Sony Home - The official thread*

[patsu]

So anyone making a B3D clubhouse?

tha_con made an R2 one ("Project Abraham").

Game launching only makes sense if it provides some features and options that the game itself doesn't offer, like easier ways to find players you want to play with.

Doesn't seem likely that developers, especially those making multiplatform games, will compromise their schedules with putting in that kind of support.

It's decoupled. Friend finding can be done in Home without the game developers' involvement. Then the party launches into a game directly, by-passing all the intermediate UI. You select all the gaming parameters (e.g., game mode, number of players, party members, etc.) before starting the session.

Home is essentially an open-ended party system.

For the Buzz! game space, you can play right inside Home itself (It's a game show stage). Theoretically, you can walk right into a Buzz! game on-demand.

You can also do more compared to a standard in-game lobby. Home has a robust text, emote and voice chat system that is much more flexible and expressive that most lobby communication systems. You can also play mini-games (basically do your own thing) while waiting for a game to form/launch.

 

[wco81]

Hope you guys are right.

Thing is, when you meet people in 3rd party games, there's no way to add them as a friend from within the game. You have to drop out to XMB and remember their name and try to add it.

But for instance, you have games like FIFA or LBP which have players from all over the world. In the case of FIFA, the lobbies leave a lot to be desired in terms of finding people and limiting games to people you want to play with.

Yet, why would EA, which has spent some time developing that UI, as confusing as it is (you have to branch into various menus and then go back up and down again to access different areas), cede online players to Home?

If Home can have clubhouses or some other space where you can launch FIFA games, maybe people hang out in Home in order to start FIFA games rather than EA's own lobbies. Why would EA give up this control they have over the user experience of their own game? Especially when there are probably advertising opportunities in their own space?

 

[patsu]

Hope you guys are right.

I simply described what's working now (for Warhawk).

Thing is, when you meet people in 3rd party games, there's no way to add them as a friend from within the game. You have to drop out to XMB and remember their name and try to add it.

Yes, it is game specific.

But if you meet them in Home first (and then launch the game), you'd have the opportunity to add them in Home itself.

But for instance, you have games like FIFA or LBP which have players from all over the world. In the case of FIFA, the lobbies leave a lot to be desired in terms of finding people and limiting games to people you want to play with.

Yet, why would EA, which has spent some time developing that UI, as confusing as it is (you have to branch into various menus and then go back up and down again to access different areas), cede online players to Home?

There is no UI. They read an XML file to launch a game with the Home members. So the traffic direction is one-way (from Home to game).

If Home can have clubhouses or some other space where you can launch FIFA games, maybe people hang out in Home in order to start FIFA games rather than EA's own lobbies. Why would EA give up this control they have over the user experience of their own game? Especially when there are probably advertising opportunities in their own space?

They don't give it up. It's an option. In-game lobby is still present.

There is no giving up of control because the game space can be created and owned by EA. If EA is concerned with loss of opportunity, they'd devote resources to enhance their game space so that people will visit there. I am not sure about clubhouse infrastructure. For all we know, they could be hosted on developer servers too, just like game spaces. There is no technical reason preventing EA from rolling their own as well.

 

[betan]

Hope you guys are right.

Thing is, when you meet people in 3rd party games, there's no way to add them as a friend from within the game. You have to drop out to XMB and remember their name and try to add it.

When was the last time you used a PS3?
In-game XMB is pretty old now, "players met" list is even older.

 

[patsu]

Hmm... I thought "dropping out to XMB" means in-game XMB. If not, then wco81, you have missed a few months of crucial PS3 development. ^_^

 

[Arwin]

Yet, why would EA, which has spent some time developing that UI, as confusing as it is (you have to branch into various menus and then go back up and down again to access different areas), cede online players to Home?

Ask Peter Moore, the guy who said about Home that it's great, we'll support it, and we wish Sony would release it already. It's precisely because it will make their software less confusing.

If Home can have clubhouses or some other space where you can launch FIFA games, maybe people hang out in Home in order to start FIFA games rather than EA's own lobbies. Why would EA give up this control they have over the user experience of their own game? Especially when there are probably advertising opportunities in their own space?

Because they don't have to maintain them, and don't have to run them on their own servers, and still get all the info, and can still distinguish themselves by creating EA spaces in Home.

We'll see soon enough!

And what others said about players met and in-game XMB.

 

[patsu]

Interview with some Home people from Sony and Capcom dev.
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/934/934213p1.html

Addressed some of wco81's questions.

 

[tirminyl]

^ Yes, I read about that interview. I really do hope that many other publishers have spaces just waiting to go at the launch of their game or at least plan to do so. I would love to see new spaces, whether from developers, publishers or other 3rd parties, launch beside OR a week before a game so users can check out preview vids, a recreation of an environment and to just meet others excited about the game. Reps from the publisher can be on hand to answer questions, etc. Lots of potential there.

Even after reading the interviews I have to remember not to get too excited about it going open beta as I am really hoping there is an explosion of content available. Either way I am excited to see how the service can expand.

 

[patsu]

Yes, most notably... the general usability issues will likely remain (since we have the Home 1.0 client now).

The new content may come in "corporate" timeframe (read: slow). Would be a delight if Sony can move at Internet time.

 

[wco81]

Hmm... I thought "dropping out to XMB" means in-game XMB. If not, then wco81, you have missed a few months of crucial PS3 development. ^_^

No I have the latest firmware and I use in-game XMB all the time.

But it's really lame.

In FIFA and other EA games, I can't add friends from within the game.

What's worse, I can't track friends who are online in the same game and invite them to specific games. So I have to drop out to XMB and back into the game. Back and forth all the time.

It's dumb.

I might see 10 game sessions and I can only guess where the friends I want are, because EA's system puts one of up to 20 players from the menu list showing active game sessions.

If Home uses a 3D space of some kind and you gather in that space to launch a game, it would make things simpler, but not perfect.

The PS2 versions of EA Sports games actually let you maintain your own friends list and you could tell which lobby they were in and which point in the game they were at so that you can decide whether to wait for a friend.

So EA and PSN really regressed in functionality as far as I'm concerned.

 

[wco81]

BTW, are you guys saying a publisher could make a space like the mall with just XML?

Or is XML used just for some transaction handoff between Home and their online game servers?

 

[patsu]

No I have the latest firmware and I use in-game XMB all the time.

But it's really lame.

In FIFA and other EA games, I can't add friends from within the game.

What's worse, I can't track friends who are online in the same game and invite them to specific games. So I have to drop out to XMB and back into the game. Back and forth all the time.

It's dumb.

I might see 10 game sessions and I can only guess where the friends I want are, because EA's system puts one of up to 20 players from the menu list showing active game sessions.

Yap, XMB support is game specific. R2 and LBP handle it much better. I expect the integration to improve over time. I was told trophy support is becoming mandatory. I suspect the only reason why friends management is not enforced is because they are waiting to finalize Home.

If Home uses a 3D space of some kind and you gather in that space to launch a game, it would make things simpler, but not perfect.

Playstation Home extends the in-game environment to a common community/gathering area shared by all games. For specific infrastructure feature like game invitation, it would be a Playstation Network feature.

The PS2 versions of EA Sports games actually let you maintain your own friends list and you could tell which lobby they were in and which point in the game they were at so that you can decide whether to wait for a friend.

So EA and PSN really regressed in functionality as far as I'm concerned.

Yes, it's a work in progress as far as I can tell.

EDIT:

BTW, are you guys saying a publisher could make a space like the mall with just XML?

Or is XML used just for some transaction handoff between Home and their online game servers?

Probably a mix of both. I believe Collada also uses XML.

One of the reasons why I think Home will have "corporate timeframe" update is because of the complex content creation process and technology. This will put a heavy burden on Sony and the developers. They may not be able to achieve Internet-style daily content update to draw users constantly. Even with community managers, the attraction will be severely limited to chatters.

The only cheap and scalable way is to allow the users to extend the Home world as well.

 

[Arwin]

BTW, are you guys saying a publisher could make a space like the mall with just XML?

A game space like the mall is first of all of course a bunch of 3D data. But apparently it's really easy to move 3D data into Home, like was demonstrated with the Far Cry 2 village in Home. I don't know if this 3D data is xml or something else.

Also apparently all interactive elements are programmed using Lua now, even the Arcade games (they weren't before apparently, this changed just recently).

Or is XML used just for some transaction handoff between Home and their online game servers?

I only know for certain that it is used here, because that was discussed in various locations.

 

[patsu]

It was in an old article: http://www.developmag.com/news/27599/Sonys-open-Home

Regarding Home Development Kit (HDK)...

For example, the current pre-release version only supports the use of Maya for the creation of 3D assets, while v1.0 will add 3ds Max and Collada support.

For Collada...
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_/ai_n26945308

...COLLADA, open standard XML-based digital asset exchange schema for interactive 3D applications. Originally targeted for exchange of content in a game environment, COLLADA can be effectively applied in nearly any area of 3D content creation. The addition of shading effects and physics to COLLADA 1.4 in March 2006 has enabled thousands of game artists and developers to create and use hundreds of COLLADA-based tools to author and process their next-generation game assets. COLLADA 1.4 includes core features such as mesh geometry, skinning, morphing, animation and data validation as well as COLLADA FX for defining visual effects and COLLADA Physics for physics effects including rigid body dynamics, rag dolls, constraints and collision volumes.

 

[patsu]

http://www.brandrepublic.com/Revolution/News/866365/Red-Bull-becomes-first-brand-PlayStation-Home/

Red Bull has become the first brand to build a presence in PlayStation Home, Sony's much anticipated virtual world, Revolution can reveal.

Red Bull has built a tropical island, featuring an aeroplane racing game based on Red Bull's real world Red Bull Air Race series.

May not be fast or fun enough. It usually takes a few months to a year to close a corporate deal.

Please let the users customize Home (like LBP !). Even if Sony introduces monthly "corporate" content, the combined userbase can probably do daily update (30 times more content). It'd be less stiff too !

 

[tirminyl]

Please let the users customize Home (like LBP !). Even if Sony introduces monthly "corporate" content, the combined userbase can probably do daily update (30 times more content). It'd be less stiff too !

I thought Sony stated before that they would allow users to create and distribute java based games? I guess I need to do some searching...

 

[Arwin]

Eventually ... It won't happen overnight though for sure. I think it will partly depend on the commercial success of what publishers do.

Regarding Red Bull, the deal was probably started quite a while ago, and either got the go-ahead after a Home location was created successfully, or the deal was made a while ago completely and the results are now ready to be announced and will be available when the public beta launches. We'll see.

 

[patsu]

I thought Sony stated before that they would allow users to create and distribute java based games? I guess I need to do some searching...

I think they decided to go LUA instead of Java.

Would be cool if it's Java coz they can explore integration with BD-Live and tru2way settop box standards. I think for the foreseeable future, the Java run-time will only be activated in Blu-ray.

 

[patsu]

For those beta testers who don't check the beta forum

Might want to check out the mall for freebies tomorrow morning (There will be downtime tonight)

 

[DJ12]

Cool, I read over at PS3trophies.co.uk that trophies will equal money in home and you will get money for any trophies you already have too.