GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

[Pai Pai Master]

The rumours leaked it early, but it's been confirmed today: PlayStation Home is the real deal.

Touted as the PS3's ultimate effort in mixing social networking, user-created content, and gaming into a single entity, PlayStation Home is basically a social-MMO built around the PS3 community. It looks a lot like a Sony-created Second Life, seems to have a fair bit of avatar customization (no facial recognition via PS3 HD-IP Camera?), and social game content.

It seems you can do all sorts of game-related stuff, from playing things like bowling or pool in the PS3 Home world, or meet up with your friends to move directly into various PS3 online games, such as the newly revealed Little Big Planet.

Gametrailers has new HD footage of Warhawk, Little Big Planet, and PlayStation Home.

PlayStation Home

Little Big Planet Gameplay

Warhawk "City Raid" Gameplay

[Clever Ninja]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

I stopped caring about consoles so this is really 'meh' news to me, but hopefully the MMO goes off well.

[Icemage]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

Can't wait to see how this will work out!


Icemage

[fastcart]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

Lol. Little Big Planet is really cute.

Home looks like a Sims ripoff... Can you imagine the pick up lines? "Hey, baby. Come on back to my place where we can watch some exclusive HD movie trailers..."

[Manatra]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

Lol. Little Big Planet is really cute.
Home looks like a Sims ripoff... Can you imagine the pick up lines? "Hey, baby. Come on back to my place where we can watch some exclusive HD movie trailers..."

Not only does it ripoff the Sims, it rips of Second Life, and pretty much every feature that MS and Nintendo have had since launch, as well as some MMORPG's (FFXI for example). Which isn't a bad thing really, competition is good. What is stupid about this though is that Sony is coming off as if they're pioneering the whole thing. Now that is what I call arrogance.

Either way, using this as a user interface seems aweful to me.

I guess the other interesting thing to come out of this is that Warhawk really has had a bumpy development cycle, which is dissapointing, I enjoyed the original single player game.

[jwalton]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

PlayStation Home is the first cool thing Sony has done with the PlayStation 3. About damned time too, as there's been a lot of negative press with Sony. Now they just need to get some unique games out that you can't already buy that's comparable or available as a port on the 360, and I'll own one.

[Pai Pai Master]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

Not only does it ripoff the Sims, it rips of Second Life, and pretty much every feature that MS and Nintendo have had since launch, as well as some MMORPG's (FFXI for example). Which isn't a bad thing really, competition is good. What is stupid about this though is that Sony is coming off as if they're pioneering the whole thing. Now that is what I call arrogance.

Either way, using this as a user interface seems aweful to me.

I guess the other interesting thing to come out of this is that Warhawk really has had a bumpy development cycle, which is dissapointing, I enjoyed the original single player game.

I haven't really heard anything from Sony that makes them seem as if they think they're "pioneering" it. They are doing something unique from Microsoft and Nintendo, and I think they deserve some credit for that. Everyone pointed to Home being just a simple mix of Miis and Achievements, and it's far from that.

And every MMO rips off the MMOs before it. If anyone made anything similar to Second Life and ended its genre monopoly, they'd be ripping it off.

And it's not really used as a user-interface. You can access parts of the XMB (such as video, music, photo, PlayStation Store and online games), but it's really, basically, a social MMO.

And Little Big Planet looks like it'll be fantastic and one of the most important releases this year.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

Mind linking a normal video feed? Can't really say anything til I see it, but it sounds like the typical Sony ripoff act. Achievements, Miis, etc.

I don't have much faith in Sony's online plans due to the outright apathy they've shown in the past. Last gen MS clearly showed online was their priority, Nintendo made it clear it wasn't. Sony... couldn't make up their minds. Free or Pay? FFXI, pay. All others free, but lacked longevity since no revenue was generated to keep servers up.

Meaning, one day, MotorStorm's servers will go down, its not like Xbox Live where player fees will still allow servers to stay up. MGS3 will no longer be playable online as of next month, that blows, it was fun. But there's no long-term revenue to support it, so I can't say I'm surprised.

Nintendo's Network is totally WiFi, players host their own games, they are their own servers since they're not trying to do huge multiplayer games. Those servers will not go down. Archaic, perhaps, but functional.

I just smell another Sony failure.

[Ameroth]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

As I was watching the trailer for Little Big Planet, I found myself slowly being compelled to purchase a PS3. That may just be the game that makes me finally say, "Wow, the PS3 can do more than take every game from the Xbox 360 and make it slightly more HD."

[Pai Pai Master]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

Taking MGS3's servers down is Konami's decision, not Sony's, and a bad one at that.

Sony's leaving it up to the developers again but Motorstorm is a bad example to cite, considering the game is published and managed by Sony. There are some developers on the right track, however. In Warhawk, Incognito will be hosting servers for play like any other game, but players can also use their PS3 itself to host servers just like you'd do with any PC game. In addition, Sony has come up with an easy way to pay for those servers and make up for the (still wonderful) fact that PSN is free, with the microtransactions involved with PS Home.

There's an SD trailer up at gametrailers.com, but I don't know if it'll help if your initial reaction before seeing anything is that it's "just another Sony failure." When they can't be given credit for anything, everything they do will be a failure. Honestly, I don't know how you can say that considering we haven't had any online Wii games yet, and those will only come from Nintendo this year. Third parties still haven't been given tools for making online games on Wii and that won't happen for some time. Meanwhile, the only online game in the near future for the platform is Pokemon, and that uses Nintendo's ridiculous Friend Code system.

Microsoft is the only one to get online right so far, but Sony is starting to get on the right track to making it work and doing something that'll set them apart.

PlayStation Home goes into Closed Beta next month; hopefully Sony's Gamer Advisory Panel members will be accepted easily.

[Raydeus]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

I downloaded LBP's trailer in 1280x720, it was really impressive, I wonder how it would look in full 1080p

And then there's Home, I have only seen a small fraction of Live, but from the looks of it I'll never even think about that when Home goes live.

I just wonder about region restrictions and how that will affect the experience in Home, maybe you'll be able to jump to different regions and stuff and have the chance to speak in other languages (if applicable).



PS > I almost forgot. Warhawk! Man the next couple of years are going to be very interesting indeed.

[Pai Pai Master]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

Sony says Home will be a worldwide network, not just restricted by country.

[Drive]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

I haven't played Second Life. Never really interested me and this doesn't do it for me either. But there is Voice Chat(and free) so i'll try it out.

[Raydeus]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

Hmm, if it's indeed open then we can expect a version of the Auto-translate function built in too, they could ask SE about the AT jokes and stuff.

[Susurrus]

Re: GDC 2007: "PlayStation Home" Revealed

Mii + Achievements = Home?