where I mean several orders of magnitude increase. And I won't do your search for you, Bad boy, you can easily read the past few posts from DemoCoder yourself, just look for his username...
I am somewhat surprised that people still think Home's going to be a toy effort after 2.5 years of work by Sony group's experienced gaming team . It may not be as exciting as what netizens want it to be, but surely the 64 concurrent user per room limit is for the beta (15,000 total uers in by August, 50,000 total by October, and then free for all).
There can be techniques to switch room automatically (behind the scene) and allow cross room communication too. Phil spoke a little about overflowing to the next server in one of his interviews. I can't find it now.
Tap In said:
Shifty Geezer said:
That's my sense too. Phil Harrison mentioned that the toolkit for Home is quite easy to integrate.
The main issue now is they have to tie multiple 3rd party solutions together to provide a logically unified service... kinda like how Jabber (XMPP) can work with Yahoo IM, MSN IM, AOL IM, ... We have heard Quazal developer relationship manager last October talking about integrating their middleware with PSN, but no update so far.
The second issue is how current PS online game network support is anemic. This can and will give the wrong impression if the situation extends over a long period.
The key here is 3rd party support (Not sure if MS will allow XBox LiveAnywhere to talk to Google talk and Yahoo IM for example).
NovemberMike said:
This is perhaps why Sony make PS3 pluggable with any USB keyboard, Blue-tooth + USB headset (for Cell phones and PCs), plus SATA hard disk. Many netizens like me already have these (or extra !) to give it a quick try. Those who like the experience will buy dedicated devices for it.
EDIT:
Laa Yosh said:
In essence, it is a framework but it is many things at once (i.e., the effort is not shallow). From Sony's perspective, it is a product to unify and differentiate their offerings, a marketing platform to draw in and sustain more/different crowd, and a business platform to partner with gaming and non-gaming business entities. From users' perspective, it is an evolving social platform for entertainment purposes.
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ManuVlad3.0
Regular
Great post, patsu!
ManuVlad3.0
Regular
So what are the positives you can see about Home - anything get you excited? What future potential do you see? [just like to a get a sceptics view here]
woundingchaney
Regular
Yes there are there is also a host of complications involved with using a BT headset on the PS3 (to be kind it isnt very reliable) even one that is "supported".
Still not packaging a headset and/or keyboard has had an affect on how often I hear people talk on PSN (it is rather rare) and I believe them at least having a standard or reliable Sony brand set would increase the use of this feature.
There are indeed issues in using different brands of BT mikes and USB cameras on Playstation 3. I hope Sony continues to improve it. I also think that Sony should see an increase use of voice chat if these communication devices are bundled for free.
A relatively easy way to solve this jump-start problem is via marketing. They can select only beta testers (15,000 - 50,000) with mike and USB keyboard. This would ensure that all of them can test the full functionality of Playstation Home.
Subsequently, they will have to let the community grow organically or with organized events (e.g., developer Q&A online).
Chatting in Playstation Home is different from in-game chats. Most open-ended, multi-purposed community like Home are full of lurkers (The silent majority) anyway. These people may be attracted to the trophies, the personalization of Homes or just curious. Don't expect most of them to talk day in and day out.
Giving all users free mikes may not encourage them to do so on day 1. It has to start with certain kind of people (e.g., community leaders, chat junkies, people with questions) and those are likely to find a USB keyboard or a mike. It should be easy since they are everywhere these days. In fact, free mikes to the wrong people may disrupt the growth/quality of a community (and overload the small number of mods/leaders initially).
The big advantages of Playstation Home are that it's free (no subscription) and sexy. Owners with communication device on PS3 is also growing albeit slower. Should the rate does not match Sony's expectation, they can always start to bundle a free mike with some games like they did with Socom.
Possible issues exist (e.g., Will majority of people talk ? Will people misbehave ? ...) but Sony should be able to address them because they have almost full control of the user experience. Don't look at it as a snapshot and don't pigeon-hole the Home effort as just a 3D UI or an XBox Live competition. Look at it as a long-running condensed-Internet platform and people will start to see that many of these issues are not show stoppers. It takes time to make the community feel at Home. Playstation Home has another unique advantage: The Playstation brand and the long 10 year relationships with gamers.
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Err, then you're not reading my posts in detail. I clearly stated that I don't expect HOME 1.0 to have everything I talked about, nor did I say I expect HOME to permit any individual to just publish executable content, or even unrestricted media content.
Here's what I said:
1) I call on Sony to create a sandbox environment for individuals to program scripts/macros/event handler code to extend the world, much like TinyMUSH/TinyMUF/LambdaMOO, etc. This is in addition to the C interface for licensed devs/publishers. Note, I am not claiming that they have this feature, I merely described the possibility.
2) According to Sony's philosophy, HOME/Game3.0 is about content creation, social collaboration, et al ala Web2.0. So whether or not HOME 1.0 has any Game 3.0 features is kinda irrelevent. They've announced their direction that they'd like to move on, so why shouldn't I expect them to try and provide it? (Honestly LY, your posts as of late seem so biased towards XB360 and so biased against Sony, it seems like you're on the MS payroll or doing an XB360 game. You used to be more fair, but now your comments seems predictable.)
3) I expect that HOME consists of more than just the 3D layer. Everyone who thinks HOME things 3D, but what's not seen is that to make what was seen in the demo work, there must be APIs for persistent object storage, for creating channels, publisher/subscriber messaging, service discovery, content synchronization, and on and on. This is significant because prior to this, the PS3 doesn't really have an online API like the Xbox 360, now it will be getting all of these components at the OS level, or atleast the SDK level, because of HOME support.
Thus, I do see that many of the "applications" I talked about: film festivals, online classrooms, online shared karoake competitions, etc are possible. I mean, even without developer support, people with headsets could go into an apartment made to look like a bar, play music on a TV, and sing (but low-rate vocoder would fubar it up) And why wouldn't media companies show trailers and clips? I can imagine stuff like a 8-minute Spider-Man 3 clip being shown to audiences exclusively, along with online chat sessions with the actors or directors.
The key here is that traditional online chat sessions with actors and directors (which you get on AOL, Yahoo, etc all the time) are text-only. Yahoo Instance Messenger can't do shared broadcast video to hundreds of users. On the other hand, done right, HOME could do for millions of users what even big online media firms like Yahoo can't do today.
