Sony Still Not Happy With 'Home'

1up is reporting on comments made by Sony's Kaz Hirai to the Japanese magazine Famitsu. Hirai states that he personally is still not completely satisfied with the way Sony's ambitious Home project is shaping up. He also talks about the loss of the Monster Hunter franchise to the Wii, the lack of backwards compatibility in the newest version of the PS3, and other weighty holiday issues. "If anything, we believe the delay would have a positive effect. I personally am not satisfied with the current version of Home. This is a very big project for the PS3 and we want to make sure that we deliver to our hearts content. We hope everyone will look forward to its spring release next year."

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Periwinkle blue?

Well, you know what they say...

[Indes]

Home is where the heart is.

  And if you're not content with your home, wheres your heart gonna be?

  (Hopefully not playing the Wii)

Re:

[mink]

If I learned one thing from Dr. Emilio Lizardo it is that "Home is where you hang your hat.".

NEWS FLASH:

[Perseid]

Citizens of Home are finding their town shrouded in a mysterious vapor, causing residents to question whether or not they will ever actually exist.

Details at 11.

Re:

[Gravatron]

They have had a closed eta for a while you know. IF anything, it sounds like they heard the complaints and are working to make it better. Thats pretty strange, as most companies express nothign but hype over how something is comming along.

Well ok then

[Applekid]

Given that he's the CEO of Sony's gaming division, I guess if he's not happy he is empowered to manage and organize so that he can become happy with it. Whining to the press about it certainly won't make it better.

Re:

[Sciros]

Well yeah, but to be fair it's an interview with Famitsu where he's talking about what people want to hear from him, not him calling some journalist at night while sobbing with a near-empty bottle of sake in his hand. ...Perhaps you would prefer a racy photo shoot of him in the magazine, wearing that Borat "swimsuit." Actually that would be pretty funny so nevermind.

Thanks for pointing that out

[Chuck Chunder]

With your incredible insight I'm sure you can expect an invitation to the Sony board very shortly......

Re:

[LoverOfJoy]

To be fair, it wasn't so much whining about the Playstation Home Service as it was spinning the delay. This isn't much different from Nintendo spinning their delays by saying they'd rather delay and give a good product that release on time with crap. Here's the pertinent part:

The delay of the PlayStation Home service was also announced, will this affect the company's future strategy?

Hirai: If anything, we believe the delay would have a positive effect. I personally am not satisfied with the current vers

Sony's Not Exactly Setting the World on Fire

[Petersko]

Sony should probably be unhappy with a wide variety of PS3-related issues.

It's great fun seeing an arrogant bully get kicked square in the nuts and fold like a cheap lawn chair, but the desire to see them fail is all out of my system now. It's important that they succeed.

Re:

[LWATCDR]

"It's important that they succeed."

Why? Really why is it important to anyone but themselves that they succeed?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if they fail, there's less competition.

Re:

[KDR_11k]

I think that's not an issue, a leader failing is an example to others.

Re:

[Osty]

Because if they fail, there's less competition.

Sega failed yet we still have three players in the console market. If Sony were to fail so horribly with the PS3 that they drop out of the market entirely, I wouldn't be surprised to see others try to enter the market in their wake. EA is probably the most likely candidate.

Re:

[LKM]

You think if Sony failed with the PS3, they'd leave the console market? I think not. I think they need to learn their lesson, fail miserable with the PS3, and then not make the same mistakes with the PS4 again.

It's all about the money.

[Petersko]

"Why? Really why is it important to anyone but themselves that they succeed?"

It's important because a very large base of owners will allow companies to keep making games with high development costs. Right now they're doing it primarily on faith.

Re:

[LrdDimwit]

Because if Sony folds then it becomes "Microsoft versus Nintendo". Considering Microsoft's past history, a lot of people aren't too comfortable with that thought.

Re:

[burndive]

No one wants Sony to fold. We're perfectly happy with them continually buying themselves back in to a losing game.

I just hope they don't bleed enough money to make the DRM monstrosity that is Blu-Ray a success. As long as it goes the way of UMD, I'll be happy.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

just hope they don't bleed enough money to make the DRM monstrosity that is Blu-Ray a success. As long as it goes the way of UMD, I'll be happy.

Unfortunately, the target users for Blu-Ray (i.e., not us the viewer) wants DRM. That's unfortunately why a standard like HD-DVD is bound to fail - the DVD Forum guys may have learned from the mistakes of DVD (i.e., region coding), but at the same time, they're making it unpalatable to the studios, who want their content locked up tighter than Fort Knox.

Blu-Ray off

Re:

[burndive]

I am one of those low-price (sub-$200) HD DVD player buyers. I'm putting my money on HD DVD being cheaper, and also throwing my hat in with the less-restrictive DRM.

I fully expect that this holiday season, HD DVD players will be cheap enough for HD DVD to gain the momentum and popular awareness that it needs to succeed.

One great way for them to seriously screw up Blu-Ray is for the price to stay high.

Re:

[trdrstv]

I am one of those low-price (sub-$200) HD DVD player buyers. I'm putting my money on HD DVD being cheaper, and also throwing my hat in with the less-restrictive DRM.

Also have you noticed the BluRay discs are more expensive too? Unless you're forced to get an HD DVD "combo disc" both the players and movies are less expensive. Throw in the fact that HD DVD is Region free and output 1080p... Why (besides exclusive studios) would you pay the premium? What's the real benefit to the consumer?

Re:

[king-manic]

"It's important that they succeed."

Why? Really why is it important to anyone but themselves that they succeed?

Because the competition (as well as Sony) have shown when they are on top they will be tyrants. So the best situation for gamers is a fairly close race and some diversity. The wii has a good install base, but some games will never come to the wii. So we need a Alternative to the 360 to continue to exist. Remember how each player failed when they dominated. Remember that competition improves markets and products. Thus int he interest of capitalism and gaming we need them not to fold up. Competition is good.

Re:

[Ang31us]

Overall, Sony has helped expand the market for video games. As much as I despise the PlayStation brand, competition is good for the industry overall, because it keeps Nintendo and Microsoft on their toes. It is definitely important that they succeed.

Re:

[LWATCDR]

You make an assumption that no one else would bring out a console. Maybe Apple would. Maybe Google would, maybe Sega would comeback.

Re:

[Ang31us]

You're right, of course...but how many consoles can this market support? As it is, development houses like EA want a standard console architecture to develop for to reduce the up-front cost of creating games.

Apple has a pretty shoddy track record of supporting gamers and I have no idea what a Google offering would even look like.

I never bought a Sega Master System, Genesis, 32X, Sega CD, or Saturn, but when they put out the Dreamcast while lying on their console manufacturer deathbed, I went out and bo

Re:

[LWATCDR]

A game console from Apple does make sense. I think we will see Apple getting into games for the iPhone in a pretty big way even if they are just simple Tetris type games.
How many game consoles can be supported. I don't know. If it can only be two then live would really be ugly if our choices where only Sony and Microsoft.
If Sony totaly fails with the PS3 I doubt that will be the end of Sony game consoles. Heck them failing might be the best thing that ever happened. Maybe they will back away from DRM everyt

Touchy, aren't we?

[Petersko]

"What the fuck are you babbling about? issues? The hardware is rock solid with people playing games and folding at home for months at a time."

Never said a word about the hardware. I own a PS3 (no games, but lots of movies). Their issues are in every single other area, including sales, marketing, and third party support services. They're blowing it. If you don't think they have issues, think again.

"BluRay has won the next gen format war."

They have not. There's at least 18 months left in this silly

Re:

[king-manic]

They have not. There's at least 18 months left in this silly war, and Sony never wins format wars. I'm buying the new Samsung dual-format player in January because the war is going to continue.

Sony has to outsell the 360 by over 200,000 units every month for until 2012 just to catch up. Depends on the market, Sony has lost the US, has a solid #2 in Japan and in several other markets.

Also sony have won formats. they are roughy 1:1 success vs failures.

Wins:

3.5" floppy
CD
DVD
Sort of MD
BetaCam

Loses:
Betamax
memsti

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[king-manic]

I'd put MD in the loss column, and DVD was not Sony. (Sony and Phillips abandoned their multimedia disc idea and switched to Toshiba et al.'s version, which eventually became DVD.. so Sony supported it eventually, but it wasn't their format.)

3.5" disks, the CD (split with Phillips, who's no stranger to failed formats themselves *cough* cd-i *cough*), and Betacam they get, though. :) Disks and CDs are pretty good successes, admittedly.

Depending on if you consider markets outside the US. The MD format was a smashing success all over Asia. North America just didn't have the need for it and thus it failed there.

Even memstick/memstick duo can be seen as a tepid warm success or at least not an outright failure. I mis called the DVD thing.

In any case it's habitual failure but common failure.

Re:

[Pojut]

I've often wondered...I understand that folks such as yourself get paid to bash the competition, but does your employer (Sony, I'm assuming) really believe that by bashing potential customers that they will win over more buisness?

It just seems odd to me that you are bashing the USERS of other products...

Flaiming Competitors, and politics...

[trdrstv]

I've often wondered...I understand that folks such as yourself get paid to bash the competition, but does your employer (Sony, I'm assuming) really believe that by bashing potential customers that they will win over more buisness?

I don't understand the mentality either, but it is big in political campaigns as well. Personally I've never been a fan of voting for someone who's platform is based on "I'm better than so and so, because they do ___". It tells me they have nothing to offer but criticism. This

Re:

[Pojut]

One acronym, three letters:

DRM.

Thank you folks, you've been a wonderful audience! Remember to tip your waitress.

Re:

[king-manic]

One acronym, three letters:

DRM.

Thank you folks, you've been a wonderful audience! Remember to tip your waitress.

So you have decided to boycott all 3?

Re:

[BosstonesOwn]

They could still pull it out.

They need to get people on board with the cell. As a dev I know multiprocessor coding is difficult and the new compilers that are allowing us to spend more time coding then figuring out what needs to be run in parallel while waiting on another process to finish. The kernel in the xbox 360 does a better job of actually breaking the executable into different executable code for the different cores, strictly because it has the compiler in the DK that does it. MS has years of multi

Re:

[KDR_11k]

The 360 is completely dead in Japan.

Which fascinatingly is sufficient to outsell the PS3 this week.

Re:

[Reapman]

Source? Because that would be amazing, the last I saw the difference was about 6x (18k vs 3k), in favor of the PS3.

Assuming your right, I would'nt pop the champaign just yet. The PS3 has in previous weeks outsold the 360 in America (see price drop), but I hardly call the PS3 a victor over here. Far from it.

Re:

[KDR_11k]

I can't find a website listing it, only forum posts but Famitsu apparently puts the 360 at 17k sales compared to 16k for the PS3 for 29. oct to 4. nov. Proper articles on it will probably become more numerous soon. While I agree it doesn't mean much it does emphasize to me that both consoles are scraping along the bottom when it comes to sales numbers there so that even a spike that's small in absolute numbers is enough to move one over the other in the weekly charts.

Re:

[Reapman]

Hmm... I never thought about it as scraping the bottom for the 360 and PS3.. but that's probably a really good way of putting it. I haven't found anything that disproves what you said. That would be impressive for the 360 if they can keep it up, it's usually far, far, FAR behind. It's all DS, PSP, and Wii (of course) in Japan these days from the looks of it.

Re:

[KDR_11k]

I doubt it'll keep up, just a momentary sales spike from the release of Ace Combat 6. Interestingly 360 games do appear in the software top 20 quite often.

Re:

[Reapman]

I was reading elsewhere (forget the source now, probably Joystiq or some such) that the 360 sells more games per console then the other 2 by a fairly wide margian.

I would wish for all three to remain competitive, just having 2 is too close to one going out for the count and us left with a monopoly. Nintendo's had a bad history with that in the past, and of course MS and Sony need no explanation as to why that would be bad. :)

Re:

[Chuck Chunder]

link [kotaku.com]. Didn't see that one coming!

Re:

[Reapman]

That IS freakin amazing.

Re:

[mink]

Why do you think people will NEED them (1080P games and blue-ray)? Want, I can understand but need seems a bit much.

Re:

[GammaKitsune]

Obviously, you weren't a die-hard Nintendo fan for the recent years of famine and despair. Having owned a Gamecube and nothing else during that time, and having stuck with the DS when it appeared to be going down the gutter, I can safely say that I still love each and every minute of nut kicking that Sony receives. Arrogant pricks.

Re:Yet Another Pathetic Bit Of Zonk Fanboy Spin

[Turken]

I don't like replying to AC trolls, but tell me... how exactly is this article a bunch of "Zonk hates teh Sony fanboy crap?"

The article summary simply described the contents of a third-party source. There was no blatant negative spin put into the summary or the choice of quote. I was wondering why I hadn't heard much about Home lately. I read the article, and now I know what at least part of the holdup is. Since I don't spend all day trolling gaming blogs and fanboy sites, this was news to me. And for putting a link to this news on Slashdot, I say Thank you, Zonk.

Re:

[LKM]

The updatee which installed that annoying little scrolling thing which constantly tells me meaningless gibberish? Yay, let's discuss that.

Re:

[cornface]

It's not that Zonk is a fanboy, it's just that he is a terrible poster with nothing interesting to say.

I don't know about other PS3 owners...

[Hamster Lover]

but I bought my PS3 to play HD games. I really could not care less about Home and I hope to hell that Home doesn't replace the awesome XMB interface.

Obviously, I am not the target audience here, but does a target audience even exist? I honestly do not see what Sony is attempting to achieve with Home other than unnecessarily complicate the on-line experience. I'd rather Sony put the effort into creating some good games, which are in remarkably short supply at the moment.

Don't get me wrong, I love my PS3 (and my 360), but Home has zero appeal to me on machine I bought to play Drake's Fortune and Assassin's Creed.

Re:I don't know about other PS3 owners...

[Devir]

I dont know what Sony "Home" is. I'm looking forward to more "remote play" capable games for the PS3/PSP mix. I'm totally awaiting more PS1 games that I can play including FF7.

THe XMB interface is "ok" at best. THey seriously need to overhaul the video, and music portion of the system. In fact, they should hire the guys who created "Xbox Media Center" for the original Xbox. THat is one sweet piece of software and can completely replace the Xbox and "evox" dash for modded xboxes.

Seriously, I try to copy music over and it comes over in one long list 1000 lines long. I try to copy it by artist and that fails. The ps3 interface for music and video is horrid. I cant make playlists as well.

Sony is not bad, it's just that they're trying to do too much too quick, and making it sloppy. Instead of analyzing t he market and predicting needs and trends, they're reacting to the market and responding to trends. This makes a rushed out the door feel to products. THey need to step back, analyze what the consumer wants and provide that.

For now My modded Xbox has no media center replacement.
For now the PS3 is my updated PS2.
I want backwards compatability, hence why I rushed to buy the 60 gig.
I want to download games, and stream to my PSP.
I want more remote play titles. Heck, I'd love to be able to play a PS2 game through remote play.

There's tons of things Sony "could" do with the PS3. They just need to stop, step back, take a global look, and start revising it piece by piece. Start with more PSP interoperability. I love that feature.

Re:I don't know about other PS3 owners...

[rworne]

Seriously, I try to copy music over and it comes over in one long list 1000 lines long. I try to copy it by artist and that fails. The ps3 interface for music and video is horrid. I cant make playlists as well.

Wow, they must have heard you and then issued a firmware update that addresses this very problem...

Seriously, v2.0 was released this morning and includes playlists, themes, and remote play. How much of an improvement it is is still up to debate.

Re:

[Devir]

Ok then. I just got home, I read this response, and wam, turn on the PS3. THe update is downloading now.

Thanks for letting me know this, since it was a very important item on my "Ps3 gripe" list.

37% downloaded, grr DSL. FIOS install tomorrow.

Re:

[trdrstv]

Wow, they must have heard you and then issued a firmware update that addresses this very problem...

Seriously, v2.0 was released this morning and includes playlists, themes, and remote play. How much of an improvement it is is still up to debate.

Did they add an "auto off setting" for an inactive controller, or do I still have to manually turn off the controller every time?

What Home is

[LKM]

Remember in the early 90s when everyone thought online shops would be virtual 3D things where you walk through virtual 3D stores, put virtual 3D goods into your virtual 3D basket, then virtually carry your 3D basket to a virtual 3D cash register and virtually paid virtual 3D money?

That's Home, except for online communities and videogame matchmaking instead of online shopping.

Instead of a linear list of buddies you can chat with, invite to games or otherwise interact, you get a virtual 3D home with virtual f

Re:

[Devir]

I'm scared for the future then...

Updated system. Interface still sucks. They need to steal ideas from the Xbox Media Center. It's not nice when a multibillion dollar company gets beat out by a couple of guys programming semi gray legal software for free.

Re:

[LKM]

They need to steal ideas from the Xbox Media Center

Yes. And from the Xbox blade interface, and from the Wii interface.

Frankly, the PS3 interface is a mess. It's a neat idea for the PSP, where you have few things, but on the PS3, it just breaks down. Scrolling through my list of movies or games actually takes probably about half a minute from top to bottom. Why can't we have some way to order this stuff into directories? Sorting everything by activity also doesn't quite work: If I played skate and want t

Re:

[KlomDark]

Did Melinda Gates jump ship to Sony? Sounds a lot like her old Microsoft Bob project.

Re:

[LKM]

Same general idea, except in 3D.

If they were smart

[fawzma]

they'd widgetize the whole thing and let their users decide how the place looks.

Re:PS3 will grow wings.

[amuro98]

The whole "just wait...You'll see!" attitude of Sony's and their fans is tiring.

First off, "coming soon!" doesn't sell hardware.

Second, there's no guarantee that those big titles will even come out on time, or will even be any good to begin with. Look at 2007. MGS4 - slipped. Home - Slipped. Lair - Probably the most disappointing game of the year.

Even if the upcoming titles come out on time and will be good, it may be literally too little too late. Right now Sony is facing their second holiday season of being dead last. Their current library can't compare to that of the 360's or the Wii's. Sony has tried to address the price issue by creating their 4th(!) console model in under 12 months, but them lobotomized it by removing all PS2 backwards compatibility from it!

Sony is on a slippery precipice. Unless they can get more PS3s and games into peoples' hands, and soon, developers are going to grow tired of waiting and will stop making PS3 exclusive games (or stop developing for the PS3 altogether) at which point, it's game over for the PS3. 2008 is really going to be the PS3's last chance. Blow it, and the PS3 won't survive to see Christmas 2009.

As for blu-ray and hd-dvd movies, the whole market is messed up. Seriously, any idiotic company who thinks customers are going to willing to buy a device that can only play 50% of the movies on the market should just be put out of our miseries. Seriously, who's bright idea was it to make the consumer choose? Despite all the dick-waving that fanboys like you are doing, there's really no difference between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Both hold HD video and surround sound. Beyond that, you have to be a fanboy, or an engineer who's more interested in technical minutiae than just watching movies.

Most of the market that can even take advantage of these HD formats are just sitting on the sidelines letting the other idiots waste their money and get burned in yet another stupid format war. Seriously, have folks forgotten the mess that still is DVD-R vs. DVD+R? Two formats, doing identical things, but in an incompatible manner, fight for market domination until one company says "why choose?" and comes out with a hybrid drive that handles both. The same will happen for HD video, and when those drives come out, every player that can't play both formats will be instantly obsolete. Which again, just proves how stupid both sides in this "war" are being...

Re:

[amuro98]

Microsoft's move from Xbox to the 360 has nothing to do with the number of games. Developers knew well in advance that the 360 was going to be coming out, and had plenty of time to transition over as they saw fit. Even after the 360 came out, there were still a handful of Xbox games that came out afterwards. In addition, Playstation developers had even MORE time. Sony delayed the launch of the PS3 by 6 months for US and Japan, which most people assumed would have been used by the developers to work out

Re:

[flitty]

What a troll man, please get of /. and go read your "news" from Sonydefenseforce.com please, much more suited to trolls like you.

Re:

[LKM]

but what happens when u just wanna sit back, relax, and play something casually? Well, you can't because you have to wave your arms around like a mad man!

I suggest you try actually playing with a Wii. One of the main complaints people have is that you don't have to get up to play.

By the time Sony is happy...

[CelticLo]

...I will urinate myself while convulsing with laughter if a new blade appears on xbox live offering a very, very similar virtual environment. Well at least they have the servers to run such a venture.