Sony Home - The official thread*

[patsu]

Hmm... I think they want Home items to be based on real economy. Paying with fake money is probably less interesting (especially user-to-user trading !).

If they allow Home money to be converted into real money, it will count as currencies (or money's worth) too.

What's with the desire to have Home money ? I know someone posed as a Sony mod and spreaded rumors about Home money. Sony has not mentioned anything to that effect.

If it's useless, then there will be little demand for it and they'll just withdraw it.

I bought the summer home and some furniture but haven't bothered to check it out.

Well, you probably won't buy The Sims Online too. Doesn't mean fake furnitures are not interesting to other people though.

To have any kind of utility, they should just give you tools to design your own architecture and just decorate it. Then maybe have something like a GT photo mode and make pictures or movies that you can upload to external sites.

Yes, I support user generated content and activities because they provide more depth and "sticklness".

Otherwise, what is the point of customizing stock apartments that everyone else has? It would be kind of funny if people just built whatever they wanted and you had these unsightly buildings marring the skyline.

That's where they hope some will buy exclusive items if it's cheap enough.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

If it's useless, then there will be little demand for it and they'll just withdraw it.

Dunno about that, there is quite a few useless\worthless DLCs that come out ever so often that people pay for.

Hehe, if people could build whatever they want, i bet it will end up with everybody having houses looking like boobies and dick's

 

[DJ12]

I cannot think of one thing I'd ever consider paying for in Home. I'm sure there's some people that would love to spend £1 on a new t-shirt for their virtual character, but it isn't for me.

I don't have much of a life, but I have more of a life than that suggests.

 

[patsu]

They can tie virtual items with the purchase of real items. The virtual items may serve as exposure/advertisement only.

 

[Arwin]

I understand that trophies are not currencies to begin with, but you could easily have build a model that would transform trophies into Home money. Imo that would beat having to pay real money for useless crap.

Your talking more of what Sony first referred to as 'Entitlements', if anyone remembers that.

As for the rest, Sony's Home is simply following the model of many other free MMO's.

 

[tha_con]

Really don't understand complaints of purchasing your own home spaces or clubhouses. I mean, it's all optional, and not really essential to the core functionality at home. IMO that's far more acceptable than charging for an online service such as WoW or XBL. Well, maybe WoW is acceptable.

 

[slider]

Dunno about that, there is quite a few useless\worthless DLCs that come out ever so often that people pay for.

Hehe, if people could build whatever they want, i bet it will end up with everybody having houses looking like boobies and dick's

Yeah, that's the issue unfortunately. If people pay for it there's no reason for Sony to rework the model. As vocal as core gamers can be they aren't necessarily the ones dictating business models.

As for the 2nd part of your post... I've never seen you be so like that!

 

[Asher]

If they were really smart about this, they'd take a page out of the book of Lord of the Rings Online and similar MMORPGs. Unlocking certain trophies in games should unlock content to be used in Home (whether it be a minigame to install in your apartment to a special piece of furniture, to a painting, to a physical trophy to show off, to clothing)...

Focusing on real money to buy virtual items is a huge mistake.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So...umm...where is it? PSN Store is busted (error 80710D23), but Threespeech lists the PSN Contents for this update, and Home is absent.

 

[Asher]

I think it's down...

After a painful 15 minute update process (1.0 -> 1.03, 2.52 system to 2.53 -- I still don't know why this takes orders of magnitude longer than the 360's updates), mine times out after a minute or two at the "Initialization" screen with the error "Network Error The connection to the server was lost D5027"

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I still don't know why this takes orders of magnitude longer than the 360's updates

PS3 updates are complete firmwares, not patches.

So, looks like another online service/function/feature Sony have mallsed up again

 

[slider]

Does this mean I can't play Warhawk? Dammit.

EDIT: Logged onto PSN, Store remains elusive. Just a black screen with the swirling smoke thingy. Strike that, it's up... now it's not... no it's not. Server timed out. Now I'm on again but it's patchy. No sign of Home but Warhawk is on for £14.99 (is that old)?

Sorry for the stream of consciousness .

 

[Arwin]

I think it's down...

After a painful 15 minute update process (1.0 -> 1.03, 2.52 system to 2.53 -- I still don't know why this takes orders of magnitude longer than the 360's updates), mine times out after a minute or two at the "Initialization" screen with the error "Network Error The connection to the server was lost D5027"

It's something to do with your connection to Sony though, because this 16MB update (last one was 27MB, so it's a good update process it seems) took me 32 seconds. Guess what my connection speed is.

That said though I can't get into either Home or the Store either though. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing (popular or lousy planning by Sony) but it looks like it's going to be a good thing, because it means a lot of people are trying and although disappointed now, at least they'll likely try again soon.

 

[patsu]

Check this post. TedTheDog (The EU Home community manager) is keeping us posted on the update progress:
http://community.eu.playstation.com...essage?board.id=b_EN_PS3_Home&thread.id=58096

Technical updates are progressing and as you have probably seen the 1.03 patch is available for existing users already but the service remains unavailable whilst work is carried out

Service should be back up everywhere early PM UK time although theres no specific time as theres a long list of actions being worked through in Europe, America, Asia and Japan

New comers to the service will find the Home icon on their XMB once we activate it. You wont have to look for it, it will be easy to spot and will appear under PlayStation®Network. However, if you are online on your PS3 when we activate it you will need to restart your PS3 for it to appear. Watch these forums for news on when that is. It will work like Folding@Home in that the icon will be there and you'll download the service when you first select it.

**Edit 3pm**

Still progressing nicely, now on the testing stage. No eta still as I wouldnt want to guess how long it will take for each region to verify its elements are working but we're getting there.


**Edit 3:15pm**

Not there yet, the testing is still going on, but I wanted to mention a couple of other things that need clarification.
The Far Cry2 and Uncharted spaces will not be available in our region today as the localisation and testing phase is not yet complete. They will follow on later.
Additonally the Diesel and Ligne Roset content will be added next week at the same time as the Red Bull Air Race.

**Edit 4:25pm**
Testing complete and a couple of technical problems have been found. We need to iron these issues out first and I'm waiting to hear how long that might take (I'm not qualified to even guess, its very technical). Apologies, I know you all want to get in but we must get these things right. And please remember, this is a beta and today is our first step into the Open Beta environment and what we're doing today is part of the beta process itself.

**Edit 5:55**
Apologies for the delay in an update, you may have noticed a PSN outage in the last hour. Things seem back on track now although the outage delayed us a little we are moving again. Hope to have another update soon.

 

[Asher]

It's something to do with your connection to Sony though, because this 16MB update (last one was 27MB, so it's a good update process it seems) took me 32 seconds. Guess what my connection speed is.

That said though I can't get into either Home or the Store either though. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing (popular or lousy planning by Sony) but it looks like it's going to be a good thing, because it means a lot of people are trying and although disappointed now, at least they'll likely try again soon.

It's not the downloading that takes forever, it's the install process. But the download is definitely slower than it should be.

And I wouldn't say it's "my connection to Sony", because my connection is fine. I regularly download at 1MB/s from many sites. Maybe Sony is just really, really cheap or otherwise incompetent with their North American infrastructure (which honestly would not be surprising given that they are incompetent at making small patches rather than pushing down whole firmwares as well).

 

[patsu]

They use the same CDN provider as XBL. The servers are hosted in SOE. So the infrastructure should be fine. (Don't forget it's free too !)

PS3 software are generally of high quality (SecondLife s*ck, Google Lively took a few years of development too with fewer features on a familiar/commodity platform), so I'd say the techies are competent in general.

What's more problematic are project-related issues (Too many things happening at the same time). They may have to focus only on a few things, tweak the processes or even reorg to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

EDIT:

**Edit 8:15pm**

Very sorry about the delay here. The PSN outage really set us back a while but things are picking up again. And apologies for the delay in updates, I had to get home to continue with this. Looks like we're not far off now though.

 

[itch]

The servers seem to be up now (at least for the U.S.) I just got in Home. it's downloading the new Central Plaza now...

 

[Asher]

They use the same CDN provider as XBL. The servers are hosted in SOE. So the infrastructure should be fine. (Don't forget it's free too !)

If the provider is the same as XBL, then they have a huge problem on their own side. XBL downloads (even the free Silver stuff) are significantly faster in Canada. Both when I lived on he west coast and now on the east coast.

PS3 software are generally of high quality (SecondLife s*ck, Google Lively took a few years of development too with fewer features on a familiar/commodity platform), so I'd say the techies are competent in general.

Really? I think if you look at how many firmware updates have come out and how frequently we get minor patches compared to Sony's competition, in addition to other stuff like how much resources the PS3 OS uses compared to the competition, it's fair to question their relative technical competence.

I simply do not comprehend why the PS3 needs so many updates so often, and then on top of that each update takes an absurdly long time to download and install compared to the competition. I understand your angle on this will be "because they are adding new features all the time", which is true but if they were really competent organizationally and technically most of the features they've been adding should've been launched long ago, or at least bundled in larger updates that are less frequent. Additionally, most of the patches are of the "0.01" variety which largely fix bugs, not adding any significant features.

Then there's other things like Home's absurd loading times and I really question the calibre of SCE's internal developers.

Sorry for the threadjack, it just annoys me to no end to sit down and want to play something and then just stare at my screen for 15 minutes while it updates to add full-screen Flash functionality which I never wanted or needed anyway. They need to be more respectful of their user's time and adopt a system that provides genuine patches hosted on capable infrastructures with regular, less frequent updates.

 

[Arwin]

They had a PSN downage for 2 hours, but apparently Home is up now and you should be able to get the icon for it on your XMB automatically above the store Icon just by rebooting your PS3

 

[tirminyl]

If the provider is the same as XBL, then they have a huge problem on their own side. XBL downloads (even the free Silver stuff) are significantly faster in Canada. Both when I lived on he west coast and now on the east coast.


Really? I think if you look at how many firmware updates have come out and how frequently we get minor patches compared to Sony's competition, in addition to other stuff like how much resources the PS3 OS uses compared to the competition, it's fair to question their relative technical competence.

I simply do not comprehend why the PS3 needs so many updates so often, and then on top of that each update takes an absurdly long time to download and install compared to the competition. I understand your angle on this will be "because they are adding new features all the time", which is true but if they were really competent organizationally and technically most of the features they've been adding should've been launched long ago, or at least bundled in larger updates that are less frequent. Additionally, most of the patches are of the "0.01" variety which largely fix bugs, not adding any significant features.

Then there's other things like Home's absurd loading times and I really question the calibre of SCE's internal developers.

Sorry for the threadjack, it just annoys me to no end to sit down and want to play something and then just stare at my screen for 15 minutes while it updates to add full-screen Flash functionality which I never wanted or needed anyway. They need to be more respectful of their user's time and adopt a system that provides genuine patches hosted on capable infrastructures with regular, less frequent updates.

Not to detract from the point of the thread but people complained about the updates and Sony adding new features to the console, and when they stopped people complained about not receiving new features, and fixes for issues they were having. It is a lose lose situation for Sony but a win win situation for me.

Download speeds have never been a problem for me and install speeds have only been an issue when my harddrive was running low on space. Sure it can be annoying to have to wait to play a game online when there is an update that is required for it and sure I would love to download OS patches and not full OS releases but I know for every one person that believes the updates to be pointless to them, someone else is thanking Sony for fixing their problem or giving them a much needed (to them) feature. Although, I don't disagree with the idea that improvements can be made all around. So please don't take my post as me attacking you, just making some statements in general to what I have read around the net.

As far as Home, I played in the Euro version last night before bed and I love the theater. Watched the Watchmen and Spirit trailer, among other movie trailers. I definitely prefer the Euro theater so lets see if they made any improvements to the US one.

Word is for those that have access the US region is that PULSE is playing in the mall, very cool. Also, all the items Beta users got for free are priced on the store. I have heard of clothing ranging from $0.49 to $0.99. The Summer house is $4.99 as well as the club.