Phil Harrison's GDC keynote - Home, LittleBigPlanet & more
- Thread starter Titanio
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regarding the issue about "dedicated" game servers i gotta disagree with many people. 97% of online games don't need dedicated server. Also a dedicated server doesn't mean the game play experience will be any better, smoother, or faster. After working on online games for about 7 years there's one thing the software online gaming technology can't improve, and that's network conditions.
It's honestly a waste of time using a dedicated servers for something that isn't a massively multi player game (I'm talking 64 players or higher)
It's honestly a waste of time using a dedicated servers for something that isn't a massively multi player game (I'm talking 64 players or higher)
quest55720
Regular
Little big planet look pretty damn awesome. Home blah could careless I am not into on line community stuff. I would of rather seen them use the home resources on better PS2 emulation and game development. Little big planet will be definately be one of the games I get when I pick up a PS3 in 2 or 3 price cuts.
You should watch the keynote
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/video_player/popup.php?sid=6167003&pid=undefined
and you'll know video streaming and building a home with your photos and videos, and collecting assets in your hall of fame, obviously in your own PS3 HDD, is a rather big deal there. Multiple video streaming is definitely leveraged by what Cell can do.
As for the reserved resources, I wrote game/internet integration. If you run its P2P distribution system and you broadcast what you are playing to others beside a running game, it requires background resources.
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64 player thing is your optimism.
Most home broadband connections cannot handle 32 players. Just take an example, GeoW supports just only 8 players but you still can see huge lag in the game.
If you charge somebody money its supposed to be better than free service not the other way around. Its simple as that.
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Which will matter in about 2 years when pricing is more in the range of the non-gamer. But now, not so much (IMO).
And I don't think that qualifies the service as a system seller. A single excellent PS3 game (like Heavenly Sword) is more of a system seller than Home, IMO.
Oh, it's a great strategy. And if that does happen, the console market will look so different that I won't know what to think anymore.
That did not necessarily make WoW a system seller, though. It could easily be argued that WoW's superior gameplay was the primary selling point of the game, and even then it wouldn't be clear that the game caused a spike in PC sales.
Thanks for the link. Just finished watching. I must say LBP is the work of geniuses (and lotsa love !). Can't wait for the rubber ducky game. Is it going to be Game 3.0 as well ?
I'm glad they are doing a soft launch (closed beta) for PS Home to gain feedback and acceptance. Main thing to watch out is still load time and quick/easy access (basically optimization and simplification). As an expert user, I may end up using the virtual PSP quite a bit. The overall concept is very promising and can support multiple business models, which is important.
I can see how consumers may benefit on this platform (e.g., financially, socially, etc.) as it gains momentum. Seeing what they have done so far, I'm pretty sure Sony marketing is already exploring these ideas (because I would have !).
For people who are disappointed, I think they should continue to watch this space. This is just the beginning.
Great job, Sony. You were not clueless. Just awfully busy I guess.
But you're like Kutaragi who refused to communicate to the stake holders. I hope the team will manage their communications more thoughtfully in the future. I can appreciate stealth moves where appropriate so do still keep some pleasant surprises for us
With LBP, suddenly nextgen becomes more than just chronology or cosmetic or realism. The fun got multiplied as well (Kudos to Nintendo Wii here too).
ManuVlad3.0
Regular
I don't talking about people who will buy PS3 just to play HOME. I'm talking about people who lives in a house with a PS3 console, but don't care about games, like a teenage sister or a non-gamer brother, or wife. They could be interested. Like many people who don't care about computers in 90's, but loved to surf in the web and spend a lot of time in chat rooms.
And as someone who has been playing PC online FPSs since Quakeworld, as well as being a near full-time CS/DoD player, I can tell you this is so dead wrong it is ridiculous. Lag is a huge factor in playability of these games. In Day of Defeat : Source I can eviscerate anyone with more than 40ms ping using the sniper rifle, especially people standing still behind cover, since my client already knows there position (even if I can't see them yet), I can sprint-strafe them into view and snipe them before they see me. I routinely get accused of hacking because of this.
1) Most people's upstream DSL bandwidth is not sufficient to host 64 player gamers reliably, especially with voice.
2) Dedicated servers can sit at network peering points, minimizing the latency and number of hops to a far larger number of gamers, enlarging the number of users who can play together with low lag.
3) In many games, the user whose console is currently hosting has a latency advantage
4) Dedicated servers free up CPU resources
5) Dedicated servers help avoid NAT/Firewall issues that many home network users face and who aren't sophisticated enough to fix (and no UPnP and NAT hole punching are not solutions for everyone)
6) dedicated servers offer a more efficient, and more secure way of having shared resources
Honestly, even 32-player FPS games hosted from ADSL connections suck ass and I find it amazing someone with so many claimed years of experience would claim otherwise. If it weren't for the fact that consoles don't have mice, many more people would realize just how bad the lag is.
Upload bandwidth need is exponential from the server POV I think. Most home broadband connections are anemic in the UL (~300Mbps). This means 8-16 player max. Are there any 32+ shooter games that are peer-to-peer? Dedicated servers are a must for big games like Battlefield, Warhawk, etc. and is nice for a quality match for any game that has mosre than a handful of players.
See, this is why I like Sony. They're so goddamn ambitious. I'm already imagining all sorts of cool uses for the Home system. I can imagine hooking up with friends, wandering through the virtual world, maybe strolling through the new movies sections. "Hey, let's check out some trailers!" We go to the Spiderman 4 section section or whatever and we can watch it simultaneously in HD, commenting on it with live voice chat as it plays and then talking about what we thought of it afterwards. Or, hey, I'm in a game with some friends killing Nazis, or whatever. "Hey, have you guys heard the new Modest Mouse?" After the round it's a party at my place where we can all listen to the album at the same time and talk about it while it plays. Or we can get together to check out the retro arcade. "what do you guys want to play?" And then we start a four player game of gauntlet or whatever, pumping virtual quarters into the virtual machine. They key is this real time consensual experience which could be pretty different from what we have now via IM, message boards, game matchmaking and social websites. No more linking to stills or trailers for Little Big World. We'd be standing there together looking at the same thing going, "Oh shit! That looks amazing!"
I don't have a particular interest in meeting new people randomly online, but it would be pretty sweet for keeping up with my College buddies over the summer when they go home. Or with my family if I move away for Grad school.
I don't have a particular interest in meeting new people randomly online, but it would be pretty sweet for keeping up with my College buddies over the summer when they go home. Or with my family if I move away for Grad school.
True. No one ordered it. And we know for a fact that there were "casualties". These people risked their career and reputation pushing that envelope.
I am not particularly interested in Home, but I can see that it's a good meld of already existing ideas. I can defintely see the potential. Good job Sony, now they just need to properly execute it. I am way more interested in LBW, I guess I will have to own all three consoles.
My poor poor wallet
My poor poor wallet
I don't get why LBP would be a huge exclusive. They should've showed off MGS gameplay demos (what new innovations there are), a new Heavenly Sword level demo, or maybe even a FF13 demo/movie.
Home is interesting, but I don't get it's target demographic. Like ManuVlad3.0 said, it could be something for non-gamers but there's easier ways to play music, video, or chat. And if you're a gamer, it's annoying walking (as far as I can tell) to the movie or music sections. Hopefully tomorrow's more interesting and they just wanted to show new things they published in the keynote.
Home is interesting, but I don't get it's target demographic. Like ManuVlad3.0 said, it could be something for non-gamers but there's easier ways to play music, video, or chat. And if you're a gamer, it's annoying walking (as far as I can tell) to the movie or music sections. Hopefully tomorrow's more interesting and they just wanted to show new things they published in the keynote.
Do you have a myspace page? Do you create youtube videos? Do you play second life, or old style Social MUDs? Probably not in the audience. I'm not even in XBL's "achievement" audience. I frankly don't care about unlocking achievements or what achievements others have unlocked.
I can certainly see where HOME and LBP are headed. The LBP "sharing" trailer frankly looks like YouTube's interface in a way, I can imagine people creating worlds, perhaps little stage plays, and garnering fame, maybe even advertising revenue if Sony open's it up. As Second Life has already demostrated, there is a huge, surprising huge, audience willing to pay for the experience, so I can see HOME as sort of SL+MySpace.
I think the key is if the HOME service is "open" from the standard point of allowing third parties to provide content. The HOME client should almost be like a Web browser in the sense that I could create my online store using HOME APIs, host them on my own server, and a PS3 could essentially traverse onto my site, essentially VRML/Web3D as it was meant to be.
I can certainly see where HOME and LBP are headed. The LBP "sharing" trailer frankly looks like YouTube's interface in a way, I can imagine people creating worlds, perhaps little stage plays, and garnering fame, maybe even advertising revenue if Sony open's it up. As Second Life has already demostrated, there is a huge, surprising huge, audience willing to pay for the experience, so I can see HOME as sort of SL+MySpace.
I think the key is if the HOME service is "open" from the standard point of allowing third parties to provide content. The HOME client should almost be like a Web browser in the sense that I could create my online store using HOME APIs, host them on my own server, and a PS3 could essentially traverse onto my site, essentially VRML/Web3D as it was meant to be.
NovemberMike
Regular
Am I the only person who isn't impressed? I think MS got the right idea with a minimalist interface that enables people do do things like see if friends are online, see who the last 20 people they played with were and negative rep somebody in two or three buttons while in a game. Home seems nifty, but unless you can check your characters cell phone to see if a friend is online while waiting to respawn in Killzone (which brings its own problems in the form of resource use) I don't see it being very practical.
Sony seems to have focused too much on the features and lost sight of the main objective. An online interface like this is like a car with an entertainment system that takes so much energy the car won't start with it on. The feature itself is really nice, but all I need is stereo sound at a reasonable volume so I can listen to something while I drive.
Sony seems to have focused too much on the features and lost sight of the main objective. An online interface like this is like a car with an entertainment system that takes so much energy the car won't start with it on. The feature itself is really nice, but all I need is stereo sound at a reasonable volume so I can listen to something while I drive.
Thats why the virtual PSP is there.
you do know that PS3 has P2P games as well (and will have many more in the future) right.
they are not all on dedicated servers. And Live has dedicated server games as well.
Essentially, XMB is the basic navigation interface (embedded in the form of a Virtual PSP). Conceptually, it works for PSP remote access too.
I expect the service to evolve further after the beta. Phil mentioned that each room surface can take HTML, video or other media. So they have quite a bit of flexibility to play with.
This is just the surface/shell, the draw of PS Home should become more apparent later on (with added business dimensions and actual users).
I expect the service to evolve further after the beta. Phil mentioned that each room surface can take HTML, video or other media. So they have quite a bit of flexibility to play with.
This is just the surface/shell, the draw of PS Home should become more apparent later on (with added business dimensions and actual users).
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