Sony Home - The official thread*

Rolly Polly "Music Cafe" in Playstation Home, Japan:
http://rolly.jp.sonystyle.com/motion/special/sp12.jsp#motionplayer

A waste of time for me since I wrote off Rolly as gimmicky, but heck, at least they are using the platform to market their product.

Problem is it's for show only (non-interactive). Playstation Home should be an interactive marketing platform.

If they want to explore toy robots, they should look at integration with PS3 (e.g., robots + PS Eye + new controller + Cell), or at least integration with PSN. A standalone, single-function robot like the Rolly experience is so 80s.


EDIT: Sony's Automatic Photographer is another product that could benefit from better integration with PS3:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0908/09080600sonypartyshot.asp

It has built-in support for motion detection, smile detection and face detection.


I reached my milestone tonight, and did a quick google for "PS3 robot"

Found this forgotten patent:
http://www.siliconera.com/2009/03/18/sony-computer-entertainment-making-a-robot-accessory/

The robot is designed with a camera (item 14) to detect its surroundings and a display (18) which can show images. A microphone that reacts a user’s voice and speaker allows the robot to respond to sound as well. Sony also plans to add a position detection sensor to the robot such as an acceleration sensor, gyro sensor, or possibly a GPS receiver.

Ha ha, this is what I meant exactly.


EDIT:
Arwin said:
It reminded me that Burn Zombie Burn space actually has animated zombies walking around, so what you thought about earlier is already possible. It also has a minimgame with similar zombies trying to grab you while you navigate a kind of maze.

I checked out the zombie after your post. Yap, it's similar to what I was requesting. Adding (more) intelligence and interaction to the NPCs would be one of the next steps. Allowing an NPC to follow me to the system spaces should be allowed too :)

Okay, there is another zombie at the cash counter. This one is smarter. If I'm close enough, it would stand up to attend to me.

Bought "Burn Zombie Burn" ^_^
 
How come the Asian spaces are so much more interesting ?

Beach space in Hong Kong Home:

You have an oxygen gauge if you're underwater.
 
A Home space for Aquanauts Holiday?

I find it minorly comforting for some reason seeing in that video that the store's tile loading speed is just as utterly atrocious as it is for me when I'm in Home.

=)

Cheers
 
I remember when PS Store was first launched, the speed of icon loading was an issue too.

It looks like the CDN was not populated with the Home Store icons (because not enough people access it). It happens to me too. That's why I never bother to go shopping in Home. Can't be bothered with the slowness. If Sony wants to increase their sales conversion or "sticky-ness", speed is indeed one of the key issues they need to tackle.
 
I don't know ! It looks bright and sunny but not so atmospheric.

I care more about its usefulness and ease of use at this moment, followed by user generated content in the (near ?) future.
 
So Home is growing and improving, but does it actually do it's job yet, or has its job changed? Lets say we were to organise a B3D Fat Princess game, and scheduled a time. Is it really worth visiting Home beforehand to await people and meet? Or is it better to sit in a game that's fun and await everyone to pop online?

When Home was first unveiled I was sceptical. Than I started to grow interested, and after it was released lost all interest. Admittedly I haven't been on since lots of the updates. Sony lost me on the 'first impression' and on the few times I've been curious to have a look since, it hasn't loaded with network issues. Or I've just got bored downloading spaces.

The idea of 'living' in Home waiting for people or meeting up seems lost on me. The service now appears to be more a standalone experience, more of a game in itself where people turn up and run solo quests for those that like doing stuff, or a glorified message board for those who like socialising. It doesn't appear to work as an effect hub between games and media experiences on your PS3, a place you want to reside in between activities where you meet, launch games, and return to. That's my impression, but is anyone finding it otherwise? I see patsu's logged into Home often enough, but then he does the socialising thing. Does Home work any better than a chat-site in that respect?
 
It is still more of a social experience imo. You can also look at it as a advertisement hub for developers but it would be better if they integrated the PSN store into HOME. I have not yet used the game launching feature but maybe because Iam not in a clan. However I have met a few friends in HOME so that's a good thing. Loading is definitely its biggest problem.
 
The idea of 'living' in Home waiting for people or meeting up seems lost on me. The service now appears to be more a standalone experience, more of a game in itself where people turn up and run solo quests for those that like doing stuff, or a glorified message board for those who like socialising. It doesn't appear to work as an effect hub between games and media experiences on your PS3, a place you want to reside in between activities where you meet, launch games, and return to. That's my impression, but is anyone finding it otherwise?

They have weekly game launching events in Home. My sense is unless they make it more seamless and convenient, it will be a hard sell. They need to do this for PSN online games first since these will be readily available on the HDD. It has to be something the users want to do themselves rather than promo-driven.

I see patsu's logged into Home often enough, but then he does the socialising thing. Does Home work any better than a chat-site in that respect?

The Home chat works differently from say the XMB chat. The latter is closed (invite only) while the former is open. If your topic is interesting, it's possible for anyone to barge in. Then again, it's not unlike other 3D chat system.

The Home team will probably need to evolve their chat system further. e.g., Put public space voice chat back in Home, integrate better with party system. In general, the overall integration needs to be beefed up. For game launching, it would be more useful for Home to allocate people with similar interest and game collection in the same instance. They should also highlight interesting user activities automatically instead of relying on Cydonia and Locust_Star to announce official activities on the MoTD page. There are much room for improvement in the community platform area.
 
New 1.3 SDK discussed and announced formally, among others:

http://www.gamasutra.com/newswire?story=24880

Oh and look what you did, patsu ;)

Another case study was discussed, namely PSN title Burn Zombie Burn. Developer DoubleSix downloaded the Playstation Home SDK tools and single-handedly built a Home space for Burn Zombie Burn, complete with a shop for users to purchase clothing featuring branding for the game. "Sales have gone up for Burn Zombie Burn because of this space", claims Van Der Meulen.
 
:LOL: sales +1 is also an increase.

Make the zombies chase the players to other system spaces. Sales will x10. :p
It's not surprising that BZB increases in sales because of the additional exposure in Home. I mean people are buying "useless" Home items because they are bored, for crying out loud.

On future Home...

The HDK tools are split into three parts – the development kit itself, the documents and user guides, and the 'Content Delivery System' for submitting projects to Sony. Home spaces submitted can be either "public spaces" which anyone can enter, or "personal spaces", which users can enter alone or invite friends to join them. Their personal spaces can also be decorated with items bought from the Home store and even sold to other users.

Cox's slide on the subject also contained the bulletpoint, "Future: Clubhouses", but Cox himself did not divulge any details on this. [patsu: Hallelujah !]

Integration between Home and PS3 titles is important for the future of Home, says Cox, with two main methods available to developers. Sony is pushing developers to give users the ability to not onlhy launch their games through PlayStation Home (with multiple people if desired), but also to drop both themselves and their friends straight into a specific level of a game, skipping the title and loading screens.

Describing the Lua programming language support for HDK, Cox says that "Home is there for people who play games" but points out that "you don't have to make a game... you can make any interactive experience you want". Tools available to create worlds filled with audio, videos (and video streams), media-RSS and scoreboards mean developers can go beyond simply making a place to complement their PS3 release.

Among the additions to Home coming in build 1.3, Cox mentioned the Character Viewer Tool, which will allow devs to do a lot more with character creation, and custom animations for characters – up until now only the pre-set animations which come with Home are at a developer's disposal, but allowing animations built for specific purposes will mean "avatars will feel so much more involved", according to Cox.

There will also be more 'active items' -- i.e. furniture can be linked to a minigame -- and added restrictions on which clothing items can be worn simultaneously with others. For example, Cox explained that "Mortal Kombat components would not be available at the same time as Street Fighter [components]".

Just show the Asian Home Spaces to shame western developers. Those were built with older version of HDK. You don't need v1.3 to do more interesting stuff in Home.
 
I keep forgetting to mention that around noon I noticed that yesterday's conference is up now in the Presentation Podium space in the main Sony bit of Home.
 
So Home is growing and improving, but does it actually do it's job yet, or has its job changed? Lets say we were to organise a B3D Fat Princess game, and scheduled a time. Is it really worth visiting Home beforehand to await people and meet? Or is it better to sit in a game that's fun and await everyone to pop online?

When Home was first unveiled I was sceptical. Than I started to grow interested, and after it was released lost all interest. Admittedly I haven't been on since lots of the updates. Sony lost me on the 'first impression' and on the few times I've been curious to have a look since, it hasn't loaded with network issues. Or I've just got bored downloading spaces.

The idea of 'living' in Home waiting for people or meeting up seems lost on me. The service now appears to be more a standalone experience, more of a game in itself where people turn up and run solo quests for those that like doing stuff, or a glorified message board for those who like socialising. It doesn't appear to work as an effect hub between games and media experiences on your PS3, a place you want to reside in between activities where you meet, launch games, and return to. That's my impression, but is anyone finding it otherwise? I see patsu's logged into Home often enough, but then he does the socialising thing. Does Home work any better than a chat-site in that respect?

I'm genuinely curious if it's actually being used as a game lobby by any real games? I haven't been in in a long, long time because every time I've been in Home it's been a Second Life-like atmosphere, complete with tacky advertising and 'sponsored spaces' that I've no interest in whatsoever.
 
Home v1.3

Home getting an upgrade this September:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/08/19/playstation-home-v1-3-coming-this-september/

A first small step to encourage game launching usage:
Universal. Game. Launching. That’s right – you can now launch into any PlayStation 3 game directly from Home. Titles that fully support game launching (like Street Fighter IV, Resistance 2, MotorStorm, and Far Cry 2) will be identified by separate icons that appear over an avatar’s head and will have varying degrees of additional multiplayer functionality built in. Simplified game launching will take you from Home to the start menu of your favorite games with ease.

Improved UI (Yay !)
There are tons of little updates that you’ll notice when PlayStation Home v1.3 launches. To start, you’ll see that your avatar has additional emotes – including two new action emotes (you can flip a coin with your friends or play the old “pick a number between 1 and 100” game). You will also be able to pose your avatar in a variety of ways (photo op anyone?). We’ve also added some new categories of clothing (composite and outfits) that will allow you to customize your avatar with greater ease. In addition, we’ve optimized the targeting system, added a new queuing system, fixed quite a few pesky bugs, and are giving you the option to determine your cache size (you can choose from 3, 5, 8, and 12 GB) so as to make navigating Home a much smoother experience.

Better shopping experience:
Shop-a-holics will be stoked to see that an in-store item previewing option will be rolled out. This feature will allow you to preview items of clothing on your character in 3D (including the ability to check out multiple items simultaneously to see what combinations best suit your taste). You’ll be able to preview all furniture in 3D as well, complete with zoom and rotate options so you can check your potential purchases from all angles, right down to the nitty gritty. We’ll also offer you the ability to rent certain items and purchase “consumables” (limited use items) when available – such as the new Shrink Potion that lets you shrink your avatar to a tiny size.

Other objects:
PlayStation Home v1.3 will also see additional portable objects (like the Bubble Machine) made available to the community. To start, we’ll be giving everyone free cameras that you can use to snap pictures from either a 1st or 3rd person view. These photos will automatically be saved to the Photo section of the XMB, from which you can then upload to the picture frames you have hanging in your personal spaces. We’ll be announcing more portable objects very soon

SingStar space:
Last but certainly not least, we’ll be launching a SingStar space right around the time that PlayStation Home v1.3 hits your PlayStation 3s. This swanky night club-esque SingStar-themed game space is sure to be the hot new hub for all of you party goers. Whether you want to get down with your friends on the reactive dance floor, vote for your favorite music videos on the Video Jukebox, or test your knowledge at the SingStar Music Quiz, this space promises to have something for every SingStar fanatic.
 
I am very interested in queuin and targeting and if they address the issues I would expect them to. Glad to have global game launching.
 
Considering the current state of things versus how long Home has been around, I am *very* skeptical that this update will solve the glaring issues in Home.

I gave up today trying to find where the streams from Gamescom were located after waiting through what seemed like endless loading screens in the theatre - surprise, surprise you have to download each of the 10 theaters separately and apparently each include the same anoying initial trailer for neon Home furniture (I gave up after the third loading dialog). That was after finding nothing in the Home events space or mentioned in the 3 different "news" slots of the PDA.

I may have asked you this before Patsu but where do you find your never ending enthusiasm for Home?

=)

Cheers
 
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