PlayStation 'Home' open beta launches
(Credit: SCEA)If all goes according to plan, PlayStation Home will be opening its doors to the public later Thursday. The PlayStation 3-exclusive allows gamers to interact with one another using avatars in a virtual environment via text or voice chat (think Second Life, but on the PS3). The free service is still in beta, but should be available to PS3 users worldwide by the end of the day.
Nintendo's Wii launched with support for player avatars that can be used in many of its games, and the Xbox 360 added avatar and enhanced community features with its November 2008 New Xbox Experience makeover. But PlayStation Home looks to be the most sophisticated virtual world to date available on a game console, with realistic graphical renderings of people and environments. The Home world features minigames, in-world music options, trophy rooms, and--of course--advertiser-supported destinations and stores.
What do you think: Is Home a game changer for the PS3? Or is it yet another environment to sell you "virtual junk" you don't need? Share your comments below.
(Via: Official PlayStation Blog)
Earlier coverage:
PS3 'Home' a second life away from home
Sony delays launch of PlayStation 'Home' service
John P. Falcone covers home theater and network entertainment products. He's been writing for CNET since 2002.
So if Sony can get to THAT point then it is absolutely a game changer.
I would specifically buy a PS3 if the Home-thingy would let me play card games with other online players, and shoot pool, or play a game of Monopoly, etc.
BUT if the entire online exeprience consists entirely of buying clothes from my avatar and randoming texting other people online --- then it would be boring and pointless.
If you want a virtual world stick to the pc where that weird reality is meant to be.
why i bought a ps3:
blu-ray player (cheapest at the time i bought it)
free online gaming (its great even thou xbox 360 fanboys say its not nearly as good xbox live, i love psn there are many people online to play with, and communication is great)
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even though the xbox 360 has more exclusives than the ps3, the ps3 does have its own great exclusives
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Sony has made some good, and like everyone else some that we prefer to not remember. So before you start screaming your fanboy-ism out you might like to look at the facts before you make yourself look dumb.
I have no problem with the PS3 i think its an amazing system, but i do have problems with fanboys who think they know it all and that their machine outways the other. No! they all have their benefits and downfalls.
I've been in the closed beta for about five month, got the invite through a friend that did not want it (from the magazine) and its a great experience so far. There are plenty of mini games for most people to be please and word is that in the open beta there would be even more. Of course you tend to run into immature people (for the lack of a better word) that do **** you off, but then, where don't you?
I have not seen a place that's a 100 percent safe (not even my house) so home would not be immune to jerks either. Although there are ways to block them and once you are in your apartment only people whom you invite can get it, you should be safer. But the real meaning of home of course is for us to find people and play minigames before we launch an actual game, create parties and stuff and for sony is to profit from micro-transactions that showoff are going to make to "upgrade" their avatars and think they are pimping since they cant do it in the real world. Like i said, this should be fun, and is , for the most part, free. I have met people there, not that i intend to actually meet them in person, but we go out to the clubs and play some minigames while i wait for my real friends to get out of class and we start playing call of duty, thats the way i see it, also we get to go and see the previews of movies to come and soon, actual videos uploaded to the psn to view for free. The thing is in beta and I have spotted little glitches sometimes that for the most part have been fix periodically and that should explain why this thing took so long. Im not unable to sign in to my psn account which I think means that sony finally put the Japanese to work and are going to roll out the open beta. Im exited to see whats new and how manny more people are going to be online. Anywyas if you guys have a ps3 look at it this way.
Is Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, just try it and if you dont like it, dont use it.........
Anyway, I have a Wii and a 360, but am not beyond buying a PS3 if the interface looks good and there are enough games for me to justify it. It'll be interesting to see how Home plays out.
However, I think XBox Live's biggest drawback is the cost -- while $50/year is not expensive (that's really quite cheap all things considered), PS3 offers similar for free. The question will be how the network holds up. I give props to Sony for using non-proprietary interfaces (most notably Bluetooth), and for taking a huge risk in new technologies. If I had the money, I would buy a PS3 to replace my dying Xbox 360 (red rings of death).
The one thing keeping me on the XBox is the community of friends I have on XBox Live. It is still fun to log on and play with people I've been playing with for a couple years now.
I think Sony has taken a huge gable with Home and I don't think it's going to pay off. A lot of people will jump in and try it for the next month or two and then the active user-base will quickly diminish to a small fraction of overall PS3 owners. We've seen the same thing happen with Second Life. Only a fraction of registered people tend to use these sort of virtual word programs and do anything with them. There's a reason why Google shut down Lively and why so many MMO's fail. I have a feeling Home is going to get added to that failure list by 2010. I just don't see anything great coming from it except pretty screenshots.
Sony desperately needs to put the focus of the PS3 back on quality games rather than Home or Blu-ray.
1. Controllers disconnecting. It happens every now and then to both my sixaxis and dual shock and is a real pain.
2. XMB just blows in my opinion. Tiny little text (yes, you can adjust the font but it doesn't look good) is hard to read. The UI needs an upgrade rather than Home.
3. More and better games.
Home does look fun and inventive, but do I want to spend $400 on a copy of Second Life? I can get a blu-ray now for half that price, so I don't need to buy it for that. So not games, stand alone blu-ray is cheap, so why do I want a PS3?
Honestly, I work at a game store... and I see things first hand. I am a college student that is a striving student by day, and an avid gamer by night. I've seen and heard it all. I was there camping outside of gamestop for my 360 on launch night, and I was one of the same people to be disappointed by 3 red rings that SAME night. I was the employee taking back 360's over, and over and over again. I can't tell you how many times I hit the counter at my store when I saw a half ripped open 360 box come through the door because it "broke for no reason". Get out of here with your superiority tactics. If you want a video game console retrospective, I'll give it to you. You won't like what the 360 has done to its community over the last few years AT ALL!
Name some games like GoW, and I'll name one like Resistance. Name a game like Halo that swept the nation, and I'll give you Little Big Planet. Give me a game like Call of Duty, and I'll show you my ps3 copy. Then I'll also walk into my closet, and pull out my now dead HD DVD player. You remember that? That piece of junk that offered cheaper HD movies, and a pretty red sleeve? Now granted I was smart, and it wasn't actually me that went HD-DVD. I went with blu-ray, and my good friend went with HD-DVD. It was quite the day when BR finally won.
Online networks are rather the same, if you exclude the total rip off of what we used to call "Mii's". Sure ps3 looks like second life and all, but it also brings more to the table. Xbox 360 gave you a few clothes, and the ability to make xbox live parties. Don't you realize that's all you have? Sorry, but I tried the netflix thing on xbox live, and I hate paying $50 to watch my netflix account on my 360, when I can just watch it on my pc plugged into my tv via HDMI lol. Seriously xbots, get over yourselves.
You may wonder why I'm so offensive about 360. Well, it's because I have to turn zombies into thinkers every day at work when they tell me ps3 is expensive. The same people that walk out of the door with a 360, play and charge kit, xbox live for a year, network adapter and a wireless headset haha! You just spent 500, sorry buddy...
As for home, it'll grow and grow overtime into something decent. It's not the end all gaming network, but it'll get some play time. Just stop talking about the 360's game library, and it's reliability as if it has any. Majority games are cross platform, and 360 is also losing their exclusives. It's how the industry works. Money, Money, Money makes the world go 'round.
Now I am not saying that Xbox is the best in the future but for right now it is for what it offers. Yes the Live Subscription is dumb, red rings of death are horrid, and Microsoft lost in the format war, but there plenty of neutral reading that you should follow up on. Like CNET's own Blu-Ray article by Don Reisinger with the next-gen consoles.
Plus Microsoft has only about 7 years of experience with consoles, Sony has about 12, but Microsoft started well on the online component before Sony or Nintendo. You need to give credit to where credit is due and Microsoft currently has the best online base than either Nintendo or Sony. I do give credit to Sony for the format war and pre-gen game hits, but what good is all that when we are going to be moving to the next-gen in a few years. Microsoft will probably go the way of digital distribution while Sony will keep to physical limitations.
Xbox Live is $50/year but how much will you Home-ies spend on addtional content??
The reason, I think, is that the Wii offers something that the 360 doesn't have...namely Nintendo properties and access to the old classics for alot of systems. I play alot of classic games. So the Wii has cut into my 360 time in a way that the PS3 never did. The PS3 didn't offer anything that different from the 360.
However, I do think that Home would be cool to check out and I would spend a fair amount of time there...initially...but I'd probably get bored with it and be back to my 50-50 Wii-360 split.
I give Sony full credit for trying to differentiate** itself from the 360; something it desperately needs to do if it's gonna gain ground. Unfortunately, I don't think Home will attract enough people to do that.
**(I don't put alot of value in the PS3's Bluray player anymore...discs are too expensive and other players are coming way down in price.)
check it out for yourself.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/pioneer-blu-ray-bluray-disc,6650.html
I own an XBOX and love playing it but just like one of the previous post I got it because all my friends already had one and I wanted to play online with them. If It wasn't for that I would never get an XBOX just for the fact that MS had the balls to drop such a defective product on the market. I got the (Red ring Of Death)ROD and so did every single one the my friends, it's not a matter of if but when. I love my XBOX but it's a piece of junk.
And what they said about the price is also true, in reality 360 is more expansive. Yes the PS3 is more expansive out the box but the XBOX is missing so many things and then they expect you to pay for their overpriced products to make up the difference. You know how pissed I was when I realized that after dropping about 500 on an Elite for the 1080p that it had no WI-FI and I would have to drop another 100 a add WI-FI. Tthat's a joke, I can get a WI-FI for my pc for 30.00. The WI-FI would put my purchase close to 600.00 and still on BluRay. And if you want a bigger HD you have to pay for their junk too, Amazon has a 120GB XBOX HD for 150.00 you can get a 1.5 TB HD for your PS3 for that same price. What a joke.
MS forced everyone to get an XBOX 360 by stopping all production for the original XBOX. The only way XBOX can compete with the PS3 in the next 5 years is by dropping a new XBOX. And if that happens say bye bye to and new 360 games.
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by keysy420
December 11, 2008 2:23 PM PST
- mmorgan i have to agree with you 100 percent i too own all three systems and i feel like the only reason i own a xbox is because my old friends do. every cross platform game that comes out i get for ps3 because it crisper smoother and looks better. ive had 13 xbox systems because they are a crap machine , rushed out by ms. and your right again the xbox had a four year run and the xbox may make 5 you can see it right now. they have a couple of titles that are worth playing but dropped the ball on sequels gears 2 is a totally step away from where they should have gone with that game every time i play i feel like been their done that. its still fun but not like itwas when gears 1 first came out. should i mention halo 3 who plays that but hard core fans or someone who is meeting up with buddies. The system seems to be dying and the playstation is comming alive. a new system has to be in the plans for microsoft becuase they are loosing out in every catagory. more exclusive ps3, blu ray vrs hd blu ray won. xbox avatar vrs home home . im really wondering what game is going to save the xbox gears 3 i'd rather play mag
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by HMetal68
December 11, 2008 3:15 PM PST
- More exclusive PS3? You mean games like Final Fantasy? Nope, no longer exclusive. You must mean Grand Theft Auto. Wait, that isn't exclusive anymore either. Oh yeah, how about Ace Combat. Now that is exclusive. The only problem is it is no longer exclusive to PlayStation, it's exclusive on Xbox. Almost every title being released now is no longer exclusive. Ok, so PS3 got Little Big Planet and Metal Gear. So what. Xbox has a lot more than just Gears of War and Halo. And as for the games looking better? Check any game site you want that does side by side comparisons and you'll see that in most cases there is almost no difference. In many cases, the Xbox graphics are better than PS3.
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by Aftermath_11
December 12, 2008 3:06 PM PST
- To HMetal68: Well Final Fantasy is no longer an exclusive for PS3, at least it wont be on 3 dvd disc (xbox). lol Xbox graphics better than PS3.... Thats a joke man. I have both Xbox 360 and PS3 which i have had my PS3 for the last 2 years and have never had a problem with it other than the odd freeze, but in the last 3 years I have had 4 Xboxs which keep in mind i had to wait 1 month to get an xbox 360 back which means a month without gaming, luckliy i had a ps3 to keep me entertained. lol and a Cheap network adapter id rather have everything built already in to my PS3. Dont get me wrong Xbox 360 has great games but personally in 2009 the PS3 will show people how powerfull the system actually is. ( Killzone 2, Infamous,Heavy Rain)all ps3 exclusives for 2009. Heavy Rain is said to be "By far and away,Heavy Rain has the best graphics we have ever seen in a video game. Even better than heavy-hitter Metal Gear Solid 4" Gamepro 2009 Game Guide Mag.
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by HMetal68
December 13, 2008 6:48 AM PST
- Here's a link to a comparison of graphics. This is actually the first article I've read like this that doesn't say the Xbox is better. This just points out that for the graphics, they are pretty much equal which I suppose you could say is a victory for Sony. In the previous year comparisons, Xbox was better so for them to now be equal, well that is an improvement. Who knows, maybe by next years comparison PS3 will be better but I'm not counting on it.
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (77 Comments)I'll give you that the Xbox hardware is not reliable. I've had plenty of issues with that (5 failures in 3 years) but for game content I just can't agree with you. And for everyone that says they "had to buy" a wireless adapter, you would think on a tech site you would know how to use a network cable. Cheap, reliable and faster.
I have all 3 systems and of the 3, the PS3 is used the least. With the exception of LBP, it's mainly a George Foreman Blu-Ray player.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6201700/index.html?tag=result;title;0
As for my other points, well I think CNN says it very well in this article.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/siliconalley/personal-tech/2008_12_sonys_ps3_a_sinking_ship_sales_plummet_sne.html
And one thing I would like to add is that I do expect there to be some good (exclusive) games for the PS3, but it's been 2 years now, where the hell are they? Killzone 2 was shown even before the launch of the PS3 but isn't available yet. I didn't have to wait 2 years for good exclusives on the 360. Yes the 360 has hardware issues, which suck, but they also have a ton more games. And I don't care if a game comes on one disk or 30 as long as I don't have to swap it out constantly. Seriously, Metal Gear Solid on the PS2 was 2 disks, did you care? 2 disks or not that was one of the best games ever made.
As for 2009, I think by the end of the year you'll see that Xbox is still leading in sales just like the numbers announced a couple of days ago. For every good exclusive on the PS3, there will be 2 for the Xbox. I actually hope I'm wrong because I would love to have my PS3 be something more than just a weekly 30 minute update, but I said before, do you want to play or watch an update screen.