Sony Home - The official thread*

[wco81]

But Home's dead right?

They never did interesting things like game launching from virtual lobbies or have mini social games.

 

[Nesh]

But Home's dead right?

They never did interesting things like game launching from virtual lobbies or have mini social games.

It had a ton of mini games and I am pretty sure it did support some game launching.

It was nice. What bothered me was the UI and the controls the most

 

[bunge]

But Home's dead right?

Yeah, and that perplexes me. I think they killed it in ~2015 so PSVR must have been a known quantity internally. How was the potential missed? WHY was the potential missed?

I guess ultimately that's what perplexes me the most. We're two different departments so out of touch they simply missed each other? Ships passing in the night?

 

[iroboto]

Yeah, and that perplexes me. I think they killed it in ~2015 so PSVR must have been a known quantity internally. How was the potential missed? WHY was the potential missed?

I guess ultimately that's what perplexes me the most. We're two different departments so out of touch they simply missed each other? Ships passing in the night?

They could bring it back online. But it requires a lot of work to prep it for VR. The only game I've ever released was on @Home and I had to do everything through their Lua SDK.

It was a pretty limited platform and most things as i understand it (ourselves included) were commissioned by Sony, so if they are going to redo it, they're going to probably make it a lot more flexible and better to convince developers it's profitable to develop for, as opposed to paying us to develop content for them.

the tools they would have to provide would need to be more thorough. Or they could pair up with unity? Seems like a good fit. That's what MS would do I guess.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If you read through this thread, I had a little insight from a dev who created content for Home. It made money for the content creators as the people who 'played' Home liked buying junk. The Home developers had vision and had a version working on PC, but the Powers That Be pulled the plug instead of investing in it. There's no alternative at the moment. Atom Universe aims to be a Home alternative and is slowly growing, but it's presently pitched as a virtual theme park and it hasn't the investment needed to make it into a proper Home yet. Still, it's written in UE4 and supports VR.

 

[goonergaz]

I liked home, it was a place to chill - they could have done so much more but I was still gutted it was canned. As @bunge says, would be ideal as a PSVR title.

 

[bunge]

If you read through this thread, I had a little insight from a dev who created content for Home. It made money for the content creators as the people who 'played' Home liked buying junk. The Home developers had vision and had a version working on PC, but the Powers That Be pulled the plug instead of investing in it. There's no alternative at the moment. Atom Universe aims to be a Home alternative and is slowly growing, but it's presently pitched as a virtual theme park and it hasn't the investment needed to make it into a proper Home yet. Still, it's written in UE4 and supports VR.

I remember hearing/reading that it could make money. That's why I was surprised they pulled the plug. Disappointed I guess is a better word. But knowing now that VR was coming I'm completely perplexed.

Perhaps as @iroboto says, the dev environment needed a serious update. Still, I'm almost stunned. Am I wrong to think it would engage a VR community? Wouldn't the cross pollination of VR and non-VR players in the same world help sell the PSVR?

I'm starting to think PSVR will go the way of PS Move or Vita if Sony is spread too thin.

Just odd.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The dev environment did indeed suck, and clever content developers had to find workarounds and tricks. Home didn't make any money for Sony apparently which explains why the pulled it. I think that was a myopic management decision though. The fact it made money for content creators means Sony could have profited, by growing it (which was on the table on other platforms!) and taking a larger cut. But it was clear within a year that Sony dropped the original vision of gamers starting in Home, meeting up, and gaming from them. They never really got parties going on PS3 in any stretch - PS4 provides the experience Home needed. There is a point though that Home would have to run in the background and be quickly swapped to to work as intended. No gamer is going to want to waste time loading up Home and then running around to meet a virtual avatar team-mate when they could instead be playing.

I guess what really needed to happen was Sony to step back, forget what they were going for, notice what was happening with the social aspect, and commit to making that a reality on PS4 with a new, designed for the job Home+. Built on UE4 same as Atom Universe I think as the Blueprints provides a way for less technical content creation. Home+ on PC, mobile and PS4 including VR and using the stereoscopic camera for VR streaming and comms and maybe avatar creation would have done very well I think. It's now in MS's court as the best people positioned to put real people avatars into a VR space with their depth camera experience. But I think on FaceBook is really interested, and I'm not sure they're doing anything anyway.

 

[wco81]

Well Home was on PS3 when PSN was free?

So maybe Home could be an enticement for people to subscribe and stay subscribed to PSN Plus.

Because I haven't seen a compelling reason to re-subscribe to PSN Plus in over a year.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You have to have PS+ to play online games - that's reason enough for most.

 

[goonergaz]

You have to have PS+ to play online games - that's reason enough for most.

Indeed. until PS Plus (and some time after) people paid just to play online on Xbox. And with letting the sub slide all the games you've collected will stop working (as well as cloud saves)