Sony Home - The official thread*

[Arwin]

They can do that by including an XMB version of Home with "shortcuts" to various Home functions while at the same time it will make the access to Home continuous and faster.

It just changed to something a bit more like that in 1.3.5, but yeah it can go further.

Currently it is not. I have to choose a different application that feels separated from everything else and it takes time. Home should feel like an experience integrated with PS, not like a separate platform

For me the speed is not really the bottleneck, especially the loading of spaces is fast enough now. They just need a killer app I think to bring more people in. If I had a steady crew I was playing online with, I'd probably use Home more often right now already.

 

[patsu]

Aye, Home loading speed has improved a few times, but it's still not snappy enough for daily use. They need to surprise people (e.g., See how iPad/iPhone responds quickly, and tracks the user's fingers down to the subtle movement). With Move they have the necessary sensitivity and direct interaction tool. But they need to make the 3D world "async" so that for the impatient gamers, we can use the 2D Home interface right away while the 3D world is still loading/showing in the background.

If they can pull in 3D vision, game launching, community features and user generated content, and yet maintain at 2D navigation speed and usability, it would surprise even the toughest critics.

Compared to the minimalist XMB that PS3 gamers are used to, Home is simply too clumsy to use.

EDIT: For killer app, I always thought it's the value-added community services. But they have kinda "abandoned" the Club House and Game Launching improvements. User generated content was mentioned but not delivered. There is also no premium content or community tool to attract and gather like-minded gamers (like how GameRoom attract arcade players). It looks like Sony is only keeping Home in maintenance mode.

 

[patsu]

Another update that hit close to my heart...

The full list is here:
http://www.alphazone4.com/2010/04/p...e-content-updates-–-22nd-april-2010#more-7744

The highlights ?

* FFXIII costumes and items. I won't buy but enjoy watching others cosplay. ^_^

* Toro Station ! (Will buy but too bad, it's Japan Home only)

I'd say throw away the rest of Home, and force everyone to come to this town.
The rest are mostly ruins, ghost town, desert and other inhospitable environment anyway.

 

[patsu]

My son got bored and forced me to go Home today. Did they change the Salt Shooter game ? I remember it was a closed arena game, now it's like an "open" world shooting game. I receive weapon, engine, armor and other special upgrades after each enemy wave. Plays like a solid game. If you visit Home sometimes, you should give Sodium a second look.

If it was there the first time, I certainly missed it.

EDIT: What were they thinking ? Wanted to buy the game but couldn't find it in the Sodium store. After looking high and low for a minute or two, I finally realized that it's the costume. There is no "Sodium Shooter" icon in the store. You have to buy the Sodium costume to gain access to the game. Don't they want to make it easy for people to navigate and buy stuff ?

 

[JardeL]

CydoniaX is organizing an E3 event for Home. She's asking for free gift ideas:

My reply:

Don't fall in love too much with the virtual world.

If you want to attract new comers, use real world gifts like the official headset, PS Eye, keypad, iPod, or even iPad as gifts. But reward the loyal users or users who help build the community, so you don't get the cheap new players who come just for the gifts.

Wanna win a Wireless Keypad? Visit Home by Friday and look for the posters in Central Plaza

No no, it's not common sense, it's the power of patsu!!!

 

[Nite_Hawk]

I have to agree with london-boy. I only tried home for about an hour, and I absolutely hated it. In some ways it's actually kind of impressive how much Sony was able to make me abhor being there. I rank it right below the 2 hour timeshare presentation my wife and I subjected ourselves to so that we could get a free $50 restaurant gift card (which they never actually gave us).

Nite_Hawk

 

[tha_con]

I have to agree with london-boy. I only tried home for about an hour, and I absolutely hated it. In some ways it's actually kind of impressive how much Sony was able to make me abhor being there. I rank it right below the 2 hour timeshare presentation my wife and I subjected ourselves to so that we could get a free $50 restaurant gift card (which they never actually gave us).

Nite_Hawk

It's pretty simple. Home by yourself is stupid. Home with other people is actually pretty neat. If you went in by yourself, then what did you expect? That's the equivalent of starting a party in XBL and being the only person present. It serves no purpose at that point.

 

[patsu]

IMAGE: http://i41.tinypic.com/posr4.jpg

No no, it's not common sense, it's the power of patsu!!!

Ha ha, they probably have their own ideas. Otherwise, the more critical complains would have been acknowledged and addressed (or showed some signs of being addressed).

The more complete community event was already posted on the Official Blog last week:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010...-sodium-updates-and-wireless-keypad-giveaway/

(They now have a nightly/daily Featured Game event)

Ever since we released the new and improved Gamer’s Lounge last week, our nightly Featured Game parties have been hopping. And while you can always count on at least one official event being staged every single day in PlayStation Home (like this upcoming Saturday night’s Battlefield: Bad Company 2 game launching party), you can also bet that we’ll regularly break the mold and offer additional, 100% exclusive giveaways complete with the best prizes we can get our hands on.

Hope they evolve their user lifecycle management further. That giveaway thing can be associated with purchases, events, game battles, or even user organized activities.



EDIT:
Playstation Home also hosts interviews with movie directors, and other movie-centric events. Sometimes I wonder if they can just do it once for both the gamers and the Blu-ray communities.

Like these guys who specialized in streaming movie trailers to all Blu-ray players:
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/streaming/deluxe-touts-bd-live-theatrical-trailer-streams-19203

Deluxe Digital Studios April 27 said it plans to stream 25 million theatrical trailers to Internet-connected Blu-ray Disc players by the end of the year.

The Burbank, Calif.-based DVD compression and authoring company said its nascent pre-roll technology has already streamed 8 million theatrical trailers via BD-Live, the Internet-enabled component of the high-definition packaged media format.

The idea is that studios, through BD-Live, can offer updated or revised theatrical trailers on DVD and Blu-ray releases instead of the traditional preview.

The PS Home backend seems to be HTTP-based. So streaming/downloading stuff to Blu-ray players should require little extra development.

 

[patsu]

I have to agree with london-boy. I only tried home for about an hour, and I absolutely hated it. In some ways it's actually kind of impressive how much Sony was able to make me abhor being there. I rank it right below the 2 hour timeshare presentation my wife and I subjected ourselves to so that we could get a free $50 restaurant gift card (which they never actually gave us).

Hey, I was in Hawaii and did exactly that. Got 2 tickets for some show on Maui.

Why were you in Home for one hour ? >_<

If you're not an avid chatter, then the only draw are the free videos and free games.
Most of the games are too shallow. I have only enjoyed the Buzz mini-game, Xi as well as Sodium. Sodium is like a full PSN shooter game now. I heard EA's Poker game is ok, but haven't tried it yet.

As for the free videos, most of them are just trailers although occasionally, they have TV pilots, or anime premiere.

Haven't been to the daily gaming events yet.

 

[patsu]

The EU Home community manager announced an upcoming change to EU Home Square:
http://community.eu.playstation.com...Thylaudax-new-avatar-pic/m-p/10677236#M290150

I can now confirm what’s obvious to you all by now: we’re working on brand new Home Square and Shopping Centre spaces! These new spaces will contain more to see and do, and we’ll be able to bring you exciting new experiences on a regular basis once we've released them.

We’ve still got a bit of work left to do to make the spaces ready, so that release is still a little way away. At the moment we’re anticipating a release no sooner than late June, however we’ll confirm dates and reveal more about the spaces when we get closer to release. Stay tuned for future updates!

Judging from the screenshots, it looks like they will add new mini-games to the Square (e.g., Basket Ball shooting). Since the court is open for all to see, we seem to be able to spectate the game play (like RedBull Air Race). I wonder if they will follow Wii Sports Resort and make a motion sensing Basket Ball game.

 

[patsu]

Interview with PlayStation Home Creative Producer, Martijn Van Der Meulen:
http://www.alphazone4.com/2010/05/i...ive-producer-martijn-van-der-meulen#more-7841

We had the opportunity to ask some questions to Martijn Van Der Meulen – the creative producer of PlayStation Home. So, here we have an exclusive interview with one of the creative minds behind PlayStation Home. Enjoy!

I felt a strange urge to wallop his head before I realized that he's responsible for the games, not the platform itself.

In the next 6 months, what would you say is the main focus for you in Home?

My main focus will be on building bigger and better social games. We are still just scratching the surface of the possibilities with Home. I want there to be a stronger focus on team based narrative content, as well as having a deeper integration with other social media. It’s important that we keep on growing the Home community and I’m looking at additional methods of reaching out to people that would enjoy Home but for some reason have never been in there.

What kind of content do you think there should be more of in Home?

Social collaborative games. Games where people team up to explore new parts of Home, consisting of good storylines and gameplay mechanics that create bonds between people.

What new features (that you can speak of) are you most excited about coming to Home?

Recently we added several new features to the Home Development Kit which allow developers to enhance their games in Home. One of my favourites is custom animations, so, for example, a developer can build a futuristic environment and every player could be a different type of robot, all having their own distinctive animations. The possibilities are endless.

Fix the basic stuff first, puh-lease !

 

[tuna]

I got 100 mb internet and I must say that Home is a much more pleasent experience. Now everything loads pretty fast and feels pretty responsive.

 

[Gradthrawn]

I got 100 mb internet and I must say that Home is a much more pleasent experience. Now everything loads pretty fast and feels pretty responsive.

What the... What region are you in and who is your ISP?

 

[patsu]

I got 100 mb internet and I must say that Home is a much more pleasent experience. Now everything loads pretty fast and feels pretty responsive.

Ha ha, they should optimize the experience for the rest of us.

 

[patsu]

MW2 gaming event:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010...y-session-items-for-red-dead-redemption-more/

To celebrate the release of the first ever DLC for what is inarguably one of the biggest titles of the current generation — Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 — our friends at Infinity Ward will be joining us in the Gamer’s Lounge this Friday, May 7th at 4:00pm PT (7:00pm ET) to launch into the new multiplayer maps of the Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package. You make the call as to whether you want to jump into the Bailout, Salvage, Storm, Crash, or Overgrown maps — just let us know when the time comes to set up the multiplayer session. More details, including host accounts, will be posted in our Message of the Day prior to the event start time this Friday.

 

[patsu]

US Home will get a new space, "The Playground", soon:
http://boardsus.playstation.com/t5/...-space-quot-The-Playground-quot/td-p/45621999

It's h-u-g-e. I suspect it may be made up of multiple Home Spaces, like the EA one:

It’s called “The Playground.” Imagine an urban playground setting and block party from the mid 1980’s. All of the sights, sounds and fashion you’d expect to see are there. Take a look!

Here are some views of the main intersection. You can see the park where you can play chess and basketball courts where you can play H-O-R-S-E, all in the shadow of a bridge with downtown visible in the background. And of course, the local corner store and newsstand are right there for your convenience.

 

[obonicus]

Personally, I still don't like Home, but I was surprised at how much more tolerable the latest UI makes it. I could actually conceive of spending time there if I had nothing at all better to do, which is better than avoiding it like the plague.

 

[patsu]

Yap, that's why I highly encourage them to simplify the UI and accelerate the load time further.

From the other end of the spectrum, spruce up the avatars with more interesting expressions, gestures and items. It's worlds apart from LittleBigPlanet at the moment. The PSEye and Move technologies should help here.

I remember the first time one of the B3Ders (Jaeyden ?) appeared in front of me in LBP. He had peacock feathers sticking out of his head and body, and dazzling costume colors. He literally looked like a genie.

Right now, a lot of the items are corporate sponsored goodies, they are rather sterile.

I also don't mind the Home team sacrifice the number of concurrent players in a room from 64 to 32 or 40 to make Home load faster (unless you specifically want a big room for a large party game).

 

[Nesh]

Something needed in Home is the ability to preview the "purchasable" and newly available content in 3D. The icons are too tiny and the current previews dont show you much. For example lets say that a new "apartment" becomes available and is announced when you enter Home, why not be able to see how it is?

It will make people more curious to check the content and buy more. Since they dont know exactly what/how it is, they dont buy as much

 

[Arwin]

Something needed in Home is the ability to preview the "purchasable" and newly available content in 3D. The icons are too tiny and the current previews dont show you much. For example lets say that a new "apartment" becomes available and is announced when you enter Home, why not be able to see how it is?

It will make people more curious to check the content and buy more. Since they dont know exactly what/how it is, they dont buy as much

True. This is why they added this feature for clothing a while ago - not sure if you noticed that? Sure enough though they should try to add that for the other stuff as well.