Sony Home - The official thread*
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LittleBigPlanet coming to PS Home:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010...tation-home-qore-event-and-machinima-contest/
Why not just one space with 2 things to do ? So I don't have to waste time downloading and walking ? ^_^
LittleBigPlanet Home Space:
Rumor: Home going International (No more region bound):
http://boardsus.playstation.com/t5/...mor-Multi-Server-Coming-To-Home/td-p/45651423
http://translate.google.it/translat...resto-in-home-sara-possibile.html&sl=it&tl=en
Rumor: Home going International (No more region bound):
http://boardsus.playstation.com/t5/...mor-Multi-Server-Coming-To-Home/td-p/45651423
http://translate.google.it/translat...resto-in-home-sara-possibile.html&sl=it&tl=en
One of the limitations of Home is undoubtedly the only people who can meet part of its territory: we Europeans can only see other European users and so on.
The only way to greet with a friendly "arigato" a Japanese is to create a fake Japanese account and login with this account. Pity that it is illegal and subject to Ban ...
According to rumors issued by some beta testers, it seems that something is moving in this direction. Home spaces may have multi-server, or users of all the world can interact together while somehow ... do not think evil maniacs who are not much
Ah... finally, an even more useful Home Space that I would visit:
Capcom's Home lounge:
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/05/20/capcom_home_lounge/
Still don't like the walking, but the features look more meaty to justify for a Home Space.
Capcom's Youtube channel has a few walkthrough videos:
http://www.youtube.com/CapcomChannel
Capcom's Home lounge:
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/05/20/capcom_home_lounge/
Still don't like the walking, but the features look more meaty to justify for a Home Space.
Capcom's Youtube channel has a few walkthrough videos:
http://www.youtube.com/CapcomChannel
ZOMG, Home coming out of beta in Dec ?
http://www.alphazone4.com/2010/05/playstation-home-coming-out-of-beta-in-december
Original Source: http://play.tm/news/30410/playstation-home-out-of-beta-later-this-year/
Argh, then why not 3, 5 or more millions repeat users using Home for an hour ? Why is 1.7 million a good/better/best number ?
http://www.alphazone4.com/2010/05/playstation-home-coming-out-of-beta-in-december
Original Source: http://play.tm/news/30410/playstation-home-out-of-beta-later-this-year/
Argh, then why not 3, 5 or more millions repeat users using Home for an hour ? Why is 1.7 million a good/better/best number ?
"Most people." >50%. 1.7 million is a drop in the ocean compared to most people. How's about ignoring the existing fans and making changes to actually make Home good if you want most people to value it, instead of making unconvincing arguments that 1 in 3 PS3 users use Home (seriously, he has to mean 1 in 3 have had a look of which most never returned, some tried to use it again but couldn't get on, and every other PS3 owner isn't even aware they ahve that icon and aren't going to click it).
Have they sorted out the situation where you have to queue to use the in-Home games yet?
Talking about Home, at least the new-content flow for the platform is pretty healthy these days. Another little update:
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010/05/26/playstation-home-modnation-red-dead-redemption-and-more/
I think there are definitely a lot of early adapters frustrated with what Home has to offer, but to new users (or long time absentees), Home is a pretty big experience with lots to do. I'm hearing more and more positive vibe about it.
If they can manage to integrate Move successfully into it (for instance by linking character animation to PS Eye detection and Move controls), that could be a pretty big thing.
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010/05/26/playstation-home-modnation-red-dead-redemption-and-more/
I think there are definitely a lot of early adapters frustrated with what Home has to offer, but to new users (or long time absentees), Home is a pretty big experience with lots to do. I'm hearing more and more positive vibe about it.
If they can manage to integrate Move successfully into it (for instance by linking character animation to PS Eye detection and Move controls), that could be a pretty big thing.
*shrug* I don't queue anymore. The games I wanted to play seem to be always available, so I can't be sure (May be they expanded the queue, may be they got rid of the queuing system, or may be it's just unoccupied).
I bought the Sodium Salt Shooter game. According to a Home article, they sold 300,000+ copies. It's not a bad game. Getting into Home is a hassle, so I don't play as often.
Besides active/repeat users and revenue, they should also track growth rate. There is a loyal Home userbase, it's just that the setup only appeals to a relatively small portion of PS3 population. They should make it appeal to more folks.
Yap, please continue to address speed and accessiblity issues first.
This GAF post shows some of the latest Home spaces. The Irem one looks interesting. It's an RPG, so you can actually do stuff in Home itself.
Reading a person's facial expression and mapping that to the avatar would be a big plus.
I was thinking more the bowling, pool and arcade cabinets. It was ridiculous to artifically cap availibility in order to attempt to recrate the frustrations of real life! It's not surprising no-one cared to create arcade games when only a handful of people at a time could play them. Have they had the sense to enable anyone to play pool/arcade games whenever they want?
Gradthrawn
Veteran
Considering that he's not even with SCE, I doubt he has too much influence over it's direction. From what I can tell, he's making those statements from the perspective of a content publisher within Home. So at least somebody that's developing for it outside of SCE doesn't think it's shit.
That, or Home's business relations team is damn good at selling their product.granthinds
Newcomer
I agree. It's not tantalizing enough at this point. Once you get burnt after buying something and it didn't turn out to be what you thought it would be, you'll be less likely to make another follow-up purchase.
The queuing system is probably more for cost control since Sony may not want to spend too much on free gaming servers (without advertisers). I vaguely recall they added the queuing system later. Initially, you couldn't even queue. We had to poll.
I went to the EA sports complex. The poker table usually have space these days. I seldom try the bowling, pool or arcade games in Home.
EDIT:
Considering that he's not even with SCE, I doubt he has too much influence over it's direction. From what I can tell, he's making those statements from the perspective of a content publisher within Home. So at least somebody that's developing for it outside of SCE doesn't think it's shit.
Yes, if Sodium did sell 300,000 copies, then Home is clearly a great platform from the developers' perspective. Don't know how much Sony earned from it though. From our perspective, I think Sony is trottling their resources. It looks like they don't want to spend too much $$$ on Home without a proven model. It's like PSP and PSEye.
The original user generated content concept has been gimped. Things like the avatar expression and animation are very weak (or non-existent). User interface is backwards (e.g., item selection is clumsy !); too much walking and (re)downloading for too little benefits. They only address a few critical issues so far (changed the world map, swapped out virtual PSP, added HDD cache, and added queuing system). By and large, most design problems prevail.
Not sure what they meant by getting out of beta. Stop development and go maintenance mode ? The status quo is not good enough, and may not meet business objectives too.
Gradthrawn
Veteran
They definitely have a long way to go, IMO. And I agree with Shiffty, they should work on bringing in the millions of users who log in once and don't come back (not to say they are or are not doing that currently). Like you were saying, I'm guessing they don't want to invest significant resources into it at this point. I get the feeling that, to them, it's a platform to built on in the future (likely with their next console), and that they're in no rush to dump a lot of resources into it now, with the minimum exposure it's getting. My assumption would be that they would rather hold that off until it's fully integrated into the host platform from the beginning (PS4?, PSP2?).
In regards to them moving out of beta, reportedly SCEE has debunked that.
Yes. Queueing is still possible, and a few of the early spaces still have it (but I heard the European spaces are getting a big overhaul), but a lot of games don't require you to queue and simply have 64 slots available at all times (which is as many users as there can be in a space). There are still some valid queues, like in the Red-Bull space where you actually see users fly through the space in real-time I think, so they had a valid reason to limit the amount of people that can be up there at the same time.
I also looked into the 3D preview thing, which I think is a common misconception that this is still missing. Since I was looking at the new LBP space (beautiful) anyway, I recorded some of my store visit. The LBP space is, as you'd expect, beautiful. EDIT: crap, I probably didn't pay attention using Live Movie Maker, this turned out way more compressed than it should have been. EDIT2: never mind, that was just temporary, a new feature to support 'semi-live' broadcasting. It's up in higher quality now, and you can also select a 480p version.
I think it's also important to look at the load times - they are better than a lot of actual games now I think. Look at how fast I travel from LBP space to the Modnation racers space. I downloaded that space in advance, but I'm visiting it for the first time. It looks like they pre-cache the space now when you download it, which makes sense. But whatever they are doing, anyone complaining about the load-time is nuts.
I also noticed that one of my issues with bonus items was addressed, which is that you can see which one you get. In the menu there's a rewarded items section and you can see everything you won in there, which is a great improvement. All they need now is integrate that list in your wardrobe and decoration interface so that you can immediately check out new items you've won.
I tried two games this time - the pool game in the Events space for Hustle Kings, which is quite fun. It's a lot like the Buzz Quiz game in that it's a high-up view of a Pool table in which everyone is tiny. Then a bunch of pool shots are being made, and you have to place yourself out of harms way. However, the closer you are to moving balls as they pass you, the more points you get, which gives the game some depth. Pretty good. The other one is the photography game in LBP. It has three levels, I just played the first one, which is a fairly simple 'find an item and take a close up shot of it' with a camera. What was interesting is that there seemed to be people in this space with Home shirts that offered assistance to anyone who needed it.
I think it's also important to look at the load times - they are better than a lot of actual games now I think. Look at how fast I travel from LBP space to the Modnation racers space. I downloaded that space in advance, but I'm visiting it for the first time. It looks like they pre-cache the space now when you download it, which makes sense. But whatever they are doing, anyone complaining about the load-time is nuts.
Aye, the issue is not the absolute load time for games. Home is an integrated community and gaming platform. When accessing community features, it needs to be as efficient as XMB or a web page (because people are used to it already). When loading games, it needs to be quick too.
As you mentioned, Home addressed the game load time since part of the game engine is already loaded in Home. However it failed in the fast community access. It is not a technical implementation issue (so caching won't solve the problem completely). It is a design issue.
The UI is awkward for item selection, community features still feel rather isolated (e.g., where to find like-minded friends ? Where are the community stats like Top X this, Top Y that [See Modnation Racer hub], too few benefits per Home space except for 1-2 spaces, walking is a hassle especially when we can't jump to get to where we want).
EDIT:
[size=-2]I am a broken record.[/size]
Home 1.36 available:
http://community.eu.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-Home/1-36-Patch-Notes/td-p/10854782
More speed bump. ^_^
Unfortunately, they messed up the patch:
http://community.eu.playstation.com...ATE-Patching-to-1-36-workaround/td-p/10856080
I heard reinstalling Home works too.
http://community.eu.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-Home/1-36-Patch-Notes/td-p/10854782
More speed bump. ^_^
Unfortunately, they messed up the patch:
http://community.eu.playstation.com...ATE-Patching-to-1-36-workaround/td-p/10856080
I heard reinstalling Home works too.
Otay... I spent about 10-15 minutes in Home 1.36 yesterday, checking things out quickly.
The central spaces are still rather popular. The other smaller spaces have fewer folks as expected. About 2 months ago, my EA sports complex instance only had 2 people and they weren't talking.
The app tries to load the UI asap now, which is nice. However because it's "caching/downloading essential elements" (e.g., friends status, favorite spaces, ...) I still have to wait 10-20 seconds before I can use the content for real. I suspect this may be due to the "undersized/beta" Home server Sony uses (?).
I could hop around the Worldmap menus though. If Home allows some more textual content here for me to check out (More than MOTD), it would hide the delay further. The content doesn't have to be very up to date (could be anything that is fast to grab first or cached when I exited from Home last time). Some sort of local mini-game involving people I met last time (i.e., old cached data) may help too.
Navigating from space to space is still a hassle for the first time, but the space loading has definitely been improved (About 5-10 seconds once downloaded, I didn't clock it). It's rather sweet to see spaces load quickly. I gave up half way after redownloading 3 spaces; didn't want to wait for more downloading.
I was very very happy to see the community interacting with each other for real, like 7-8 people standing on benches and making fun of each other (noobs asking them how to get up there), quiet folks playing chess against each other, 4-5 dancing away in Music@Home, and even more pockets of people chatting away.
The theaters still have sucky content, and I have to redownload each mini-theater instead of reusing 1 theater "room" to show multiple movies in different spaces.
Overall, it's still very vibrant. I see more costumes wore by people too.
What prompted me to type this up is this GAF post:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=21589868&postcount=4501
My hunch tells me Sandra is a real girl. It's always a pleasure to chat with females in Home. They have very different perspective of life, of gamers, etc. The ones I met were very down to earth, and open minded. Great time waster ^_^
Ignoring 2D Home UI (to speed up access even more), what's missing now are:
* Better expression tools for users (facial expression, jump, movement based on PS Move, etc.)
* Persistent user content. When Flickr moved from a real-time community (Java-based real-time photo publish and subscribe platform) to a persistent one (web based photo album), their usage jumped an order of magnitude just because friends from different timezone can interact. We also get to visualize the "hive mind". May be Home can integrate with the PS Blog, or allow people to leave Demon's Souls-like messages in Home, or have its own, say, voice forum cloned on the PS official site. We used to have a voice forum, and 3 million people left messages every day. Old messages can be thrown away to keep cost down.
EDIT: ... or use the Clubhouse man.
The central spaces are still rather popular. The other smaller spaces have fewer folks as expected. About 2 months ago, my EA sports complex instance only had 2 people and they weren't talking.
The app tries to load the UI asap now, which is nice. However because it's "caching/downloading essential elements" (e.g., friends status, favorite spaces, ...) I still have to wait 10-20 seconds before I can use the content for real. I suspect this may be due to the "undersized/beta" Home server Sony uses (?).
I could hop around the Worldmap menus though. If Home allows some more textual content here for me to check out (More than MOTD), it would hide the delay further. The content doesn't have to be very up to date (could be anything that is fast to grab first or cached when I exited from Home last time). Some sort of local mini-game involving people I met last time (i.e., old cached data) may help too.
Navigating from space to space is still a hassle for the first time, but the space loading has definitely been improved (About 5-10 seconds once downloaded, I didn't clock it). It's rather sweet to see spaces load quickly. I gave up half way after redownloading 3 spaces; didn't want to wait for more downloading.
I was very very happy to see the community interacting with each other for real, like 7-8 people standing on benches and making fun of each other (noobs asking them how to get up there), quiet folks playing chess against each other, 4-5 dancing away in Music@Home, and even more pockets of people chatting away.
The theaters still have sucky content, and I have to redownload each mini-theater instead of reusing 1 theater "room" to show multiple movies in different spaces.
Overall, it's still very vibrant. I see more costumes wore by people too.
What prompted me to type this up is this GAF post:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=21589868&postcount=4501
My hunch tells me Sandra is a real girl. It's always a pleasure to chat with females in Home. They have very different perspective of life, of gamers, etc. The ones I met were very down to earth, and open minded. Great time waster ^_^
Ignoring 2D Home UI (to speed up access even more), what's missing now are:
* Better expression tools for users (facial expression, jump, movement based on PS Move, etc.)
* Persistent user content. When Flickr moved from a real-time community (Java-based real-time photo publish and subscribe platform) to a persistent one (web based photo album), their usage jumped an order of magnitude just because friends from different timezone can interact. We also get to visualize the "hive mind". May be Home can integrate with the PS Blog, or allow people to leave Demon's Souls-like messages in Home, or have its own, say, voice forum cloned on the PS official site. We used to have a voice forum, and 3 million people left messages every day. Old messages can be thrown away to keep cost down.
EDIT: ... or use the Clubhouse man.
FIFA 2010 Home Space coming Home:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010...o-playstation-home-bioshock-2-kekkaishi-more/
I was thinking Sony should allow us to bring our furniture to a space straight from our apartment. That way the public spaces can be more interesting, and people can show off their purchased items to new friends. Naturally, when we exit from the space, clear the furniture from that instance.
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010...o-playstation-home-bioshock-2-kekkaishi-more/
I was thinking Sony should allow us to bring our furniture to a space straight from our apartment. That way the public spaces can be more interesting, and people can show off their purchased items to new friends. Naturally, when we exit from the space, clear the furniture from that instance.
The comment about the global space is pretty significant!
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