I’ll admit, I don’t have a PS3, but the idea of Home almost seems downright offensive to me. The idea of a Second Life-like virtual world bores me to tears, but the way Sony is so proud of the fact that they’re going to partner up with all of these companies to offer paid doodads on Home to decorate your “virtual apartment” almost makes me physically ill.
Diesel clothes? Linge Roset furniture? A Red Bull island? This is like a marketer’s wet dream. Of course, Second Life was a marketer’s wet dream too until the world found out the entire userbase was a handful of people with 18 accounts each.
Pretty much every gaming podcast I listen to says the same thing: Boring, and insulting in the expectation to have people actually dish out money for branded virtual crapola to decorate your “apartment” with.
I actually was invited to participate in the closed demo maybe two weeks ago. I was tempted to start a thread about it, but the whole thing generated a huge “meh” from me that I couldn’t be bothered.
It is kind of neat in design - you are in a large virtual courtyard. You can wander over to differenent areas where people are congregating and join into a coversation. There are videos playing in the background on virtual screens. Again, interesting in one way but pretty useless in most ways. I hopped into the “arcade” where I could bowl or play pool against other people, but didn’t feel the need.
My “apartment” is totally empty (but does have a nice view). I can’t imagine what would motivate me to pay to decorate it. I suppose that my unlocked trophies (all 6 of them) from games should be on display somewhere in there, but I don’t see them.
They certainly need to add more functional areas to make it useful. And if this is going to be the interface for grouping friends or whatever together to launch a multiplayer iteration of a game, that will need some serious explaining.
My brother got invited to the closed demo. I must say, I was underwhelmed.
We both agreed that if we were 14 it might be cool. But now that I see you have to pay for stuff with real money makes it less appealing to 14 year olds.
What we found really funny was the arcade. There are games there you can walk up to and play. Unless someone else is playing it. Who the hell wants to wait in line in a virtual world? And assuming Sony wants thousands, nay, millions of users who is going to wait?
I should confess I’m an active Sony hater (not just PS3).
Justin_Bailey bitchslaps the PS3; What’s next for Sony?
:rolleyes:
It looks like a shinier, dumbed-down Second Life, and will probably play the same. But the base ability to hang out in a built-in virtual chatroom and meet people who are fellow gamers isn’t costing anything, so it’s not like there’s a lot of promise to live up to.
I’m more excited about the requirement for 2009 games to have Trophies, since the tiered system is actually a lot more intuitive and descriptive than a generic Gamerscore.
And I’m guessing that, like many instanced or chat systems, there’ll be different servers to join, so every meeting place won’t be swamped with thousands of people.
I’ll admit, there’s a little schadenfreude in knowing that Sony’s game division is going down in flames. I love my PS2, but Sony angered the video game gods and they are being rightly punished.
I’d imagine Kotaku is thrilled at Home’s lukewarm reception too seeing as how Sony barred them from all of their E3 events after Kotaku ran a story about Home before it was formally announced.
Well, are their bad decisions really hurting anyone but themselves? I talk to people all the time who are downright shocked that Microsoft could steal exclusives like Lost Odyssey and Beautiful Katamari. Sony just got lazy this time, assuming that their brand name would buy more than MS’ money. It’s bad news for any PS3 fans who are dedicated fans of the franchises that are 360-only.
But hey, if you don’t care about those, it’s now good as a combo next-gen system, Blu-Ray player, and integrated virtual chatroom!
When I first saw the news it was launching today, I thought “I’ll probably take a look at it this weekend”.
But as soon as I read that there are stores where you spend actual money, to buy fake items, well, I got very disinterested. If they allowed you to browse real goods in the Home stores, and have them shipped to you, I might be. . . . no, I would still be very disinterested.
They might gain my interest if they let you earn purchase credits via multiplayer accomplishments in other games (like for instance, using your multiplayer $$ from GTA IV - what the hell am I going to do with all that fake money in multiplayer?).
It’s like Second Life without the creepy bondage stuff - all the boring, with 100% less gimp masks!
I love my PS3. I would have sex with it if doing so wouldn’t mess it up or be weird. The only fault I have in my PS is that Left 4 Dead isn’t on there.
Home: Meh. Really meh. I have no care to have anything to do with it whatsoever.
Looks like you download it from your normal PS3 menu, there should be a new entry after you log in to your PSN account, it’s under the PS Network menu. People are saying it needs 4GB.
Well, I downloaded it because I have a PS3 and it’s free. In the first two hours I’ve used the game? I’ve been hit on by high schoolers, told I’m fat and ugly by a white supremacist (who also said that “Home needs fewer darkies”), and realized my avatar looks like I have Downs syndrome.
All in all, it’s pointless and full of idiots. There’s supposedly a free day coming up, and I’ll take advantage of that. Otherwise, it won’t see much action.
Big steaming pile of Meh. Hopefully, it is just because this is just the beta, but there isn’t much to do. Once the full version is released I would hope that there is just more available. Everything offered just seems very sparse, much like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. It might be cooler if you could meet up with friends from your list, decide what game you all felt like playing and go right into that game from Home, but I’m not sure if you can do that. More free stuff for your apartment/avatar would be nice. Something like a virtual t-shirt/poster for each game you own would be cool. A jukebox that plays MP3’s off your Hdd or media server would be nice too.
Like control-z said above it takes about 4GB to install everything. I have a launch 20GB PS3 and I had been running out of room anyway (down to 1.5 GB give or take a few bytes). So I had to delete the game data file that I had sitting on there for Oblivion (which came in at about 4.5 GB) just so I could install and run Home. I do think it runs smoother than Second Life ever did on my PC though. I plan on upgrading my hard drive soon so space shouldn’t be a concern in the future.
Ok, so I actually installed it. And I thoroughly concur with the extreme meh-ness.
It looks very good, but there’s little to actually do. You can go into a theater that perpetually shows the “Twilight” trailer!!! You can walk around a mall with exactly three shops!!! You can wait in line to play a few frames at the bowling alley!!! You can wander around aimlessly, seeing others with chat bubbles over their head that nearly invariably say either “I have no keyboard”, or “FU - I’ve got a keyboard, biiiiatchesss!!!”
I’ve got two people on my “friends” list (anyone else, feel free to add me - mske10). If I wanted to “run into” Madd Maxx in Home, how could I do that? Run around the courtyard looking for him? Break into his apartment?
If I want to set up a community room for SDMB, that would be useful. There is promise here in Home, just not a lot of explanation. I realize that this is a Beta. but come on…
