PlayStation Home Beta Opens to the Public 206
Yesterday Sony launched the open beta for PlayStation Home, the virtual world designed for PlayStation Network community members. Eurogamer has an in-depth look at the features of Home. They point out some glaring weaknesses, such as a poor communication system, a flawed business model, and the inability to form groups without entering games, something the recently revamped Xbox interface does better. "It's not alienating, it's easy to identify with, and the socialising and advertising are entirely in context. But you're left pondering the inevitable question: why would you want to spend any time here?" Home's debut to the public saw a few typical launch-day problems, but Sony was quick to address them and get things back on track. Gizmodo has some screenshots and basic information available.
Penny Arcade also summed it up well (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/12/12/ [penny-arcade.com]
Makes you want to rush out and get a PS3.... NOT.
Short Review: It Sucks (Score:5, Informative)
I loaded it up early this morning, and in short, it's terrible. It's everything bad about Second Life meets the Xbox NXE meets Miis. I was going to write a lengthy explaination as to what's wrong, but Tycho over at Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com] has done a much better job hitting on everything, and using bigger words in the process. So without further ado:
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It's no virtue to give away something that no-one in their right mind would buy.
I wish more people would realize that...
Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming (Score:5, Insightful)
There are 18 million PS3 already worldwide with 14 million PSN accounts. So the massive amount of traffic on the Home servers yesterday was understandable. No other MMORPG or online world has ever been build to handle such a gigantic userbase.
And about 1% have even heard of Home.. and even then at 3am it was so full it was unusable.
Of course, give it a week or two and it'll be empty.
One gigantic party? LOL. Sounds like you've never even seen it. It's loads of people wandering around aimlessly using their 'hello' macro and looking at dumb psp adverts.
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And about 1% have even heard of Home..
Which becomes even more significant when you consider that the number of people who play WoW in a month is about 70% of 14 million, so it wasn't really an unprecedently "gigantic userbase" to start with.
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The parent was more correct than you -- and while they had the expected open beta network issues, the system was quite usable once fixed.
Since I've been in the closed beta since summer, I can assure you it will probably not be empty anytime soon.
Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming (Score:4, Funny)
Why would you bother calling someone else a fanboy?
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Why would you bother calling someone else a fanboy?
Probably because it's the easiest way to defend yourself when you're a paid sockpuppet.
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Home does generate an insane amount of terror in the fanboys of other platforms where they start lashing out incoherently.
Here's a quick hint for you: when you start saying completely ridiculous things like this, it's a good sign that you're the crazy-assed fanboy, not the other guys.
(Full disclosure, I own a Wii, I've had it for two weeks, and I've never owned any other game consoles in my life. Pretty obviously not a fanboy here, so don't even try it.)
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Actually, he's right -- the lashing against Home has been going on a while, mostly from people who don't want to like it or have never used it.
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Don't care if he's right or wrong. Phrases like "insane amount of terror" when describing an online gaming system are ridiculous and indicate that this person is mentally unwell.
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I'm not a fanboy of any other system, the only games consoles I've ever owned have been PlayStations. Home sucks. Well, it doesn't suck if you like the idea of something like Second Life, but I don't. As a social tool for people who like decorating a virtual space and interacting with random peopl
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i don't own a PS3 so i don't know if that's the direction the PS3 is headed in, but i agree that i would be really stupid, especially since the XMB is such an easy to use and well-designed interface (i believe it's won an award for its design).
what would be nice (and make more sense) would be if Sony had instead spent their resources on expanding/extending the XMB by adding useful features. for instance, add some kind of media manager like the iPod or iTunes that lets you organize your music and browse by a
Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming (Score:4, Insightful)
My worry is that Sony will make Home the preferred way to create groups, have multi-user chat, set up private games, use the Store and so on.
If they do that, the PS3 will die as a multiplayer platform.
When I play a game, I want to play a game. More specifically, I want to play this game. I do not want to play Second Life to be able to play $multiplayergame. Someone might enjoy 2nd life. I don't. I don't want to be forced to move through some pseudo-multiuser virtual world to do what I want to do.
If people are anything when it comes to their games, it's impatient. Know what was the first thing that made consoles popular over computer based games, back in the good ol' days when computer came with floppy discs and consoles with cartridges? Load speed. It took seconds at most to load a console game, it could take a minute to load a computer game. Right behind it was ease to use. Push the cartridge in and play. No booting, no disk swapping, no searching for the right executable.
When people now have to meander through some virtual world to finally do what they wanted to do in the first place, they will most likely ponder whether it's worth the hassle in the first place. When I fire up a game and select multiplayer, I expect to be in a multiplayer lobby where I may pick my partners/enemies and go on to play it. A system that does not offer this is going to be replaced with one that offers is.
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I highly doubt they will do anything of the sort, on the basis that Home simply isn't viable for people with low bandwidth limits.
Now, I can't see Sony replicating their "clubhouse" work in Home elsewhere, so it will probably be the only way to do things like that, but we'll see.
IMHO, Home doesn't appear to be designed around launching games as its primary function at all.
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You're right, @home feels a little like the ability to join multiplayer games is some sort of tacked on ability, the basic function is some sort of social virtual world. Problem is, I'd estimate the ratio of people who want a social fantasyland to the people who just want that crap to go away and let them play multiplayer games at about 1:10000. I base this on the population of 2nd life vs. the people playing different other multiplayer games that don't have an elaborate social component like Diablo, WC3, C
Do not think it will ever replace the store... (Score:2)
There's no way that Sony would drop an efficient way for you to spend money, as such I'm sure the store will always be there.
Having online matchmaking move to Home only, seems very unlikely to me but not as much outside the realm of possibility...
I find spaces like this pretty annoying since all anyone wants to do there is giggle at sexual innuendo (or simply crude remarks). I'd be pretty put off too if I had to go there to do anything.
I am not sure it will really be ignored as much as I thought it would b
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Having online matchmaking move to Home only, seems very unlikely to me but not as much outside the realm of possibility...
It would seem unlikely to me too, but I'm worried about the fact that the closest equivalent to XBL's party system on PSN are the Clubs in Home (it costs money to set up a Club *sigh*). A Club does more than just allow you to handle group gaming, but that's currently the only PSN-wide way to have a group, though there are some game-specific group mechanisms. You don't need a Club to play with your friends, but if you wanted an evening where you play a few different games it's currently the most efficient me
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I don't want to defend Second Life here, but the one redeeming factor it has is user-generated content. Home lacks that. It's like Second Life without the only thing that made Second Life marginally interesting.
I feel the same way. There is one (1) thing out there that makes me think "Hmm, I wish I had a PS3" and that's Little Big Planet. The major selling feature of LBP is the user-generated content.
Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly you either work for Sony or are otherwise tasked with promoting Home. And I don't just mean that because I find it so unbelievable that anyone could be so gung-ho about such an obviously flawed program, but also because you've clearly got your hands on information that nobody could possibly know given the limited amount of time the public has had to digest this thing at this point. I played around in there last night for a few hours and I didn't see half the stuff you're talking about.
There are 18 million PS3 already worldwide with 14 million PSN accounts. So the massive amount of traffic on the Home servers yesterday was understandable. No other MMORPG or online world has ever been build to handle such a gigantic userbase.
Then why did I only see about 200 people total in the entire world last night?
Let's break it down. Last night when I tried to connect to the PSN network, I was told I'd need a system update. Half an hour later, my system went through its reboot and I was done with that. So, then, go to load home. Another download, another reboot, another half an hour. So, now I'm finally in my apartment. I go to leave, and am confronted with yet another download.
What regular person is going to put up with this? This only even has a prayer with the truly hardcore. It's too much work to even get started.
Everyone is filling out their friends list with people they've met. People are playing the in Home games together, checking out the initial game spaces for Uncharted and Far Cry 2, dancing in the social music area, or just hanging out chatting with their old or new friends.
I saw, and I am totally serious about this, nobody doing any of these things.
There are things to unlock in the various games throughout Home for your avatar or personal spaces. And of course there are things you can buy if you wish to.
I certainly found things I could buy (who is Sony kidding with this? I'm going to pay $1 for a fake table?). I found nothing I could unlock. And if I couldn't, no average person who doesn't have four hours to kill on a Thursday night is going to.
If you are a solo player you can setup up an online game and then invite or have people join you while you are in Home. It shows which game you have setup under your name for other to see. Once you are ready you all launch together right into the game as a party.
Again, I saw not a single person doing this. Why would you invite people this way? It is much, much easier to simply start up the game and send out an invite.
And then there are the third party game spaces that almost every console developer is in the process of creating. You don't have to have the game to enter these areas. Each of these spaces look just like the real game and give you a feel for what the game is like with the overall art style of the space, pictures from the games up on the walls, and movies streaming from the game.
You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes.
The ability to walk around in a space that looks kind of like a game is not very compelling to me, nor I suspect anyone else. Give me a demo and I'm a lot happier, not to mention a lot more likely to buy the game.
What you're saying is not unlike what Linden Labs was saying about Second Life (how every major company was building "islands" in the game). We all saw how well that worked out. People would rather just look at stuff on a web page.
And there are already third party non-game Spaces going into Home like Red Bull's space that is going live next week.
Great, so I can experience an ad!
Can you please tell me why you think people will want to do this? Every single time somebody has tried to position an ad as if it's some sort of compelling content, it has failed. Especially in virtual worlds. Every single time.
A year from now it looks like there will be easily more than a hundred different Sony, third party game, and third party non-g
Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming (Score:4, Funny)
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Then why did I only see about 200 people total in the entire world last night?
Don't you think it's very likely some kind of instancing or server balancing? Obviously the few places they have would be overwhelmed with even just 1k people, which there were obviously lot more of as you could tell by...
Let's break it down. Last night when I tried to connect to the PSN network, I was told I'd need a system update. Half an hour later, my system went through its reboot and I was done with that. So, then, go to l
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If you look at the download size, the actual Home download was only 77mb. Similarly the central hub download was only about 24mb... from an observer using it now, yes there was an absurd amount of waiting (in particular the starting apartment felt more like a cell than a living area when I realized I could not leave until the download completed). But from a technical standpoint I think they actually broke it out pretty well so that in normal use a person would hardly notice a delay, even for a new area - under normal conditions the download of 24-77mb of content would be a matter of seconds.
Even if the download is pretty quick, the load times are very noticeable. 10 seconds or more to walk through a door to a zone you've already downloaded. The WWW and HDD icons aren't active for most of that time, so it's not a server load issue and the modest download sizes mean it's not loading vast amounts of data. Home is just slow to load, even if the downloads are tolerably quick.
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Even if the download is pretty quick, the load times are very noticeable. 10 seconds or more to walk through a door to a zone you've already downloaded. The WWW and HDD icons aren't active for most of that time, so it's not a server load issue and the modest download sizes mean it's not loading vast amounts of data. Home is just slow to load, even if the downloads are tolerably quick.
It's true that there was some kind of "installation" time I had not accounted for there that was as you say some fairly notic
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Go back to the arcade and get a decent score on the Echochrome game. Enjoy your tip of the day.
Unlockables aren't "giveaways" they're unlockables, like the hidden paths in Super Mario.
Also, I don't understand how you missed people doing what he described, every day I've logged into Home since joining the private Beta, people have been doing what was described, hanging out and dance partying and such.
Why? Who knows, its kinda neat. I've met a few new interesting people in Home myself.
Also, the downloads w
Re:The Greatest Online System In Gaming (Score:4, Insightful)
*looks for the "Disclaimer: I am employed by Sony" and finding none assumes it was a forgetful mistake and moves on*
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The scope of Home and the amount of work Sony has done is staggering.
There are 18 million PS3 already worldwide with 14 million PSN accounts. So the massive amount of traffic on the Home servers yesterday was understandable. No other MMORPG or online world has ever been build to handle such a gigantic userbase.
Everquest runs on Playstation 2. FF11 runs on Playstation 2. World of Warcraft runs on everything but Wii these days. PS3 has the smallest market impact of everything out there (the Wii has 35 million units out there these days), and their "game" is rudimentary and pointless. SecondLife is over-scoped, too flexible for its own good and this limits what rendering optimizations can be done (i.e. it prevents the basic rendering strategy that makes low-powered consumer graphics card like quad GeForce 8800
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I wish I hadn't forfeited my mod points trying to cram in a Penny Arcade link earlier, so rather than mod you up I'll respond.
The less-than-perfect launch seems to be a minor point of criticism. I think some of the fundamental game choices are the object of their ire. Choosing to artificially limit access to content seems to be the main objection. It makes it more similar to real life, but it also makes it much more frustrating to people. It's already selectively enhancing part of real life, why can't i
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It's one of those "wtf" moments, ain't it? I mean, was Sony still asleep when Atari started off the console market?
What made the very first consoles popular? Why did people go out and buy a console to play PacMan or other classics? Price? Because they didn't want to spend quarter after quarter? Probably not. It would probably have been cheaper than the console. They wanted to play what they want to play when they wanted to play it, at the leisure of their home, without having to go down to the arcade, just
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Of course, the question of why this would be compelling remains hard to answer.
Simply Pointless (Score:3, Informative)
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Right, so, basically its what the XBox already had, only it only works for 10 games as opposed to EVERY game, plus a shitty 3D interface (yes Virginia, "virtual worlds" are a terrible replacement for a good menu), plus some extra marketing crap that any non-brainwashed human being shouldn't give a crap about.
Yeah, sounds fucking amazing. You'd have to be drinking a long drink from the kool-aid to think that sounded appealing. The fact that you're calling it "staggering" and "amazing" makes me think you're
Re:Sony Is Teaching Microsoft How To Do Online Gam (Score:5, Interesting)
Where are the dedicated servers for Call of Duty 4 & 5, GT5p, RSV2? Warhawk is the only game I've played on my PS3 which had dedicated servers.
I have a PS3, but I play on a friends' 360 regularly. Live is so good I've got a Live account even though I don't have a 360 myself. It's just better than PSN - it's faster (updates, menus, messaging - Live itself, I don't mean the games), people actually have mics and use them, you can form groups (parties), you can see what your friends are playing, the reputation system means you can prefer and avoid players and the player matching will take that into account, the list goes on and on. PSN is lacking so many features Live has had for years it's pretty embarrassing. It does cost money, but Microsoft use that money to ensure the Live servers are fast (PSN takes an age to show your own trophies, Live is virtually instant) and they can shove money at game publishers and get early releases and exclusive content.
I fucking hate Microsoft and think the 360 isn't particularly impressive - DVDs and no mandatory hard drive sucks, everybody with a 360 I know has had the RROD at least once and worn out many controllers - but even I can see Live is just plain better than PSN. The only people who don't think so are fanboys and people who've never used it. A few games with dedicated server doesn't make up for the deficiencies, even when you take the price of Live into account.
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Flawed? (Score:2)
If you want to use Home, you don't need to buy anything. If you want to spend money on premium clothing/decor items, the feel free. Its $0.50 for almost every item, have fun.
I don't see a flaw with this in a BETA -- they don't know how many things people will pay for, or what price to make them, but its a good time to find out.
Re:Flawed? (Score:5, Insightful)
It can be legitimately criticized, despite being a 'free' product. Notably, an obviously large amount of time and money was invested into this. Instead of considering Home 'free', one could wonder what they could have alternatively done with the servers, developers, or simply the money. Maybe they could have not had those servers and developers and lowered the console price. Or they could have pieced something compelling together. As someone who purchased a PS3, I'm interested in evaluating all the Sony offerings that are being provided free of additional charge, as my purchase contributed revenue they used to do this.
Looking back since they first started teasing Home, it has been a very long time. Now that we've had a chance to see what it has taken so long to piece together, a lot of people may rightly say "that's it?". I know, it's "beta", but few projects with this degree of uncertainty would survive so long without declaring a 'release'.
In my view, there is something actually interesting about the fundamental concept. I could see how the experience could be relaxing. It's obviously comparable in Second Life. Both have yet to hold my attention longer than a first impression, so maybe it isn't as interesting to me as I would think.
Compared to Second Life, I think Sony's Home has done a good job of looking significantly better. The best of second life doesn't look as good, and the prominence of objects designed with all the design talent of the average MySpace page author clutters that landscape with ugly atrocities. Of course, if trying for the social networking aspect, to date the popular ones have been those to allow maximum creativity, for better or for worse.
What they have done worse is aim for too much realism. The avatars move painfully slow. The 'bowling alley' is all but useless because all the slots are pretty much always in use. They could (and should) mitigate this through more instances of 'bowling alleys', I guess it is a matter of them determining the best balance between too sparse and uselessly dense. I would wager if they doubled the instances of bowling alleys, people wouldn't be bothered by the immediate appearance of limited supply, since they wouldn't have any hard time finding an empty lane or whatever. Also, the ability to import such attractions into a personal space could help, so a group of friends would always know where/how they could pass the time. It's clearly a casual gaming play here, which is a proven genre of interest.
I remain dubious of Sony's direction in general. They did this 'Qore' thing in which users are expected to buy pure advertising. Then they realized they wanted to advertise and so they did this 'Pulse' thing. Then they released this 'Home' thing. All the while not seeming to deliver what PS1 and PS2 had achieved success with, a solid set of games.
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I don't see a flaw with this in a BETA -- they don't know how many things people will pay for, or what price to make them, but its a good time to find out.
Beta today is not Beta 10 years ago. Today services that people depend on, such as gMail are beta. People use OSS beta software all the time, beta has become the new "1.0" release. Today, most "1.0" releases are equivalent to a "1.01" release.
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Whether people choose to pretend that betas are full services or not, Beta doesn't change meanings for the rest of us.
Home Makes Everything Worse (Score:5, Interesting)
Home is basically a collection of mini-games tied together by a giant pain-in-the-ass world where you have to walk around and stand in a real line in order to use a piece of virtual equipment.
Movie trailers are not the worst idea in the world. I might be interested in watching movie trailers on my PS3. What I'm not interested in doing is logging in to Home, going through a million loading screens, and then watching a trailer (which one? Whichever one they're showing! Want to change it? Too bad!) in a virtual theater full of actual jackasses jumping up and down in front of the screen ("Yo dawg, I know you like TV, so we put a TV inside your TV so you can watch TV while you watch TV!") and make homophobic comments over the voice chat.
Meanwhile, there's nothing to actually DO with anyone you would meet in Home, so the 'social MMO' aspect of Home is totally pointless. I keep waiting for Ken Kutaragi to hold a press conference just to announce, "The Aristocrats!"
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I might be interested in watching movie trailers on my PS3.
Great, then head on over to the PlayStation Store, where you've been able to download HD movie trailers for the PS3 for ages! It does sort of make the Home movie theater seem kind of stupid when you think about it, though - it's a worse version of something that the PS3 has done since launch. But don't tell the marketers that, you know they're just salivating at the thought of being able to force us to watch the trailers they want us to watch rather than trailers for movies we're actually interested in.
Meanwhile, there's nothing to actually DO with anyone you would meet in Home, so the 'social MMO' aspect of Home is totally pointless.
I re
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it's a worse version of something that the PS3 has done since launch
I wouldn't say it is that bad, I actually like having advertisment, trailers and stuff shown to me while doing something else in the virtual world. The Playstation Store surely is faster, but if you don't know what you are looking for it doesn't really help all that much, Home on the other side shows you stuff you haven't been actively looking for (which is how I learned that there was an ew Watchmen trailer). Home however has two huge problem. The first one is that movie trailers in the cinema require load
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bleh.
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Actually, I'm a Wii fanboy. My wife wanted something that could play Puzzle Fighter, and the Wii release schedule has been pretty thin for several months.
PS3 Fan (Score:5, Insightful)
I just bought my second PS3. I'm a PS3 advocate, but frankly Home is two years too late. I think Sony went into this generation expecting to coast on their reputation from previous generations, and didn't do enough to actually win people over. The PS3 is the best BluRay player on the market, and a solid console, but frankly I'm not sure it even matters anymore.
BluRay is PS3's saving grace (Score:5, Interesting)
When the PS3 first came out, I derided them for pushing BluRay, which IIRC was the main reason the console came out so late (?). What I've come to realize is that BluRay is the PS3's saving grace. If they had gone with DVDs like the 360 did, there would be little reason to own one.
I own all three consoles, and I find the PS3 to be a capable multimedia machine. I use it to play movies and we've rented some off the PlayStation network. But I only own one game for it, compared to my 4 Wii and 9 360 titles.
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Dude...
1. fire up bittorent/usenet
2. download a 1080p mp4 movie
3. put it on usb drive
4. plug drive into xbox360
5. play movie in all HD goodness via HDMI cable to your expensive HDTV
oh did i mention its free?
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Re:Oh God... (Score:5, Informative)
"Home is two years too late"
Looks at the entire PS3 community worldwide packed onto the Home servers...
I don't see it.
"coast on their reputation"
Yep, that's why they just tacked on a controller gimmick to their same old hardware...wait no that's Nintendo.
They tacked on a "controller gimmick" like Guitar Hero and Rockband... the new controllers coming out these days are actually fun and immersive, and have expanded gameplay from "jam on abstract function-linked buttons!" to "interact directly with objects in the game world, via advanced human interface methods or just using controllers that physically represent the object you're controlling in the game on a high-fidelity analog."
Let's see Sony since the PS2 has:
* Co-developed the most powerful consumer electronic chip on the planet along with IBM and Toshiba
They asked IBM to do this IIRC. Also: it's a pain in the ass to code for, and ROI is minimal if you're not writing high-budget scientific simulation programs. A lot of modern supercomputers still use current processors, some have tried Cell but it seems mostly experimental. This is a good field for Cell; game console... not so much. From a business and consumer perspective this was a mistake; too much expense (cost, price) for too little return, and much cost passed on to the consumer.
* Help push through the next gen media format BluRay and included it in the PS3
i.e. Marketing format war with HD-DVD, in order to push the PS3 and secure the rights to a licensing monopoly in order to rake in cash while making BluRay discs more expensive (no competition). They learned well from DVD+- and Beta/VHS; if you let competing tech get a hold, you'll have to price war with them and lower costs to consumers for the final product to gain market share. They raised costs for manufacturers by banning combined HD-DVD/BluRay as per agreement; and increased market penetration by pushing PS3 as an incidental BluRay player. If they had a legal monopoly in the game console field, they would have gotten a DOJ injunction for this stunt.
* Massively upgraded their first party developer studio array to over 20 compared to only 10 for Nintendo and, lol, 3 for Microsoft
Yet Nintendo puts out far better stuff... plus Nintendo intentionally broke up and spread their internal development worldwide. Division One brought us The Legend of Zelda and Metroid on the Famicom Disk System; they are now Retro Studios, a second-party developer created by Nintendo by shipping all assets related to Division One (prior and current projects at the time) into a second-party subsidiary. Nintendo has several of these.
* Developed the incredible and gigantic Home online service
It's been out for a day and has proven itself to be a piece of shit.
* Branched out into smaller but high quality game development with PSN games
Competing with WiiWare and XBoX XNA, but I don't know if Microsoft plans to ever develop its own first-party stuff on XNA.
* Created at movie download service for sub-HD movie purchases and rentals
Never heard of it.
* Created the console with most enormous graphical power advantage over its competitors ever in console history
Big deal. Have you seen Megaman 9? That's probably the most awesome game I've seen in a while. Tales of Symphonia 2 also is good. Lots of stuff out there is good... most of it's just "look we have shiny graphics" crap. Eye candy doesn't make a good game, it makes a good movie.
Yeah, they are just 'coasting' on their reputation...
They pretty much are. Most of the industry is coasting on good graphics and flashy technical specs, rather than anything substantial like fun or good games.
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* Co-developed the most powerful consumer electronic chip on the planet along with IBM and Toshiba
Not like it will actually be *used*. Its not based on the x86 architecture which eliminates it from being used on both Windows PCs and Macs. And honestly, the speed of the media the console is reading from is a much larger bottleneck than its CPU.
* Help push through the next gen media format BluRay and included it in the PS3
* Massively upgraded their first party developer studio array to over 20 compared to only 10 for Nintendo and, lol, 3 for Microsoft
Now there you are mistaken (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't like Home at all, but you seem to be the typical Sony Hater who is using the opportunity to spread a lot of your most favored misinformation.
Not like it will actually be *used*. Its not based on the x86 architecture which eliminates it from being used on both Windows PCs and Macs. And honestly, the speed of the media the console is reading from is a much larger bottleneck than its CPU.
Except by tens, and eventually hundreds of millions of PS3s... that is not a negligable number, and it is even doing
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Flow is not very different from the free flash version, so why did it cost so much on PSN?
PixelJunk Monsters/Eden while charming, did not seem any better than [random flash game] that you can play on the web for free... On the PS3's browser even. Expecially monsters, that game is so dull one of the better strategies is to just stand in one place for most of the level.
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Unlike you I'm smarter than to cherry-pick one month and say anything one way or the other. Look at the long term trends.
Generally speaking, the 360 has outsold the PS3 month by month. The long term trends are going to be irrelevant if you look at it from a generation point of view, which almost everyone does. Now if you want to combine PS2 and PS3 sales, then yes, Sony is beating Microsoft, but look at that, they need the power of two consoles, one a whole generation behind, to try and stay relevant. The PS2 just isn't relevant. You rarely hear anything about PS2 games still being made (some studios still do it...). This is
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Generally speaking, the 360 has outsold the PS3 month by month.
In the year to September, the 360 took 18% of console sales and the PS3 24%. The 360 did indeed overtake the PS3 by a small margin again last month, though people holding out for the release of the 80 GB PS3 and the boost Gears of War 2 gave to 360 sales figures undoubtedly skewed things. For the calendar year, the PS3 is well on target to have outsold the 360 overall.
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Looking at Wikipedia here, as of Septmeber 2008, world wide sales figures between the two:
PS3 - 16.84 million
XBox 360 - 22 million
If you look at the Wii's numbers, it's almost sold as much as both of the PS3 and the 360 put together. (34.55 million) And the Wii has been available as long as the PS3.
I realize that the 360 has been out longer than the PS3 by about a year and a half, but the PS3 sales are dropping at this point. In a month where it should have sold big in the U.S., it couldn't even double the
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Hundred million PS3s? Have you checked the sales numbers? The thing's going over like the Gamecube or something. November 2008 sales were 378k, at that rate it'd take them about 18 years to hit 100M.
Or the monster that is Metal Gear Solid
First party means developers owned by the console manufacturer, not just an exclusive release. MGS is made by Konami, not Sony.
What you should probably face yourself is that they are catching up rapidly.
NPD:
Wii 2.04m
DS 1.57m
XBox 360 836k
PSP 421k
PS3 378k
PS2 206k
That do
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* Co-developed the most powerful consumer electronic chip on the planet along with IBM and Toshiba
Not like it will actually be *used*. Its not based on the x86 architecture which eliminates it from being used on both Windows PCs and Macs. And honestly, the speed of the media the console is reading from is a much larger bottleneck than its CPU.
Right, it's not x86, it's Power PC. That leaves Windows out of the running (who cares?) but Linux/Unix can run it no problem, IBM sells Bladeservers that run it, there are several companies trying to get into the daughter card processor market with the Cell processor. In theory OSX Leopard/Tiger could be modified to run on the Cell processor, both OS's are x86/PowerPC agnostic.
* Help push through the next gen media format BluRay and included it in the PS3
yah.... I have trouble arguing with this... Mainly because the arguments you are trying to use a
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http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21514 [gamasutra.com]
Sony is losing the game, they need to get back on track and stop fooling around with "no price cuts!" and Home.
And your comment about 1080i graphics is hilarious. The Xbox1 was able to do 1080i. The 360 runs rings around 1080p, unlike the PS3 with its limited graphics memory and non-unified limited shader units.
The PS3
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Right, it's not x86, it's Power PC. That leaves Windows out of the running (who cares?) but Linux/Unix can run it no problem, IBM sells Bladeservers that run it, there are several companies trying to get into the daughter card processor market with the Cell processor. In theory OSX Leopard/Tiger could be modified to run on the Cell processor, both OS's are x86/PowerPC agnostic.
Yes, but the problem is A) Most people won't use Linux/Unix and B) OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is rumored to be x86 only. Yes, servers will have the CPU, but for the average consumer, it won't benefit them save for the PS3.
* Metal Gear Solid 4 (ign score 10) * Resistance (9.1) * Resistance 2 (9.5) * Motorstorm (8.9) * Motorstorm: Pacific Rift (8.3) * Ratchet & Clank, Tools of Destruction (9.4) * Little Big Planet (9.5) * Grand Turismo 5 Prologue (8.5) * Siren: Blood Curse (8.4) * Valkyria Chronicles (9.0) That looks like a bit more then just 'nothing'... in fact, those look like some highly rated games... what does Microsoft have again? Halo 3 rated a good 9.5, and how many of the above are rated at or above a 9.5? And that's all you could name for the XBox?
I was talking about first-party titles. MGS4 is Konami, Resistance and Ratchet and Clank are made by Insomniac Games which after looking through the Wikipedia article I found no reason to believe they were owned by Sony.
The 360 and PS3 have a fair share of exclusive games, ho
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I keep wanting to see Apple make use of it in OS X Servers, since OS X is x86/PowerPC agnostic. However OS X Snow Leopard is going to be x86 only... bummer... "Grand Central" sounds like something perfectly made for the Cell processor.
Re:Oh God... (Score:4, Funny)
* Grown the most awesome marijuana in the world and given it all to you.
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Wii - 2.04 million
DS - 1.57 million
Xbox 360 - 836, 000
PSP - 421,000
PS3 - 378,000
PS2 - 206, 000
Gimmick or not, the Wii is still selling overwhelmingly well. Cant argue that. And the attach rate for the Wii is slightly higher than the PS3's (5.5 to 5.3) Personally I have played my Wii a total of 31 hours in 1.5 years, but it still sells well, so its not nearly a failure
The PS3 isn't bad, but like the parent said, Sony expected to ride the PS2 w
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Let's see Sony since the PS2 has:
* Co-developed the most powerful consumer electronic chip on the planet along with IBM and Toshiba
Yes. In fact, if you believed Sony's PR before the launch, the chip they developed is so powerful that it can send signals FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT.
No, seriously. They claimed that you could use others' PS3's extra power when they weren't using it to render frames in games. A quick back of the envelope calculation for that showed that yep, you could do that, if you could t
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As opposed to shiny new graphics, which is never a passing fancy, and always adds immeasurably to gameplay.
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>>Yet can't push out graphics that look any better than the 360.
I've played the same games on my TV with both a 360 and a PS3, and the PS3 is hands-down superior, though that's probably because the 360 I have access to (my buddy brings it over sometimes on weekends) isn't the Elite version, and thus doesn't have HDMI.
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The $200 arcade version you can go buy right now has HDMI. It's the first gen 360s that didn't have it.
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Aside from ports, the first-party "check this out!" games are what I compare between the two. Drake's Fortune, Ratchet & Clank? Looks awesome with true 720p output and true 1080i output too.
What about the 360? Well Halo 3 looks nice, at 640p upscaled. What's that say?
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It tells you that gamers have a significant investment in their gaming system beyond the hardware. They own a number of games and peripherals and have a number of friends online. It says nothing specific about the quality of the 360 experience, but says a lot about the barriers to switching systems in general.
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It's a step forward in the genre (Score:4, Interesting)
No furries.
That's about all good that can be said about it. This genre is inherently unworkable: it's a solution looking for a problem, it's a "virtual world" for the sake of being "virtual" and futuristic. Home addresses no need of the average consumer, it has very little entertainment value, and any applications to organizational tasks are better suited to simpler systems like IM.
When will these companies realize that you generally tend to invent things to make things easier, not abstract them in a confusing mess of real-life analogies and bloated 3D interfaces? Reminds me of the AOL-esque portals of the 90s.
Re:It's a step forward in the genre (Score:4, Funny)
No furries.
That's about all good that can be said about it. This genre is inherently unworkable: it's a solution looking for a problem, it's a "virtual world" for the sake of being "virtual" and futuristic. Home addresses no need of the average consumer, it has very little entertainment value, and any applications to organizational tasks are better suited to simpler systems like IM.
When will these companies realize that you generally tend to invent things to make things easier, not abstract them in a confusing mess of real-life analogies and bloated 3D interfaces? Reminds me of the AOL-esque portals of the 90s.
It would have been better to create the world with a few computer controlled furries and reward people for killing them. It would create a sense of community for one. The leaders of the lynch mobs could become important political leaders of the virtual world, massive photos of them would hang from buildings, lesser minions would get stuffed furry heads to decorate their apartments. Later on you could have plagues of Miis too, which would need to be eradicated to encourage patriotism toward the platform and hatred of its competitors.
Re:It's a step forward in the genre (Score:4, Funny)
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Microtransaction hell (Score:3, Interesting)
" Hi, new to the forum and just want to get my 2 cents in. I tried home and like the potential of what it can be, there isn't much to do at the moment, but I definitely can see where it could go given time. With that said, I can see a lot of negatives that can kill home, especially this early in its infancy. The first and biggest problem I see is that the prices are too high for many. I know some people disagree, but for many of us, it is out of the question for different reasons. Some just cannot imagine spending real money on virtual accessories, especially with no guarantee that home will be around in a few years. A LOT of people are in a financial bind with the way the economy is at the moment and are saving their money for more important things like food/bills/gass..etc, there is no way they are going to waste money on something like this. I personally fall in between those two. Finally, there is just too many people trying this, Sony with home, Microsoft with avatars, games with DLC, itunes, netflix, etc,etc People are having to prioritize where their microtransactions are going. Both Sony and Microsoft will get money at first, but it will eventually taper off with time.
Another negative affect is that you will be creating two classes of people, the have and the have nots. Your going to see rich brats running around with all the best clothes/items/living spaces while everyone else is living in the equivalent of cardboard houses and donating clothes. Not exactly a place the have nots will want to visit.
Now, with that said, I can see a possible solution to this problem. If I was Sony, I would get advertisers to pay to put their real world item brands in home (coke, Pepsi, nike, levis, Olivia,Toyota..etc) and give the virtual clothes/itmes away for free. In exchange, sony can give the companies stats about their products, keep track of what people are wearing, what items are popular. They can even put in items not yet released to see what people say about it and if its popular or a dud.
The other thing is that I would keep the option to pay in real world money for those who have it (and willing to use it), but I would have an alternative in-game money that people can get through activities in home, much like an MMO. These can be things like filling out surveys about products, to having competitions sponsored by advertisers, to scavenger hunts, to sitting and getting paid to watch ads, to get paid to go to sponsors home channels and getting paid to play their games (pop the Pepsi balloons, hit the whack a coke, beat the wrestling Toyota bear..etc). I hope you see where I am going with this. This would seem to be the best WIN-WIN scenario for everyone.
Like I said, I can see the potential of what it can be, it just needs a little work(and a lot more content) to get it started. "
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I also want to add that they need to start showing some actual movies in the theater to try and bring in some people and give people TV sets so that they can watch their own videos/music with friends in their home space. There needs to be SOMETHING to bring people in, so far there is nothing really FUN to do. One other quick thing, why is everything crammed together and scarce? The developers have near god like building powers and they create this small, sparse, sterile, cramped areas and buildings. I hope this was just a stress tess minimum stuff and the real goodies will start coming out. I do believe home could be great, however the are kidding themselves if they believe people are going to pay for all the cool features through microtransactions.
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A LOT of people are in a financial bind with the way the economy is at the moment and are saving their money for more important things like food/bills/gass..etc, there is no way they are going to waste money on something like this.
Wait ... double-take ... what kind of person who is in a "financial bind", to the extent that he is worried about saving for food, is sitting around playing games on a PS3 over a broadband connection!? No wonder the economy is the way it is and these people are in financial trouble ... get off your bums and do something constructive. I hope you're not one of those in a "financial bind" - the fact that you're then sitting around posting to slashdot about it just makes it even worse.
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I honestly don't understand your logic.
Then you're part of the problem too; the OP specifically was referring to people who were basically worried about simply having the money to pay basics like foods/gas etc. ... don't you see the connection? Remarkable.
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Anonymous Coward (Score:2, Insightful)
You guys are really boring. ok, it's something new different, not quite the coolest thing you've ever seen, but since it's SONY I guess you're going to rip it apart no matter what it actually is.
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Trolls + Fanbois make moderating pointless (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm modding and this whole discussion on PS3/Home is totally pointless as there doesn't seem to be anyone who has got any objectivity about this.
Is Home worthwhile?
Is there a good chance it will improve over time?
Will it sell more PS3s?
What's lacking?
What's good about it?
Is there a point in Avatar style virtual worlds?
So I'm leaving this idiotic troll fest and modding elsewhere.
Scrap it for a real game (Score:2, Interesting)
"Flawed business model"? (Score:4, Insightful)
That a pretty bold statement given that the business model hasn't actually been tested yet.
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It makes sense in the context of MMORPGs, but stripped of gaming there's really ver
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The point of games is to "entertain" - i.e. waste time. If you want to "meet up" with other (paid content) game players before launching, Home is at least more interesting/diverting than the battle.net text login screen.
By its placement, Home will always be lame, noone would want it to compete with purchased titles. If it can compliment them and provide a "universal pre-play lobby" that all the PS=3 games can use for players to "hook up", then I think it will be "successful."
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Why, exactly? Who would you rather hear it from, a plumber? Remember, business people are geeks, that's why they're in business. What better place for a business geek than in business?
And aside from that, anyone can see their business model is shit. Or flawed, if you like.
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Besides "flawed business model" is like "synergy"... makes you want to hit someone with a bat every time you hear it.
SCEA has been reportedly saying that SCJ (or whatever it's called over there) is basically clueless when it comes to the
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"This is like having the ability to shape being from non-being at the subatomic level, and the first thing you decide to make is AIDS."
Oh snap.
My only question is why he went off on this tangent about Vista.
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. You're beautiful, don't forget to tip your waitress.
Why? Bugs and price. (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition, I never have to worry about upgrading my system to ensure that I can play the latest gam
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There seem to be some key differences with myspace, in particular myspace doesn't charge you money if you want to change the color of your page, or keep you from playing the stupid flash game just because someone else is already playing it.
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I kind of like Playstation Home. It's not a gee-wizz-bang feature, and I don't use it much. But when I do, I enjoy the experience. It's a pretty neat idea, and I'll be using it to look for people who can help me if I get stuck in a game. Oh, and look at game presentations, if they start using it for that.
It's interesting though to see that the people who "don't like it", actually hate it so much, and that they can spend a lot of time and energy complaining about it (most rants make their point at the first paragraph, and the following 10 paragraphs are just to reinforce how important the first paragraph is to them). One can not help wonder why it's such a big deal.
I totally agree with you. It's still in beta so there are bound to be a myriad of things going wrong with it. They weren't even on time for the opening of it, what do you expect? If you look at sony's "Home" forums before they announced this open beta launch, people were clamoring for closed beta invites. Everyone wanted to be a part of it and see it. Now that it's open everyone and their mother seem to be coming out saying, "it stinks."
It was really funny to watch the "Home" forum and all of the spam