GDC07: Sony Unveils Home

dannyjo22 said:
I think sony just nailed the console war.
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Blimey.

Personally this doesn't interest me but I can see how it would appeal to a lot of people. I've watched the videos and it does look quite nice but I see it appealing more to younger people, like my 12 year old daughter.
 
rp2000 said:
Technically it is "equal" to xbox live in many ways. Text messaging, Voice messaging, joining games together, seeing who is online, Achievements etc.

But it adds to this. The idea of sharing media is cool. Achievements turned into "virtual" items. And i've not read about the Mii's much but surely they are not as customisble as these characters?
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Actually it is not 'equal' in many ways..
If you are in a game, you cannot see when your friends come online, you can't chat to each other if you are in different games, you can't invite people to games from another game, etc, etc,

It looks really really pretty, but that's it, functionality wise it's very different to live, it doesn't have half the online gaming/chatting features that make Live so seemless..
Live looks boring, because it's effectively a service that is always running in the background even whilst playing games, Home is a single App that only works when loaded, when you play a game, it isn't there anymore, and all it's features disappear.. this is to me makes it very poor in comparison to Live.
However as a meeting place/MMO style arena, it's very very good, but to compare it to Live is just pathetic..

As the PS3 has a hard drive in all models, they can offer things like this to every single PS3 owner. I still think one of the biggest mistakes MS made was not having a hard drive in every model (especially as they did previous gen). Obviously broadband availability is the main thing. But I could easily see this having like a million users online at once by the end of the year if it is released in fall (I could easily imagine another Sony delay :D ). Why would anyone not use it? it is Free!!!
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You can use bits of live with no HDD, the chat/online gaming etc.. if you want downloadable stuff, you have a choice to go and buy a HDD.. not too difficult surely..

Xbox Live is £40 pounds for most people (as they buy from the dashboard I reckon). Silver membership would give you much less than Sony Home would, for free. Surely this is now going to give an experience very similar to Xbox Live (features wise) and with loads of extras all for FREE!!!
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I think everyone is saying Sony will use a microtransaction model for new clothing/furniture/accessories etc.. they will get money out of you, don't worry..
And it still doesn't solve the issue of developers not having an effective 'free' online resource to tap into for games, they have all the Live interaction code given to them, they have the servers/bandwidth infrastructure already there for nothing.. so games are much much easier to make online then PS3, and it's showing already, we all know there are upcoming games that are MP on the 360 and SP only on the PS3..
 
Is it me, or with the Wii's Mii's this is something that the Wii would excel at?

Just for communicating with others etc?
 
wyrdo said:
Blimey.

Personally this doesn't interest me but I can see how it would appeal to a lot of people. I've watched the videos and it does look quite nice but I see it appealing more to younger people, like my 12 year old daughter.
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Yeah thats what I meant to say. I have no kids but my workmates are forever moaning about their kids being on msn all night multi chatting. They would love this.
 
The trophy gallery seems cool, but I don't use mine on my 360, if ever I want to check something out I do it through xbox.com which, for me, is one of the best and most useful websites on the Internet, it's brilliantly done. Hopefully Sony can produce something excellent too.
 
This is going to appeal to far more than teenagers, its going to appeal to all The Sims fans out there which is (love it or hate it) the most successful game ever made. Its going to appeal to all the people that "play" Second Life as well as those people that use their PCs for MMO's.

This has far more potential than the Wii and its "revolutionary" remote that in one fell swoop made it a better console than anything we have had in decades.
 
Demon said:
snip..
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I think I overstated the comparisons to Live to be honest!.


Although I don't see how you can knock the fact it is free and say you will end up paying through additional content? I mean with MS you pay for live AND you pay for the additional content so i am not sure how you somehow imply that Sony will "get the money out of you" ? As every 360 user keeps saying you are not forced to buy the addons (virtual or physical!!).

I think my main comparison should be with silver membership as this is what the majority of xbox360 owners have (I am assuming this until MS actually give a breakdown of their alleged 6 million live members).

Not being a silver user myself, I think the difference is you cannot do voice chat etc or invite/be invited to online games? With Playstation HOME you get this for free. Which is what my point should have been. (Although I stand corrected by if my interpretation of Silver is incorrect).

With regards to the HDD, MS cannot offer anything that can reach every single member as they cannot guarantee that every single owner has a memory unit of HDD. Sony have one in every SKU. This limits what MS can distribute, in my opinion (assuming broadband availability). For instance something like a web browser if they ever added it would have to be a download of sorts, which would not be available to every single user, that was my point. There is a limit to what the built in ROM etc on the 360 can hold.

I still think this Home thing is still cool, not a Live beater, but certainly not too far off. people laughed about Sony's online strategy platform, and to be fair this will shut up a few folk. unfortunately their argument will become "well it isn't exactly like Live". i thought the whole point was they design tehir own system which can be set apart from Live, in which i think this will be a success.

that is all.


rp2000
 
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This looks good for the under 16's, looks like Sony are going after the young uns now!

Xbox for the adults who have a life outside of there sweaty bedrooms :p
 
Another point i have thought of

I take it there will be hundreds of these virtual worlds, not just one as if there is just one i can see it becoming very crowded.
So would you connect to these worlds at random or will you be assigned to a specific world (realm).
As if you are assigned at random each time you log on you will never meet the same people and build friends to play with.
But on the other hand if you chose a world when you sign up all your friends may not get onto the same world and thus making it pointless again.
 
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Makes me think a little of flashy java sites. First time you see it you think wow, 4th time in when you just want to find the page your looking for quickl you start looking for the 'simple version' link.

Looks good and will work as long as there are still short cuts to find / play games with your friends. Can see the novelty value wearing off very quickly though. I've played enough MMRPGs to know that the joys of 'just getting together to mingle' are short lived and people prefer to 'actually do something'.

Still, kudos for trying something new and let's wait and see what's actually delivered.
 
WildgooseUK said:
So....Sony revealed their own version of 'Live' to rival Microsoft.Very interesting indeed.
Lets see what Microsoft comes up with?
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Its not their own version of Live though is it? Live is the online backbone on which everything runs, Sony has their own version of that in place (don't know the name, sorry).

This Home feature is just an app that runs over the top of it.

That's how I see it anyway?
 
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