PlayStation Home: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Sony finally made PlayStation Home available to the general gaming public late in 2008 to a fanfare of hype, but it's safe to say that it hasn't made quite the splash people expected it to. While it's still classified as a beta and so can't yet be judged as a final product (and it will evolve regularly over its lifespan), VideoGamer is still free to point out what they liked and don't like. So, following a plentiful vacation in Sony's free virtual world, they bring you their view on the service: The good, the bad and the ugly.

[killcycle]

true but i like it sometimes. depends on my mood.

[xT-Virusx]

i like it this as well and i also believe time will expand the experience more and more. For it being free and optional i think its right where i would expect something as grand to be. A year from now all the haters will have nothing to say in its wake.

[BigPappaPump]

Home is whatever you make it out to be. Each time I visit there's always people, wether they're the cool ones or the typical jerks with personal issues; I only use it to expand my psn friend list for potential future link ups for multi player games.

[TheColbertinator]

HOME is actually good.I just wish Sony puts more songs in the dance corner.

[xxBATTLECATxx]

i havent tried game launching yet, can we do that yet?
and i havent been to the uncharted zone either. next big game conference they should just have a live feed on the big screen in the central plaza. that would be dope, i hardly use home cuz ive mastered bowling but recently, chess has become very addicting. plus no one wears the echochrome suit anymore so i feel cool doin the robot alone.

[thor]

The Uncharted space sucks. It offers nothing much more than another "place to go". Great.

Game launching works!

With Warhawk. Perhaps Motorstorm 1.

That's it.

Because the requirements for games on PS3 have not included such features since the beginning, yet the 360 has, the 360's NXE was able to add more funcitonality without hassle. PS3 games need to be patched specifically for Home. And guess what? If they wanted to implement a similar party system for the PS3 in the future, games would have to get patched for that seperately as well. Game launching will never be a reason to go to Home. What are the chances people actually have a game that supports it in your random Home server? It's also very restricive - you can't all join a party to join an official server together - it HAS to be YOUR server. If you have a weak connection, that's not good. I can only host a game for 4 players on Warhawk.

[thor]

Home consists of:

Random people dancing (I can't see this amusement lasting more than 30 seconds except with morons) - what would happen if they removed the lame, simplistic, unsophisticated "button press to make your avatar perform a useless animation".

People playing hopeless minigames. Really, they can be quite fun, for a short while, but there are hundreds of better minigames out there.

People struggling to have a conversation or not even bothering at all and just walking around aimlessly.

Just think - all the development effort on Home could have been spent on potentially great games such as The Getaway, 8 Days and another title from Studio Cambridge. Both Studio London and Studio Cambridge have spent YEARS on this project, the two titles I mentioned were cancelled by Studio London to focus on Home, another title could have been possible with the other people working on Home before that, and Studio Cambridge could have developed another game instead of working on Home.

[thor]

How can you help not being able to talk to people when they:

Don't speak your language (yep! Europeans get lumped together in one big "happy" Home server and not all of them speak English. Of course, English is not a big problem because a lot of people do speak it, but what if you're French? German? Huge problems right there)

Don't have a keyboard (What % of people do you reckon have a keyboard hooked up to their PS3? Very few. I doubt many people would buy a sepeate keyboard just for Home, and though a few will have one lying around and connect it up, most won't bother and will stick to rudementary controller chat.)

[Graphics Whore]

It's a social network where you can interact with people. Don't take it seriously, it's an optional application to meet and interact with gaming socialites. Nothing more.

@Thor

It's still getting the backing of Mega companies, I'm not sure what your ideal imagination of Home is suppose to be, but it is what it is, and it will continue to get better at being a social experience whether you participate in it or not.

It's not a failure by any means, Home is always populated. Once advertisements and corporate line-backers are in full swing, I predict a year from now, Home will be an experience in itself.

The projects will sooner than later be reimbursed, so I am not very worried about game development. The games are already here and they will continue coming. SCEE can now distribute important intricacies of the 'Killzone 2' foundation. I'm sure Sony learned a lot about their own technologies while on Kizzy 2. If those games aren't brought back to development I'm sure original and new IP's will replace them.

[thor]

Yes and it FAILS as a social network due to the reasons I described. Even if it was never meant to have features like minigames and game launching and such, it would still suck. And if the minigames are going to be there, why are they so crummy? You can say "it's not about the pool/bowling/chess etc.", yet that's what people are doing the whole time!

[UnwanteDreamz]

Thor that is your opinion and nothing more. My friends list has tripled since Home was released and I can go there anytime and see people engaged in conversations about gaming.

I wont defend it as a game or a killer app but if spaces like EA's become the norm then I think we will have more than what it is now a decent social space for gamers.

If it helps even add one friend to your list then it does not fail.

Unless you wish to redefine the word.

"You can say "it's not about the pool/bowling/chess etc.", yet that's what people are doing the whole time!"

While they chat? Come on man.

[thor]

@Graphics Whore

Home will get better - but I can't see it being a rapid process. Companies are slooooowly getting into gear to bring more content into Home. But that wasn't my point. My point is how it fails in its most basic features. It's a chatroom where it's difficult to chat. It's a load of chatrooms but you can't choose which chatroom you join.

"Home is always populated" - you don't and can't know how many people are using Home at any given time. It could be hundreds of thousands, it could be hundreds; you would never know. Sony has intentionally kept everyone in the dark by creating an irritating opaque server system. These kind of things die out over time; all my friends stopped using Myspace ages ago, and that was a tremendously popular social networking site.

The lighting technology for Killzone 2 was middleware. That's how it managed to look so good, mostly. That tech WILL be reused, and Sony spending resources on Home or not won't affect that. It is almost certain that those games would not have been cancelled had Home not been developed. I see you live on in vein hope that they will someday be resurrected; but even then, we could have had newer games once those were developed. If Home will "evolve over time", and is still in open beta, it requires constant developer support.

@UnwanteDreamz

The people you add onto your friends list in Home, at least in my experience, rarely go to Home. Sounds strange, but the only time I've ever met a friend in Home that I didn't meet there and then was when I deliberately quit my game and loaded up Home to meet him. Then, these same people go off and play Need for Speed or CoD:WaW or some other game that I DO NOT OWN and I only occasionaly see them in-game at all. Whereas people that I added to my friends list because I played them in a game, own that game, and often play it regularly, and I can meet them in that game.

And the minigames should be better. If Home NEEDS something to pass the time, it ought to be decent. If it doesn't need something to pass the time, why is it there? It's very difficult to chat whilst you bowl because you type a message and it takes so long on the controller that it's your turn before you've finished, and then you're holding up the game.

For further reference of my Home hate, see this opinion piece I wrote:
http://forums.n4g.com/Why_H...

[ApocalypseShadow]

seriously bloodmask,how much do you make on this site?i could understand good news or bad news.but 99% of yours is always negative towards ps3.

HOME will grow beyond what people expect.haters just EXPECT things always NOW-NOW-NOW!without waiting to see planted seeds grow.

has anyone seen capcom's space?what if it's filled with arcades of capcom games?new ips that mimic powerstone but in HOME.

has anyone seen namco's space?their japanese machines are in the japanese HOME.but wait for when they create some tekken like space.or even a fighter space filled with games.

anyone seen ubisoft's space?activision's space?sega's space?

see,more content is coming,more videos,more pictures,more features to make things better for ps3 gamers.but the haters can't WAIT.but ps3 gamers are able to wait for

a reliable system
format beating bluray
awsome games like killzone2,gt5,gow3,heavy rain,etc.

waiting is actually.......*****GOOD***** haters.

apocalypse..................

[Sitdown]

to download it...........maybe one day.