How to Make PlayStation Home More Inviting to Outsiders

PlayStation Home is a fun social experience on the PS3. The thing is, those that haven’t put much - if any - time into it won’t be trying it out anytime soon. The service sits in their XMB, as fun waiting to be had. This is why Home needs to interact better with the PS3, instead of just being that icon in the PlayStation Network tab. Following are some ways to embed Home with the PS3. PlayStation Plus deserves some exclusivity here, as the cost of membership should go toward such benefits.

[core_5]

PlayStation Home would be perfect as a cloud gaming platform

[Persistantthug]

:P

[Emilio_Estevez]

Lowering the loading times would certainly help, they are just too long right now.

[stage88]

Have you been on Home lately? The loading times are vastly different to when it first launched. Moving to a new area only takes a few seconds.

[Emilio_Estevez]

Yes, used it earlier today. The first load is still slow. The items loading in the store are incredibly slow. The different area often get hung up when downloading....They are usually only 50-75mb and it takes way too long to dl something that small. Don't get me wrong, I use it all the time, but when you want to explore and see new places and items you will definitely be waiting. Also, I would have preferred if they still had central plaza and just added the new areas on to it.

The load times have decreased, but it still needs work. My wardrobe takes forever, prolly b/c I have hundreds of items, but most are in storage so it should be faster.

Right now there is an issue with the personal spaces kicking you out of home when trying to go to them for some people also, me included.

[metsgaming]

I think they are really dropping the ball if they dont plan to have it on the vita. They should make more mini games, keep doing the E3 stuff, do something for gamescom and the other events, maybe they should video record the blogcast and put it in one of the theaters, stream playoff games in a theater etc.

[Dante112]

I'm with mets on the PS Home for Vita. I think they should bring back the open mics as well (Some of the funniest conversations/rap battles went on when it was enabled in the first beta).

[LOGICWINS]

"They should make more mini games"

Clearly thats not enough. What good are mini games when the general Playstation populace still doesn't care? The only good thing about it is that it provides Sony with yet another constant microtransaction revenue stream(aside from PS Plus) from the minority that actually does care about Home. It is assumed that this income from Home is used to fund exclusive titles..or at least in some way, shape or form help Sony give gamers a better Playstation experience.

[TekoIie]

Whats the point in home? Havent even downloaded it since it just seems like a waste on my hard drive.

[LOGICWINS]

How about the most obvious tactic? Make every trophy you earn on PSN redeemable as credits to use in Home to buy virtual items. It's idiot proof. It would get people who ordinarily don't spend time in Home to get into Home frequently.

[Godmars290]

I'd rather they just make trophies items in Home.

@stage88:
For one thing they were actually doing it at some point. I don't have White Knight Chronicles, but the eight foot statue of the WK is in my sci-fi apartment which I got apparently for just putting in the disc.

You offer some stuff for free through playing games, other stuff you buy. Would say how hard is that, but then BIoware never offered ME stuff. And you know people would drop money for Garrus avatar clothing while hunting for ship models from the game to decorate their personal spaces.

[metsgaming]

yep, and/or have something opposite. Do something in home and get something special in a game, like a special skin, additional xp, gold gun, discount on dlc (doubt that one would happen lol) etc. If they could do this with COD even if they get a small percentage of people to go in thats alot of people.

[stage88]

That is a pretty ridiculous idea.

Sony get a large amount of revenue from people paying for virtual items. Why in the world would Sony start trading them for virtual trophies??

[TekoIie]

People pay for stuff in Home??? Well to be fair its no different from XBL avatars but they're on sight for everyone to see on the dashboard.

[Patriots_Pride]

Just make it simple to get to home with out all the BS downloading and loading.

[LOGICWINS]

Thats not the point. Who cares if its simple to get into when people aren't interested to get into Home regardless? I can easily and "simply" order a pizza from Dominoes...but what good is this simplicity when I don't even like Dominoes pizza in the first place?

[NBT91]

Lies. Everyone likes Dominoes pizza 2 for tuesday FTW

Honestly though I do understand what you are saying. But if it was so much quicker or easier to get into home then people would at least be more willing to try it. At the moment there is not even enough there to justify the unreasonable waiting time...

But forget it, everyone has been saying the same thing ever since it was released and nothing has been done. If anything I would argue its actually got worse over time...

[cstyle]

Home has always sucked and just need to be scratched.

[LOGICWINS]

Too late for it to be scratched, Sony's already invested to much into it. Clearly its currently making enough money for Sony to see a rationale for keeping it. But if your a core gamer(like many on this site claim to be), you'd be blind not to see the better uses the millions of dollars Sony put into Home could have done for the core:

1. More exclusive titles

2. More Move exclusives

3. Better PSN features such as quicker download times and a party system

4. Give ALL PSN users access to Game trials and free monthly PS One games(only charging them if they use cloud servers)

@stage88-Sony would clearly balance it out. They will have ONE store in Home where these credits would be applicable...every virtual item outside this store would need to be bought with real currency.

[Nes_Daze]

Maybe if they start making it more gaming oriented instead of more of a Second Life. Look at X7, wth is the point of that? Looks like a virtual pathetic club for those that want attention. Home is not for gamers, its for teens and girls that want attention.

[smashcrashbash]

Just the usual banter from people who never even tried Home.There are literally hundreds of things to do and I still hear the cry of 'there is nothing to do in Home. It has 19 million people who use it and it is always full and any new space that comes out immediately booked solid with people playing it. People spend a whole lot of PSN cash buying things for their avatar as you can tell by looking at them the amount of costumes and accessories they have. I can't believe people are still repeating the same $hit they have been saying since Home came out. The usual gamer selfishness. Because I don't use it, throw it away. Never mind anyone who does use it as long as I am happy. Worst gen ever.

[MYRMIK]

Seems the most negative comments come from those that haven't actively used the service. Even in the past six month, Home has improved in many ways. That's not to say it was bad before, but it's become a lot more gaming-oriented. Which, is something people would appreciate if they dove in and tried it out for a while. There's some fun games in Home as of late, not to mention some crazy-looking people.

[NBT91]

Bitches dunno bout my animated t shirts

[Godmars290]

Said this before: but with the Scribbke shooter which apparently advances how arcade games are done in Home, they need to get Namco back in to revamp their arcade. Sell games which come with their own cabinets, then tokens so when friends of the game's owner, who can play anytime they want, to play it as well.

[jizzyjones]

Move for the mini games (Pool/bowling ect ect)........and trophies! this will get people doing things they havent tried before, then trophies to unlock items + extra trophies for using move. Also unlocking items through exclusive PS3 titles (like what Red Dead did). Simple.

[MEsoJD]

Home integration with the xmb would be a good idea. Having the option to use your home avatar as your overall psn av would be awesome.

[dcortz2027]

To all the complainers, it's a FREE service, if you don't like it then don't use it!

[Drainage]

For Ps4- Remove all loading, if its even possible. There is nothing worse than downloading every room you enter. The character movement is too slow for running, sometimes unresponsive while turning. Open mics or gtfo. Exclusive little things so it doesnt become useless

[MYRMIK]

The bigger the cache you allocate in Home, the less often you'll have to download rooms. There's obviously a lot for the system to recognize, so the loading is inevitable. But as far as the downloading is concerned, try increasing your the max allowed storage in settings.

[Vitalogy]

Dispite the first loading screen, there's games that take the same amount of time or more to launch, they need to make it a real open world. I mean, they need to eliminate the loading between lots of zones like between the mall (east and west)so you get the idea. Take cinema for another example, you have to load the space and once inside you still need to load into different rooms which doesn't make sence, just make them with door open and people simply entar it WITHOUT any loading.

Unfortunately they want us to use teleports for everything and nothing -_- they didn't realize that Home isn't startrek.

[smashcrashbash]

It's a giant world made up different parts. Not even Bethesda's games allowed you to enter different places without going through some sort of loading. If you went into a portal or a dungeon or a different part of the country you had to load into it. Many things like this have to load once you go from one place to another. Free Realms has to load up before you enter a different part of the city. What you are talking about will take much more power then Home has. If modern games can barely do it what makes you think Home can? To make two different parts just meld into each other so easily your talking about making it like a game rather then just a social world.Even modern games have loading screens between levels.

[Vitalogy]

"your talking about making it like a game" this is funny because last time I check Playstation Home IS a game, social game but still a game.

When I said "open world" I was referring to games like RDR or even batman games where you free roam the entire map, entering and exiting buildings without loadings.

I'd rather have a 7/8Gb client not having to download everything inside and loadings free than a 100- Mb client that makes you download everything with way too much loadings. See my point?

[BitbyDeath]

I probably won't be more into it until nextgen when load times are faster.

That is my main issue with it.