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Sony Further Details Home, Looks to October Launch

Posted by Zonk on Monday March 12, @01:31PM
from the i-do-so-love-palatable-advertising dept.
PlayStation (Games) Sony
njkid1 writes "According to GameDaily, new details have been revealed about the Home service for the PlayStation 3. Not only will the advertising possibilities be 'limitless,' but the virtual community will also be able to serve as a bustling commerce hub. Transactions will eventually be able to take place within Home itself, and the company refers to the possibility of ticketing for virtual events like developer chats or game previews. At the same time, however, Sony said that advertising will be made 'palatable' so as not to drive away users. A Q&A at the official Sony site states that an October launch is planned (pdf) for the service." GameDaily also has an article looking at reactions from Microsoft and Nintendo on Sony's announcement.

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[+] Sony Keynote Offers Hope For PlayStation 3 Fans 361 comments
Once again, the stage was set for Sony to try to get some good will directed towards its next-gen console. Recent weeks especially have seen PR frustrations and setbacks for the company. Today was Sony's day to deliver: and in my opinion they did with flying colours. By the end of the keynote attendees were laughing and clapping with glee at the goodies that the company is going to be bringing to the PlayStation 3. Finally, finally, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel for the console. Read on for my notes on the keynote, as well as links to other coverage of the event. Note the first: There may finally be a great reason to buy a PlayStation.
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  • hmm

    (Score:1)
    by mastershake_phd (1050150) on Monday March 12, @01:35PM (#18318783)
    (http://freedomsforums.com/)
    Everything Ive heard from Sony about this so far sounds like they are marketing it as an advertising vehicle. I hope it has something to offer the players.

  • Good to know...

    (Score:3, Interesting)
    by nigel_q (523775) on Monday March 12, @01:35PM (#18318795)
    (Last Journal: Tuesday October 24, @12:54PM)
    ... that the advertising possibilities are limitless. After all, that's why people buy the system, right? To be served unique and novel advertisements?

  • Home is Stupid

    (Score:4, Insightful)
    by Seumas (6865) on Monday March 12, @01:39PM (#18318891)
    Why is it so damn hard to just make a simple universal lobby/game-connectivity center within a console? I don't have to join some idiotic twelve-year-old-girl's fantasy three-dimensional The Sims world to jump into a game of CounterStrike or Civilization IV on my PC. Why do I have to do that on my consoles? This is seriously one of the most retarded ideas ever and it would cause me to lean toward turning on my 360 instead of my PS3 when I sit down on the sofa for a bit of gaming, just because I don't want to play "Second Life" just to get to my damned Company of Heroes.

  • Sign me up!

    (Score:3, Funny)
    by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Monday March 12, @01:40PM (#18318921)
    (http://evil.google.com/)
    Not only will the advertising possibilities be 'limitless,'

    That does it for me right there. Sign me up!

  • I just don't get it

    (Score:5, Insightful)
    by eln (21727) on Monday March 12, @01:42PM (#18318969)
    I don't understand how this is supposed to be appealing. It appears to be basically a Second Life ripoff, except they've taken out most of the customization ability and replaced it with the ability to purchase someone else's customizations (unless you have a developers license).

    The whole idea of a "virtual community" sounds great on paper, but this looks like they're basically trying to create a virtual shopping mall. But if I want to shop online, I'll use google or amazon or something like that and find what I need a lot quicker. Why would I want to make my little avatar walk down some virtual hallway to get to the virtual store I want to virtually buy shit from? Isn't that just a waste of time? People need to stop trying to make "virtual communities" look like the real world, and start designing them to take advantage of the strengths the online world has over the real world.

    Sony wants this to be a new and revolutionary vehicle for advertising. But for advertising to be effective, you need people to look at the advertisements. If all people get from this is a place to go look at advertisements, they won't stick around for very long. And giving them some private "apartment" where they can change the color of the walls just isn't going to hold anyone's interest for long.

    • Re:I just don't get it

      (Score:4, Insightful)
      by HappySqurriel (1010623) on Monday March 12, @01:54PM (#18319201)

      I don't understand how this is supposed to be appealing. It appears to be basically a Second Life ripoff, except they've taken out most of the customization ability and replaced it with the ability to purchase someone else's customizations (unless you have a developers license).

      The whole idea of a "virtual community" sounds great on paper, but this looks like they're basically trying to create a virtual shopping mall. But if I want to shop online, I'll use google or amazon or something like that and find what I need a lot quicker. Why would I want to make my little avatar walk down some virtual hallway to get to the virtual store I want to virtually buy shit from? Isn't that just a waste of time? People need to stop trying to make "virtual communities" look like the real world, and start designing them to take advantage of the strengths the online world has over the real world.

      Sony wants this to be a new and revolutionary vehicle for advertising. But for advertising to be effective, you need people to look at the advertisements. If all people get from this is a place to go look at advertisements, they won't stick around for very long. And giving them some private "apartment" where they can change the color of the walls just isn't going to hold anyone's interest for long.


      Well, I know it is not designed to appeal to me ...

      I suspect they're trying to aim this service at the Casual or Non-gamer market but what they fail to realize is that no casual gamer will spend $500 for a gaming system ...
    • Re:I just don't get it by _xeno_ (Score:2) Monday March 12, @02:23PM
    • Remember the first online stores? 3D doesn't work. by LKM (Score:3) Tuesday March 13, @08:21AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Sounds good but...

    (Score:3, Interesting)
    by EvilGoodGuy (811015) on Monday March 12, @02:06PM (#18319405)
    Shouldn't they just have delayed the PS3 launch till October, when the selling point of the game was released? Microsoft released the 360 before many headline games so that they would have the console marketshare. Would have been nice to have a reason to buy the PS3 when it came out, not a year later.

  • Remind me to reconfigure my firewall

    (Score:2)
    by AmiMoJo (196126) <mojo@@@world3...net> on Monday March 12, @02:08PM (#18319445)
    (http://world3.net/)
    ads.sony.com -> 127.0.0.1

  • I'm looking forward to it!

    (Score:3, Informative)
    by dannycim (442761) on Monday March 12, @03:24PM (#18320931)
    Why poo-poo something that's going to be free and optional? Don't like it? Don't have to use it.

    Heck, item creation http://youtube.com/watch?v=a91ZzOMEwYY [youtube.com] looks like it's going to be easy and fun. Here's another video in real-time: http://youtube.com/watch?v=nuoOosTdFiY [youtube.com]

  • Re:Wow, that was hard to parse

    (Score:2)
    by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Monday March 12, @01:49PM (#18319095)
    (http://evil.google.com/)
    verbs = details and looks

  • Re:Wow, that was hard to parse

    (Score:1)
    by darkrowan (976992) on Monday March 12, @01:50PM (#18319127)
    Details.... and Looks, I think...
  • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

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