PlayStation Home
Game » consists of 1 releases. Released Dec 11, 2008
PlayStation Home was a social games network where PSN users could play games and socialize. Home saw a refocus in Fall 2011 in North America and Europe that put more emphasis on games than social spaces.
Open House
Home is basically presented as a very clean, very modern entertainment complex. The core locations are your apartment, a movie theater, a bowling alley, a mall, and a large, open courtyard that connects them all. There are also a few themed locations that exist separate from this virtual gated community, which currently include a bar themed around Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and a dilapidated train station for Far Cry 2. Though it can take a while for everyone's avatar to load whenever you first arrive at a new location, leaving you with a bunch of kinda-creepy translucent ghost avatars, Home has a sharp, clean look to it. People like to say that Home looks like Second Life, which is admittedly fun to say, but it doesn't really hold water. Home is a much smaller, detailed, and tightly structured virtual world. And in Second Life, there's actually stuff to do.
More than the mall that sells virtual cowboy hats for 49 cents or the conspicuous advertising, the biggest immediately apparent problem for Home is that there simply isn't a whole lot to do. In any one location, there's usually only a handful of objects you can interact with. The central plaza features a game where you guide a remote control flying saucer over a small pond, avoiding mines and collecting stars, as well as a communal jukebox stocked with a handful of licensed songs. Go into the single-screen theater, and you'll be treated to a trailer for the movie Twilight, followed by a Paramore music video that, coincidentally, is from the Twilight soundtrack. I guess Sony is anticipating plenty of self-mutilating teenage girls to use Home. Which could be a reason for some to keep using Home, I guess.
The bowling alley is the most action-packed location I've seen in Home so far, with its pool tables, arcade machines, and bowling lanes. One of the small choices in Home that I find stupefying is the fact that the arcade games allow only one player at a time, which means you have to wait your turn if you want to play a light version of Echochrome, or a really crummy Breakout knockoff. You can argue that Home might benefit from trying to emulate some specific details of real life, which is actually a little true for the player limits on the pool tables and the bowling lanes. The truth is that waiting in line to play a game at an arcade sucks. Waiting in line to play a game at an arcade that exists inside of your cutting-edge video game machine is top-shelf lunacy.
But, if growing up in the sticks taught me anything, it's that there's nothing that bored kids like more than causing trouble and generally being disruptive. Here are a few choice excerpts from an IM conversation I'm having with Jeff about his Home experience to prove my point.
Jeff (10:07): I've decided that Home is the greatest thing to happen to the PS3 ever.
Jeff (10:08): Me and five or six other dudes who knew who I am have taken over the arcade and are bullying people into dancing. And text chatting about Gears of War 2 as we do so.
Jeff (10:10): Also, bubble machines.
Jeff (10:28): We are up to eight dancers now! WE WILL NOT TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER
Jeff (10:39): I am now down to a posse of five hardcore dancers.
Jeff (10:41):Giancarlo has joined this savage dance fiesta. We are UNSTOPPABLE.
This probably isn't Home's fault, and maybe this just speaks to the type of easily amused jerk I am, but the most fun I've had with Home so far has been running around and triggering the disapproving double thumbs-down animation at stuff I don't like, which brings me to the point of communication in Home. In a way, Home is just a big, fancy chat room. You can hang out in the public lobbies and just shout at whoever, you can invite some people back to your place for some more exclusive socializing, or you can create and join clubs with like-minded individuals. Like clothing for your avatar and higher-end living quarters, clubs are a premium part of Home. It'll cost you $4.99 to start your own club, and there will be upkeep fees down the road as well.
Home supports headsets and keyboards, and also features a pop-up menu full of canned phrases, so there's plenty of options for how you communicate. In my brief experience, though, it seemed like very few people had keyboards or headsets, and most of the chatting consisted of slangy text-message abbreviations.
I guess the fact that Home is simply a free add-on for the PS3 makes my criticisms against it a little irrelevant. It's not an essential feature, so if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. But stakes are high for Sony right now, and this seems like an odd way for Sony to add value to its console. I don't think it's entirely without potential, but what's being shown in the open beta looks more like framework than a finished Home.
Home is basically presented as a very clean, very modern entertainment complex. The core locations are your apartment, a movie theater, a bowling alley, a mall, and a large, open courtyard that connects them all. There are also a few themed locations that exist separate from this virtual gated community, which currently include a bar themed around Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and a dilapidated train station for Far Cry 2. Though it can take a while for everyone's avatar to load whenever you first arrive at a new location, leaving you with a bunch of kinda-creepy translucent ghost avatars, Home has a sharp, clean look to it. People like to say that Home looks like Second Life, which is admittedly fun to say, but it doesn't really hold water. Home is a much smaller, detailed, and tightly structured virtual world. And in Second Life, there's actually stuff to do.
More than the mall that sells virtual cowboy hats for 49 cents or the conspicuous advertising, the biggest immediately apparent problem for Home is that there simply isn't a whole lot to do. In any one location, there's usually only a handful of objects you can interact with. The central plaza features a game where you guide a remote control flying saucer over a small pond, avoiding mines and collecting stars, as well as a communal jukebox stocked with a handful of licensed songs. Go into the single-screen theater, and you'll be treated to a trailer for the movie Twilight, followed by a Paramore music video that, coincidentally, is from the Twilight soundtrack. I guess Sony is anticipating plenty of self-mutilating teenage girls to use Home. Which could be a reason for some to keep using Home, I guess.
The bowling alley is the most action-packed location I've seen in Home so far, with its pool tables, arcade machines, and bowling lanes. One of the small choices in Home that I find stupefying is the fact that the arcade games allow only one player at a time, which means you have to wait your turn if you want to play a light version of Echochrome, or a really crummy Breakout knockoff. You can argue that Home might benefit from trying to emulate some specific details of real life, which is actually a little true for the player limits on the pool tables and the bowling lanes. The truth is that waiting in line to play a game at an arcade sucks. Waiting in line to play a game at an arcade that exists inside of your cutting-edge video game machine is top-shelf lunacy.
But, if growing up in the sticks taught me anything, it's that there's nothing that bored kids like more than causing trouble and generally being disruptive. Here are a few choice excerpts from an IM conversation I'm having with Jeff about his Home experience to prove my point.
Jeff (10:07): I've decided that Home is the greatest thing to happen to the PS3 ever.
Jeff (10:08): Me and five or six other dudes who knew who I am have taken over the arcade and are bullying people into dancing. And text chatting about Gears of War 2 as we do so.
Jeff (10:10): Also, bubble machines.
Jeff (10:28): We are up to eight dancers now! WE WILL NOT TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER
Jeff (10:39): I am now down to a posse of five hardcore dancers.
Jeff (10:41):Giancarlo has joined this savage dance fiesta. We are UNSTOPPABLE.
This probably isn't Home's fault, and maybe this just speaks to the type of easily amused jerk I am, but the most fun I've had with Home so far has been running around and triggering the disapproving double thumbs-down animation at stuff I don't like, which brings me to the point of communication in Home. In a way, Home is just a big, fancy chat room. You can hang out in the public lobbies and just shout at whoever, you can invite some people back to your place for some more exclusive socializing, or you can create and join clubs with like-minded individuals. Like clothing for your avatar and higher-end living quarters, clubs are a premium part of Home. It'll cost you $4.99 to start your own club, and there will be upkeep fees down the road as well.
Home supports headsets and keyboards, and also features a pop-up menu full of canned phrases, so there's plenty of options for how you communicate. In my brief experience, though, it seemed like very few people had keyboards or headsets, and most of the chatting consisted of slangy text-message abbreviations.
I guess the fact that Home is simply a free add-on for the PS3 makes my criticisms against it a little irrelevant. It's not an essential feature, so if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. But stakes are high for Sony right now, and this seems like an odd way for Sony to add value to its console. I don't think it's entirely without potential, but what's being shown in the open beta looks more like framework than a finished Home.
Nice to see your impressions of Home so far. Even though it's free, I'm not too crazy about it myself. It just seems like a big waste of time, and xbox's party system makes a little more sense, and streamlines getting together with friends much better than Home could in it's current form.
by the way, first maybe?
Too many couches!
ROFL.
To be honest I didn't really expect it to be entertaining, I thought that Sony was using it to get money from ad's and to get sales because it looks very different to anything else that the Wii or 360 offers.
I was looking forward to furnishing my house down to every last detail. Like in Animal X-ing. But it seems Home is a little too microtransaction happy for that to be possible. Unfortunate. Home seems like it could be cool, but it's just not worth spending any money on and without all that stuff it's just no fun.
I dig your furniture arrangement, Ryan. I too opted for the "huge-fucking-pile-of-as-many-couches-as-the-game-would-allow" look. I guess great minds think alike.
I don't like the long loading times between areas, shame they coundn't make it seamless somehow.. plus its a shame people can't meet in the movie theatre so you can see comments from other people about whats showing.
I don't think its fair to be overly negative now though as its the open Beta, give a few months and if nothign much changes then its justified. Although for a 2 year wait there seems to be very little added since the initial screenshots.
A friend explained it to me like this... Either you are a person that "get's it" or you're not. Either you are in to games like Second Life, The Sims, etc. Or you are not. Albeit, Home is more of a "lite" version of those games atm, which makes it seem worse for people that just don't "get" things like this.
I am one of the people that just does not get it. This seems like a waste of Sony's money, and time. I'm definitely not going to load up Home, just so i can then load up a game, when i could just go straight into the game in the first place. For me personally, everything i need on my PS3 is on my cross-media bar. Home is redundant for me atm.
I guess the cool thing about it is what it could turn into. I've already seen advertisements for things that were not in beta that looked pretty cool. Like the Red Bull stunt pilot area. They've also mentioned a Go-Cart/Mario Kart type area. And who knows if these games will eventually have trophies.
So, Home might turn into something big at some point in the future. I'm sure there are people out there that will buy a PS3 just because of Home. People that are nutty for Sims/Second Life type games. But for people like me, it's just one of those things that is neat for a few minutes, and then you move on...
I agree with most of what has been said here but honestly, I kinda like it. It's not something I'm going to use for longer than say an hour a week but if they keep it fresh and constantly add new areas it certainly has potential to be worthwhile.
Man i think the avatar's just suck, i can't get the guy to look anything like me, nor can i get him to not look like he's got issues, would it hurt him to crack a smile? and the hair and facial hair, oh man dont get me started, i know its an open beta and that stuff is limited and all that but so far, not so good in the avatar department...look at those arms! ok rant over.
As far as everything else is concerned its good, but if they could just make those avatars better...which they wont, it would be awesome.
i like your take on HOME
I always thought that Sony should have made Little Big Planet into their "thing" instead of this Home nonsense. Think about it...instead of them being two separate entities they should have just rolled them into one big experience. That would give you a real incentive to actually buy the clothes and junk they're going to want to sell to you, cause what would you rather see? A dude wearing a T-shirt with "Twilight" on it or sack boy running around looking like Rorschach from the new Watchmen movie?
I agree Ryan. Its a 3D chat room. Bottom line, after all this time of development, it seems there are some really odd choices that they made. That arcade example is definately one of them. At least at a real arcade you can watch the current players game till its your turn. Its kindof a neat feature i'm liking in SSF2T right now. My intuition is that Sony was thinking of advertising and microtransactions first and cooing its users into this space by providing a few bells and whistles. If this could somehow be the front end replacement for the XMB then I'd cream myself, but its avatar system and 3D locales are just too elaborate to be implimented into the OS like Nintendo's or NXE's. It may look pretty, but its too heavy on system resources. I'd love to have my PS3 automatically start in my virtual apt, but would hate having the couple minutes of load times and hitting X three or four times to get past user agreements every single time just to start a game, so I see why they didn't go this direction. Still if Sony limited or refocused some of their ambitions I however feel this could've been possible. I could think of a dozen design changes that I would make in home, but it would mean risks that I bet they weren't willing to take, technologically or asthetically.
Hopefully this being the public beta they get feedback like this to make some changes, but by this point I think changes will be minor, and maybe on the "official" release hopefully seeing more content will help flush Home out some bit. I'm in the boat that without it being the OS's front end and having to load the program seperately I may never really be Home much., and Sony has been wasting their time.
The bowling is a joke. All that six axis potential and they didnt even use it. Unless there is a lot of additional content being added, Home will get old fast.
I spent a bit of time in home but I was kind of borred after 10 min and decided to play a better version of home known as GTA IV where its like home but with second amendment rights. I hate waiting lin line in real world I don't need to do that in a fake one as well.
I didn't like the fact it has to partition 3GB of the HDD to get everything on there. I had 12Gb left on my 40Gb drive, it was going to have 9 left. luckily I got that back when i deleted it. i'll probably wait until more things come out and when i upgrade my HDD before i go back in.
played the open beta last night and i have to say, i agree with Ryan on this one. Even though this is only a beta and Sony does promise us more to come in the future, i would like to give Sony the benifit of the doubt and hope they add something more meaningful to Home. But right now, theres just not enought things in Home that makes me want to go back. Besides, virtual socializing just isn't my thing. anyway, I'm interested to see what will happen to Home in the coming months.
Home has done exactly what it was said to do and therefore is exactly what I expected. There's not supposed to be a reason to "keep coming back" other than talking to people. If you're the type of person who likes generally chatting and hanging out with random people, you'll like Home. If you prefer to spend your time on your video game console playing games, which is perfectly reasonable, you probably won't be into home that much. It's simple.
It's free and fun. I liked running around for a few hours. I'm sure I will again as well. Can't wait to till games actually support it.
"If you prefer to spend your time on your video game console playing games, which is perfectly reasonable, you probably won't be into home that much. It's simple."
Not only is it perfectly reasonable, it's the whole reason the console exists.
w00t virtual couches!!!! OMG it's a virtual hardwood fl00r?
NXE = bad Mii rip off. Home = high res Second Life minus fun
Give me a fucking MMORPG on a console (na0 with actual gameplay!) or die!
WHERE IS MY FUCKING GAMEPLAY CONSOLE MAKERS? ENOUGH TEA BAGGING SHOOTER GUN HOMO BULLSHIT (yes I typed that in ALL CAPS RETARD style)
After the server connection problems subsided, I finally got a chance to try out Home for myself. So far, the world as a whole is very small, but it's extremely detailed. Graphics are pretty awesome for a this type of game, but there are some quirks here and there. Load times aren't too bad considering how much is happening onto the screen at one time. My apartment is ok I guess, but I don't spend much time there since there is nothing to do there.
Title of the article should have been: When 360 Fanboys Invade Home.
"And text chatting about Gears of War 2 as we do so.' /rolleyes
Seriously, why do any of you even bother with anything PS3-related?! We all know you are going to hate it!
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