Possibilities for PS3 Home

[holsty101]

Well I think this is a thread worthy idea...
(Because after 18 pages... )

The developer/publisher spaces idea has a tonne of potential when you think about it. I didn't really think to much of it initially, but thinking about it, it could be quite powerful.

It was being discussed on GAF, but it would be very neat if a developer can host online tournaments in their games from a themed dedicated space, with displays around you potentially streaming video from the games people were playing, or perhaps if it was possible, live video. Imagine in a tournament, people launching into, say, races from this dedicated space, watching them race live on a big screen, and then having them return back to the space afterwards to congratulations (or comiserations) from the rest of the people participating there.

Another thing I was thinking about..consider if the ESA (organisers of E3) created a themed E3 space where people could gather and, perhaps, watch live streams of conferences or the like. These kinds of events are very 'social' in a kind of weird way already for people online..people go on to messageboards and post furiously during them. So to be able to share that experience within a closed console community would be very cool. Ditto, media outlets could create spaces to pipe their coverage too. Harrison mentioned during the demo that partners can put html on displays, so if that can be HTML hosted elsewhere, it could be pretty easy for a 1up or IGN to integrate their existing set ups with that. So, for example, you could go and keep tabs of a Eurogamer live blog of an event on a big screen in their space. Now, you might wonder why do this if you can just go online on your PC and watch the live-blog, but again, I think people are already inclined toward sharing those events, and it would be cool to be able to do that in a console community. Something like home could facilitate that perfectly.

Of course, these are all "coulds and woulds" right now, mere possibilities. But I guess just the more I think about it, the more potential I see there.

G.I.biz article

Do I, personally, want to deck out a virtual bedroom with statues of Solid Snake and pictures of my friends being drunk which I've taken with my camera phone? Do I want to share videos of myself slaughtering Frank Sinatra in Singstar, or create physics and logic puzzles to tax the wits of my friends in LittleBigPlanet? Honestly, I'm not sure - but then again, I never thought I wanted a Flickr, LiveJournal, MySpace or Second Life account. Not until such time as other people I know started getting involved, having fun and sometimes even creating genuinely interesting and fascinating things did I hop in.

It's the critical mass argument; a good enough socially-focused product, at a certain tipping point of user numbers, suddenly explodes in popularity. It may be that PlayStation Home and its ilk will never reach that level of quality or that critical mass, but even if these concepts are failures than we should praise Sony for having the guts to try.

Q&A with Phil
(Thanks Gradthrawn)

Interesting times ahead.

 

[Gradthrawn]

This needs to be stressed about 15 times over in bold print, to try and keep this thread from being derailed. Home is not a replacement for any particular functionality. It's a conglomeration of different functionalities in a community setting. So, if you have no interest in the social aspects, then there's no need to even bother with this. Your needs will be satisfied via simple "one-click" options in the XMB. From that interview:

If none of this sounds appealing, fear not. Just about everything you can do in Home can also be done through the cross media bar.

Ok, carry on. Back to the potentials and possibilities.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Doesn't sound like this is going to be a user driven community like a lot of the web content people keep comparing it to.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/771/771763p1.html

"Since the big reveal, fans and members of the media have repeatedly compared Home to the PC social experiment Second Life. Harrison called such comparisons "way over-simplifying both" Home and Second Life. While the two do have characters walking around a 3D world, Harrison believes the similarities end there. Second Life is almost exclusively driven by user-created content, while Home is an entertainment-focused environment in which almost everything is provided by Sony or third party supporters."

 

[Titanio]

Everything in terms of the 3D environments (minus, perhaps clothes and your avatar), are provided by Sony and partners.

But the content you share with other people is where the comparisons with other user-generated-content-services (youtube, flickr etc.) comes from, I guess. the shared theatre even features content from one of youtube's competitors (grouper), and there was a theatre in there for "your videos" (asides from whatever you share privately from your HDD in your apartment, of course).

 

[patsu]

Doesn't sound like this is going to be a user driven community like a lot of the web content people keep comparing it to.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/771/771763p1.html

"Since the big reveal, fans and members of the media have repeatedly compared Home to the PC social experiment Second Life. Harrison called such comparisons "way over-simplifying both" Home and Second Life. While the two do have characters walking around a 3D world, Harrison believes the similarities end there. Second Life is almost exclusively driven by user-created content, while Home is an entertainment-focused environment in which almost everything is provided by Sony or third party supporters."

The biggest part is the notion of sharing a common space by all 3 parties (Sony, devs and users). It goes beyond personalization because other people can experience and participate in your work. While keeping this central concept in mind...

There are many levels of user driven experience. Most contribute at the visual/mechanical level, some go beyond.

* Feedback -- April closed beta

* Communication content -- text, voice and video chat, emotes, companionship

* Personalization -- Avatar, home interior items, trophies

* Media -- Sharing TV, photoframe, background music (I wonder about sharing downloadable games with up to 5 people here)

* Activity -- Any online activities netizens come up with (e.g., GAF takes group photo in Resistance [again !] or in PS Home before/after the fight), plus sponsored activities by publishers

* Closed Environment (Private Space ?) -- Clan rooms, windows view (home exterior), tall/large communal objects (won via group game achievements ?)

* Open/Free Environment (Public Space ?) -- MUD and SecondLife style of buying land and creating everything from scratch. Probably not available or limited in PS Home.

* Community Management -- Self-policing, user ladder, community help and moderation shape netizen behaviour (Though "invisible", it's a key part of the experience where users can contribute). It is often overlooked, especially for the casuals. It is also a powerful concept in lowering and sustaining customer acquisition and support cost across games.

Community management is easier and more effective with the shared/common space idea. MUD, SecondLife, Youtube and Flickr all have varying level of problems here (e.g., respecting and enforcing content rights, customer support). It is an on-going challenge though.

 

[Npl]

whats really interesting is how they have solved sharing your own (possible HD-Resolution) Videos. Pretty sure theres an upper limit on Bitrate, but thats not something you want to explain your casual user, so the first problem would be to recompress videos "on the fly" which should be really stressing Cell - after all, Cell would be fast enough to decode 2 HD-Streams (reported by some Sony-Interview) but he`d have to encode it in our case (apart from decoding the original movie). Natively supported stream formats would be the next - I guess MPeg4-AVC is mandatory to open the door for broadcasters using that format. Everything else wouldve made "Streamable" by either repacking into a MP4 Stream (incase, say an AVI containing Mpeg4 ) or recompressing.

Then theres the problem of a casual user acting as Host - how many clients could he serve? I think a 1Mbit Stream wouldnt be out of the ordinary or excessive, but I guess most users barely have 1MBit/sec Upstream.
And then you could have 10 People wanting to watch your Stuff! So optimally, either you have some Server helping you to stream video (stream to server only, and server sends to multiple clients) or something similar to bittorrent (but transfering parts almost sequential ), where you send unique pieces to clients and those share them inbetween (which would create allot of latency, if for example a client dint receive a Part you would have to figure out whos jumping in to send that part again).
I`d find the latter approach interesting from a technical level and how it would deal out in practice.

Hmm, this post really fitting here?

 

[Dregun]

I was impressed with what Sony showed and the potential "Home" has, it could be SIMS on crack...either good or bad. I'm very intrigued by the possibilities Home has to offer and if Sony can pull it off it pull some much needed positive light onto them.

I have a few questions that I doubt anyone here can answer yet maybe the answer is simpler then I thought.

1. What about the language barrier.
Playing MMORPG's both with text and teamspeak, the language barrier sometimes can be a real pain. Will Sony only allow Japanese players to log onto servers in Japan, or will everyone be connected to the same servers? Will the "Voice" option only work when your within a close radius, or will I hear people from across the way speaking Hindu and not be able to hear my friends next to me? Will developers make multiple versions of their shops, stores, arcades, contests etc etc so everything besides English isn't over simplified? (so people besides the native programmers don't get dumbed down versions to save time)

2. What about lost content.
It was stated that when too many people are in "Home" that they will move people between servers to accommodate the load. Does this mean that your "Home" is stored on your PS3? If so is "purchasable" or "unlocked" content transferable between PS3's? Could you lose everything if your HDD crashed or is it backed up on a server?

3. Can Home "improve" online play with regular games?
The idea of going into a room and selecting the game you want to play "online" with your friends seems like a roundabout way of doing it, but more importantly will home allow you to "download" your games to the HDD and "only" access them from "Home"? Do you put the game you "plan" on playing into your PS3, go to Home and then switch discs when you find out your friends want to play something different? Does your PS3 remember what games you have used in your PS3 and compare them with your friends to see what you both/all "Can" play?

4. Are "Homes" an actual location in game?
Is it actually apartments/houses/condos that you go to for someones home or is it just a "Link" that takes you to it? Does "Real Estate" exist in the game, does your home actually "occupy" a virtual mass online. Basically what I'm wondering is if Home is like GTA, you have homes, condos apartments but "real" people this time would actually occupy those areas. Or is it just a small location with shops and arcades and your home is just a place without a location?

I know some of these questions are beyond the scope of what any of us know, however I think they all have some significance to what we WANT as gamers. I would really like to see "Home" as a big GTA, so you can get lost and forget how to get back home, have directions to find your place ..possibly take a CAB! I think if they made Home an actual 3D world where small cities are formed as more and more people create accounts they could solve MANY problems I have listed.

If it was all a 3D world you wouldn't have to worry about switching servers and losing your group of friends as each part of the world/city would have its own server. You move far enough and you change to the server that is hosting that new location and the people that are in it. In a 3D world language wouldn't be that big of a problem because just like in the states different areas form to embrace that culture or ethnic background...China Town for example! To me Home could be much more then what its going to be but luckily Home can always grow into that if Sony wanted it too.


Dregun

 

[-tkf-]

I was impressed with what Sony showed and the potential "Home" has, it could be SIMS on crack...either good or bad. I'm very intrigued by the possibilities Home has to offer and if Sony can pull it off it pull some much needed positive light onto them.

I have a few questions that I doubt anyone here can answer yet maybe the answer is simpler then I thought.

1. What about the language barrier.

2. What about lost content.
It was stated that when too many people are in "Home" that they will move people between servers to accommodate the load. Does this mean that your "Home" is stored on your PS3? If so is "purchasable" or "unlocked" content transferable between PS3's? Could you lose everything if your HDD crashed or is it backed up on a server?

3. Can Home "improve" online play with regular games?
The idea of going into a room and selecting the game you want to play "online" with your friends seems like a roundabout way of doing it, but more importantly will home allow you to "download" your games to the HDD and "only" access them from "Home"? Do you put the game you "plan" on playing into your PS3, go to Home and then switch discs when you find out your friends want to play something different? Does your PS3 remember what games you have used in your PS3 and compare them with your friends to see what you both/all "Can" play?

4. Are "Homes" an actual location in game?
Dregun

Many of these questions have been answered. What we know so far is 100k people on one server, and it looks like you can log in to any server you want. The world is not seemless, there is "warping" when you for example travel to your apartment. I´m pretty sure that the content you buy in Home is not a problem to get back. Your personal stuff on your HD is your own problem. The PS3 has a harddrive and Home runs from the Harddrive, Zero issues with swapping discs.

4: No, it´s a service thats running before or after your games. There isn´t any real estate as such.