Sony Home - The official thread*

Rather happy with Home 1.4 so far. Checked out their forum. Found new info:

Scheduled Downtime
http://boardsus.playstation.com/t5/...-Scheduled-Downtime-11-15-11-16/td-p/46397376

Hi everyone,

Dropping in to alert you that PlayStation Home will be taken offline for scheduled maintenance on the evening of Monday, November 15th and will be back up by early afternoon on Tuesday, November 16th.

...
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More importantly...

NOVEMBER: Give Us Your Suggestions
http://boardsus.playstation.com/t5/...VEMBER-Give-Us-Your-Suggestions/td-p/46354498

Helpful hints to post the best suggestions:

1) Your top Virtual Item requests from games or general items. A Virtual Item is pretty much anything in Home you can own (clothing, figurines, furniture, etc.) but cannot live in (like Personal Spaces).

2) Visual aids AKA screenshots! If you can find a screenshot of what you want, please include these! That old saying, "A picture is worth 1000 words," could not be truer. You all do a great job. Keep throwing suggestions and pics our way!

3) and don't be afraid to include any other suggestions you can think of (can be anything, just ask!)

Thanks in advance for collecting images, reference art, etc to best illustrate just what you're talking about.

P.S.: If you are new to these forums (or just new to this process), check out last month's suggestion thread to see how your fellow community members submit their requests.
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Interesting, so this is what the Home downtime is for.

I expected gaming press to do it first because they are more community oriented. In US Home, I *think* we can already buy PSP games from Sony directly in Home.
 
Arwin said:
Game opens a store in Home, where you can buy boxed games (PS3 and PSP)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-11-17-buy-boxed-games-from-inside-ps-home

(available from Tomorrow evening's update)
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Actually, your region also get new SingStar space:
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010...ooms-update-shopping-centre-update-plus-more/

Announcing a revamp of SingStar Rooms and the grand opening of SingStar Store! Celebrate the release of SingStar Dance & SingStar Guitar by rocking out in designer clothing, complete with exclusive animations. There’s plenty of new music, videos and craziness to be had! For the launch of the SingStar Store you’ll find five female costumes and three male costumes alongside SingStar song packs. Within the SingStar Rooms you’ll find an expanded range of music playing.
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http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/12/01/adhoc_party_home_and_mhp3rd/

Ad-Hoc Party is a free PlayStation 3 app that lets PSP owners play a large selection of ad-hoc-based PSP games online using their PS3 as a proxy. Monster Hunter Portable 3rd is a part of the party.

...

Coinciding with MHP3rd's release today, Sony has released an updated version of Ad-Hoc Party. The updated version adds a special Monster Hunter Portable 3rd world, accessible off the Ad-Hoc Party front menu by pressing L1 or R1.

The MHP3rd world has its top screen, lobby, rooms and BGM themed around MHP 3rd. Players can select from high level, low level and free play levels depending on their expertise.

The only catch with the MHP 3rd room is that it doesn't support eight player rooms. If you want eight player rooms, you'll need to use the standard world.

Sony will be giving Ad-Hoc Party another update on the 16th. This will allow for direct access to rooms from PlayStation Home.

Home will also get some MHP 3rd content on the 16th, including an MHP 3rd "Play Room" in the Capcom Lounge and a free Poogie item.
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EU has new spaces for PS+ members, MP space combat, etc.
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010...me-private-members-club-novus-prime-and-more/

The ultra-exclusive PlayStation Plus Private Members Club opens its doors to PS Plus members tomorrow. Members will be greeted in a marble foyer by a discrete doorman who will check your credentials. Inside you’ll find a stylish bar area decked out in black and gold décor, while further into the space you will find discrete alcoves for socialising.
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Space-based combat arrives in Home with the newest multiplayer action game from Hellfire Games: Novus Prime. Novus Prime offers free-to-play missions in either single-player or multi-player cooperative format. You’ll be piloting a specialist fighter craft while defending the world from invading forces, all whilst gathering the highly valuable resource Nebulon. There’s a wide variety of mission types available, ranging from classic escort missions, mining, intense space battles and more. Upgrade your craft via purchasable add-ons, such as new weapons and defensive systems, to gain that all-important edge over your enemy.
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EDIT: Space combat will be on US Home according to:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010...-space-combat-game-comes-to-playstation-home/

 
Another Sony initiative that fits well with Home's model:
http://kotaku.com/5708304/the-first-playstation-rewards-program-quest-guide

Yesterday Sony revealed the Questing system for the PlayStation Rewards program, which will give PlayStation 3 owners fun ways to upgrade their status in the program's eyes.

…

1. Speak Your Mind
Review 5 Games On Playstation.Com

2. Move It
Play any eligible PlayStation Move game.

3. Movie Maniac
Rent or buy a movie from Playstation Store.

4.Share the Play
Place your portable ID on 5 websites.

5. Check Your Pulse
Download PULSE in HD on your PS3 system.

6. Demo Down
Download and play 5 game demos from PlayStation Store.

7. Click It
Learn more by clicking through in 5 different emails from PlayStation.

8. No Place Like Home
Go to PlayStation Home and visit the Central Plaza.

9. Read It and Reap
Read 10 emails from PlayStation.
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Home is already dishing out quests via its ARG and leader boards. In general, the Quest concept is better integrated in the Home world (e.g., via Xi, Sodium's Vicki, or Buzz! quizzes).

Hopefully, the team will tap on the prizes in this Reward program, and make them more fun/imaginative/exciting (e.g., meeting with in-game personalities, trophy room, etc.)

Quests like "Read 10 emails from PlayStation." can be wrapped easily in a (Home) game concept.
 
Phil Harrison announced PS Home together with LittleBigPlanet. Two years later, they grow up to be very different kids ^_^:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/12/10/playstation-home-turns-two-new-games-incoming/

From our humble beginnings in 2008, we’ve become a world filled with hundreds of games enjoyed by 17 million users worldwide and given PlayStation Network users a unique and dynamic gaming experience that can only be found on our platform.
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5248424882_042a5b7c09_b.jpg



Also they announced Sodium 2 (Spring 2011). I remember the first game sold over one million.

Veteran PlayStation Home developers, Outso, are back with a sequel to their highly successful PlayStation Home game, Sodium One. Sodium 2 is looking to expand on every area of the original game with heavily customizable jet racers, supersonic speeds and a pounding soundtrack. The future of Sodium is coming soon, so be on look out for Outso’s new game coming in Spring 2011 to a teleporter near you.
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EDIT: Phil Harrison pitched 2 titles in one keynote and they remain very unique and active platforms today. Sony launched Move with 14 or so titles in all directions. We shall see what happen to them in 2 years. I personally don't have high hope for them due to the lack of attention and nurturing hands for these Move launch titles.
 
Playstation Home: Who's using it and why:
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/217562/playstation-home-whos-using-it-and-why/

By focusing on the games instead of the platform, some of that hostility has gone away.”

Tomorrow, Home turns two years old – and if you last logged in a year ago, you wouldn’t recognize the place anymore. There’s just so much more stuff and almost all of it is actually a video game in and of itself. “The idea [now] is you wander around and stumble across games,” Buser said. “Sometimes you’re even in a game before you know it. It’s not ‘hey, check out Home’ – it’s ‘hey, check out that game in Home.’”
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Sodium. It’s basically a hybrid shooter/role-playing game where you blow stuff up to level and buy more stuff. And it’s free-to-play, which gets users into the game faster.

“We had 1.3 million engagements in Sodium in the first six weeks,” Buser said. An “engagement” for Home is like a visit to a webpage – you show up and stay on the page to be counted as a page hit. On average, a space in Home gets 900,000 engagements per week. “Now we have over 30 independent [and major] developers creating games for Home.”
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Like page view, an engagement does not mean a unique visitor. But the following stat is encouraging:

Since changing direction in its second year of life, Home saw a threefold increase in revenues between the first financial quarter of 2009 and the first financial quarter of 2010. So clearly whatever they’re doing is working.
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But who’s it working on? According to Buser, the average Home user is a “hardcore” gamer – someone who spends more time with games than the average person. This average user is more likely to log in Friday night or Saturday night, after PlaySation Network does its weekly Thursday content publish. Once they show up, the average Home user spends 70 minutes inside of Home, mostly playing games. Buser says it could be any of the games in Home – the little free arcade games you can find in the public spaces or set up in your own private spaces, bigger free-to-play games like Sodium, and sundry tie-in games for major video games like the “Fortunate Thieves” virtual board game created for the Uncharted 2 space.
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This I begin to understand since I spoke with 2 of my most hardcore gamer friends in Home. They didn't seem embarrassed to be caught there. ^_^

I think they contribute most to the duration of stay. The games kept them busy in Home. But there are more casual people lying/sitting around in Home, like me ! I don't play much games in Home (Only play Sodium and Buzz! somewhat regularly, but not really [Know what I mean ?])

Okay… reading more… I'm like these people here:

Other Home users, though, treat the service like PC owners use Second Life – they create virtual lives or extensions of their real lives like study groups and clubs. Buser says there’s even a record label that runs within Home to produce music. Podcasts like Game Indepth and PS Nation also launched using Home as their self-marketing tool and audience space.
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… then again, not really. I just go there to observe people, and may be contribute to conversations occasionally. ^_^
 
Home v1.41 released. Looks like lotsa fixes.
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010...ll-novus-prime-additions-version-1-41-update/

Improvements

* Added “@” as an alternative to “/” for use in slash commands. For example “@g” and “/g” will both access group chat.

* Added an option to display pop-up colours in the “Local” channel of the chat log under “Menu Pad > Options > Settings > Personal > Chat Log > Local Chat Pop-up Colour”. It has three possible values:

Off: Does not display pop-up colour in the chat log.

Name (default): Colours the name of each person in the “Local” channel according to their pop-up color.

Line: Colours the whole line of text from each person in the “Local” channel according to their pop-up colour.
Added the names of people you have received private messages from to the list of people that can be blocked or reported from the Home Safe Screen (accessed by pressing [SELECT]).

* For all PSN sub-accounts, chat systems in Home will now respect any chat restrictions set by the master account in the PSN parental controls.


Bug Fixes

* Fixed a bug that would display an unnecessary warning pop-up if you joined a queue with a portable active and then tried to check your position in the queue.

* Fixed a bug that could cause screens to render on top of glass even if they were physically behind it.

* Fixed a bug in the chat log that would leave you in a phantom group if you joined a group, got disconnected and then logged back on again.
Correctly localised the error message you see when attempting to access a store from the Navigator while the system is busy.

* Fixed a bug that was causing a blank message to be shown while Home was down for maintenance.

* Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause a crash when relocating from your Personal Space.

* Fixed a bug that caused you to need to wait for the orange light to stop flashing on your PS3 hard drive before applying a patch. Once you have updated to 1.41 it will not be necessary to wait before applying any future patches.

* Fixed a bug that was preventing the images of existing character save slots from being displayed properly in the wardrobe.

* Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause a crash when previewing clothing of the opposite sex to your avatar in a store.

* Fixed a bug that was preventing club leaders from adding certain people to the club black list.

* Fixed a bug that was often causing the “Servers are overloaded” warning message to be mistakenly displayed when you joined a group or club channel.

* Fixed a bug that would allow you to open the Menu Pad in the wardrobe with some undesirable side effects.

* Fixed a bug that would let you “merge” different items of clothing on your character and potentially crash people around you.

* Fixed a bug in the chat log where typing two very long words with a single space could crash people using the “large” font option.

* Fixed a bug that was causing newly acquired purchases and rewards to go straight into storage in the wardrobe. This may still occur in a limited number of cases but should be greatly improved for most people.
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They should fix the upgrade procedure. Waiting for HDD to stop spinning is not acceptable. Or the upgrade should delete the Home icon and reinstall.

EDIT: :LOL: They fixed the upgrade procedure in this release. Great !
 
I seem to remember that a year ago a Home user spend "almost an hour" in Home while now it's over 70 minutes. That seems like a solid improvement.
 
It's really good now, I feel. Sure there can still be improvements, but the core is now solid. All we need now is for Sony to mandate (full) support for game launching from Home for any online multiplayer game, whether it is released on BD or PSN. If they do that, there's a good chance that lots of people will start hanging out in Home a tonne more still.
 
Yes, it's rather close to what I imagined when Phil presented it for the first time. The spaces are more lively these days, compared to the sterile worlds from before. I visit Home everyday now out of curiosity, but still not enough things to do yet. Most of us are passive readers/observers, which I guess is the Internet norm too.

More things to do:

* UI can be further streamlined. e.g., The theaters should share 1 download, instead of having 1 download for each theater. They are exactly the same except for the video link. The UI look, especially the frequently used navigator screen, can be refined to look better without sacrificing response time.

Decouple items/games from the 3D world. i.e., It should be possible for us to use a completely empty room, or a 2D page, and load our own items and games there. The activities, games and items are much more important than the landscape/geometry. The ability to share and leave messages (like Demon's Souls) is more important than the 3D world.


* They are now going after integrated LUA games. PS3's memory size probably prevent them from incorporating game launching satisfactorily today. I think regular BR and PSN games should at least allow Home to import achievements and leaderboards for more complex interaction (e.g., informal betting). They should also support Home game launching so that we can launch a party by clicking on a "bookmark" in XMB directly. As a side effect, Home can also launch game parties. :p


* More games !! 'specially board games and arcades since they should be easier to do for LUA.


* More ways for users to promote their crafts (e.g., Clubhouses, events).
 
Related to Home's current business model and future direction…

Two-Thirds Of Casual, Social Gamers Will Accept Virtual Goods As Holiday Gifts:
http://www.engagedigital.com/2010/1...s-will-accept-virtual-goods-as-holiday-gifts/

Peanut Labs has released data from a survey of social and casual game players which indicates that two-thirds of them would be happy to accept virtual goods as a holiday gift. Over half of the survey’s respondents had bought virtual goods as a gift for someone else. A quarter of respondents said that they would actually prefer to receive virtual goods rather than physical merchandise. Fully half of all respondents to this survey were aged 28 or older and two-thirds of them spent less than 10 hours per week on Facebook.

Over half of the survey’s respondents spent less than 5 hours per week playing games. Peanut Labs says this indicates that playing social and casual online games has become a mainstream leisure activity. As players get more used to gaming, they grow more willing to accept virtual goods as part of real-world holiday gift-giving occasions. More than three-quarters of the respondents to Peanut Labs’s survey had purchased virtual goods before. Roughly 44% of respondents had spent more than $25 on a virtual goods in the past year.

According to the survey, 58% of respondents had received virtual goods as gifts before and 51% had purchased them as gifts for others. This holiday season, 53% of the survey respondents plan on purchase virtual goods for others as holiday gifts. More than 40% of respondents expected to spend more than half of their holiday gift-giving budget online rather than offline. Roughly 62% of respondents said that they had actually requested virtual goods be given to them for the holidays.

...
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Should Sony run Home on other platforms ? (say... within FaceBook)
 
One of my early questions finally got answered by Kaz (Was PSN making money without online fees):
http://www.1up.com/news/hirai-psn-losing-money-turn

Speaking to Reuters Japan this week (via Hachimaki), Sony Computer Entertainment President Kaz Hirai described the PlayStation Network as "in the red" but believed that it would turn a profit during the next fiscal year.

According to the report, PSN sales during the 2009 fiscal year added up to 36 billion yen (approx. $434.3 million USD). That number "nearly doubled" in 2010. However, Hirai said "we're aiming to enter the black during the 2011 fiscal year." Furthermore, he projected that PSN sales would reach 300 billion yen ($3.6 billion) in the 2012 fiscal year. He cited the number of registered PSN accounts (60 million as of November) as evidence of the service's growth.
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Killzone 3 Might Make Me Try PlayStation Home:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/114/1145224p1.html

I'll be honest, in the many years I've had my PlayStation 3, I've only ever jumped into PlayStation Home twice. It's not that I don't think it's a cool service to offer players for the low price of free; it's just that I don't think Home's found a particularly good way to engage people like me, who use their PS3s primarily to play the serious first-party exclusive titles.

But that could change – at least for short periods of time – with the promotional strategy Sony's calling Total Game Integration. It's rolling out January 27, 2010 and will be availble through February 17 for Killzone 3, but I was told that it's something we can expect to see with future titles as well.

…

Total Game Integration is really just a set of buzz words, but here's what it means for you. PlayStation Home will be altered for upcoming Sony games, and with Killzone 3 it's pretty dramatic. The PlayStation Home Plaza has been completely redone, keeping its standard functionality but aesthetically looking like a battlefield from Killzone. The buildings are crumbling, Helghast drop ships fly overhead, and various Killzone imagery is everywhere. It's advertising, sure, but it's advertising done in a really clever way to an audience that might not otherwise care or hear about Killzone 3.

…

Killzone Defender is more a charming gimmick than engaging game, but the reason I could see the more hardcore among us jumping into Home to try it is for the benefits. Complete all the challenges in Killzone Defender and you'll get three multiplayer unlock points to use when Killzone 3 comes out (they buy abilities or weapons). You can only do it once, though, so don't think you're going to game the system. Additionally, if you want to pre-order Killzone 3, you can do so straight from Home. This sets you not only the extra three multiplayer points that Amazon offers promotionally but also an exclusive PlayStation Home Helghast avatar outfit.

…


I appreciate what Sony's trying to do with Home and its Total Game Integration move, but I'm skeptical about how successful it will be at drawing in a new audience to the service for the long haul. I think I'll jump in whenever Sony manages to redo Home in clever ways, but I don't see this changing my opinion about Home overall. Still, it's a damn clever way to get people who would otherwise ignore the service to give it a try as well as get the word out about Killzone 3 to people who might never have heard of it. Smart move, Sony.
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Same feeling here. They are certainly getting much better, but still quite far from making everyone jump in.

For daily use, they need to make it even quicker, plus as interesting and convenient as Internet.
 
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