Just earlier this month we'd been hearing word from Sony that it was seeing PlayStation Home as
more of a "social game platform" than a "social network," and now we're hearing that Sony might not be seeing it as much of anything. Peter Edward, the director of Home for Sony, says that the service is "not a priority right now." Kind of at odds with his other statement that it's "proved there is a market out there and we've got a lot of people that spend a lot of time in [Home]," but we'll let is slide. So, is this a roundabout way of saying Home hasn't been as great as Sony thought it would be, or just a different way of saying the emphasis is changing? We've never minded Sony's Home efforts on their own, but in the context of an also-ran multiplayer platform, it's easy to see why the company should be focusing on other aspects of the gaming experience.
Update: Sony has
gone on record saying that this statement as reported by
T3 from a talk at the London Games Conference is a misquote, instead saying that Peter was talking about how monetizing Home was not as big a priority as building the platform -- which others have confirmed.
posted November 2nd 2009 12:20PM
That's it, I'm selling my PS3 and buying an Xbox.
good on ya! i'm not exactly sure what sony is focusing on with the PS3 but its probably that i have only focused on 360 news
Let's see.. Demon's Souls, Uncharted 2, Ratchet & Clank Future: Crack in Time all in the past few weeks, and soon, God of War Collection .. ah that's right. LOTS OF REALLY GOOD GAMES. You know, the reason people buy a game console. Others could learn from this example.
@oGMo
Actually, it looks like Sony learned from Microsoft's example, seeing as they have have great games from the beginning.
The 360 doesn't have much going for it. Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 are exciting, but that's just about it.
The PS3 on the other hand just released a real GOTY contender in Uncharted 2, has MAG coming out as well as Modern Warfare 2, and God of War on the horizon.
While the 360 has retained dominance throughout, Sony is likely to enjoy a resurgence until the Project Natal/PS3 motion competition arises.
@wii60
im sure that competition will net both of them minimal support from their main audience (the only people that buy them). not to mention timed exclusives work for what microsoft needs them to, high visibility and better console attachment rates.
@Wii60
Xbox 360 doesn't have much going for it? You are crazy!
The real killer for Xbox 360 right now is the STILL over priced wireless adaptor and the STILL over priced HDD.
On a side note, I did get a NetGear Wireless Access point working as a wireless adaptor for the 360, cost all of 19.99!
@ oGMo
"You know, the reason people buy a game console. Others could learn from this example."
Actually I bought my PS3 phat to play BD movies and to be a media centre in the living room. I bet I'm not the only one who did that.
S
@Wii60
I Agreed with you about some good Sony exclusives, but Modern Warefare 2 is going to sell a lot more on the 360, and MAG, GT5 and GOW III are 2010 titles. Only Uncharted 2 was a 2009 release.
So lets see the 360 have Forza 3, Final Fantasy XIII that is almost like an exclusive for the Sony lost, L4D 2, Halo ODST better seller than uncharted, 2 DLC for GTAIV, Teken 6 another exclusive lost to Sony, Shadow Complex for Arcade.
For next year Sony has the biggest game GOWIII, Sony 1 Microsoft 0
360 has Alan Wake, Halo Reach, Splinter Cell, Microsoft 1 Sony 1
So I really think the fight is very very close. There are many others less important games for both consoles. PS3 slim right now is better choice from the price point. I mean c'mon microsoft $99 for wi-fi and over $100 for 120GB HDD. I dont care about wi-fi because I dont use it for gaming but still is way overpriced.
Perhaps leading with the 360 doesn't have much going for it was a bit of a stretch.
What I'm trying to say is that the 360 has been the dominant hardcore gamer device throughout. It doesn't sell like the Wii, but people like us prefer it. However, with the introduction of the Slim and some phenomenal titles just out and inbound it truly it has the most exciting future until the motion control fight. We have a four month window that includes the holidays in which Sony could actually turn this thing around. The idea that someone would sell a PS3 now, at the console's finest hour and only shot for relevance seems like an error.
LOL @ everyone taking the comment seriously!
If Playstation Home had a massively social game like 1v100 it would be used more.
@Carlos
"For next year Sony has the biggest game GOWIII, Sony 1 Microsoft 0
360 has Alan Wake, Halo Reach, Splinter Cell, Microsoft 1 Sony 1"
Are you really implying that God of War is even in the same league sales wise as a Halo title? I'm ignoring any quality comparisons, I know nothing about GOWIII and none of us know anything about Reach. But looking at sales ODST has already sold more than GOWII and it wasn't even a completely new game.
'earlier this month'? and when might that be? yesterday? :p
@Bernie
Not I was not trying to compare GoWIII with any Halo in any aspects, because they are totally different games. Halo is going to sell more than the 2 or 3 Sony bestsellers combined. What I was trying to say is that microsoft doesn't have a comparable title for this category and that GoWIII is going to be one of the best games.
I am a Gears of War / Call of Duty guy, so I don't really care about any of those games both are going to be huge for their respective fans; As an Xbox owner and father of an 8 years kid who loves halo I am going to buy Halo Reach for my kid.
He has Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Wars, Halo ODST & an Xbox 360 Halo Edition (Damaged due to GPU overheating, not RROD or E74).
For me; I am very dissapointed with Gears 2 so now I am playing Ballad of Gay Tony until Modern Warefare 2 arrives.
Geez...aren't you a little late to do this story? And it was already countered by Sony that the comment was taken out of context.
Sony corrected this statement a while ago.
RIP Playstation Home
2008 - Near future
There were no points. There were no winners or losers.
...Oh, there were losers.
If by losers you mean desperate boys trying to meet girls on Home, for a hookup, you sir are correct.
That didnt take them long to abandon it.....guess they dont care when they create something and dont expand on it
You are the definition of fanboi where you care so much about their public image as you're using CAPS to tell engadget to fix it. I wonder if Sony cares so much about you?
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does Picard have 6 fingers?
5 fingers and a nose I believe.
That's his mouth.
YOUR A MOUTH ;p
I tried out Home for about an hour and never went back to it. It was quite lame to say the least.
Same. I thought it was gonna be cool to mess around with, but I found it mostly boring and dumb that you had to buy a bunch of stuff to make you or your home look decent.
I suspected from the start that Home would be a dud. I just always assumed that Sony knew something I didn't and they'd make it better than I imagined.
Guess not.
Home is far from great. I do log on occasionally - but it is becoming less so every week.
My biggest disappointment with Home is the load times. If I want to jump from one space to another, it just takes too long. Half the time, a space needs to be downloaded all over for some really minor change - again adding to wait time. Also, the mini-games are often too crowded to get into. If I want to play poker - forget it. I don't want to wait to play.
Overall, the potential is there, but the implementation is not.
The problem with Home is that it doesn't have many things to offer besides chatting. There are games, for some reason beyond understanding, you have a physical limitation on who can use things and a very limited supply of them put in the world. I haven't been on recently to see if they've fixed this, but the only thing that's helped the situation is the rest of the service is so boring that less people are on trying to get in to the Red Bull planes.
There's no exploring to do. You just select a place from the menu and download it. There's no reward for spending more time in home. The people using the system are, by self-selection of purchasing a video game console, entertained by games and challenges. There is a complete lack of challenges and the games are simple and are limited to a physical exclusivity of usage in a virtual world
I loaded it up once..went through the 'build-a-pretty-boy" intro, walked around for about 5 minutes only to see guys basically dry humping any girl avatar that they could find, exited and went back to playing games.
Home is genius and has a unique place in the digital world.
No matter how empty and uneventful your real life is, Home is the one application that makes your real life look interesting and worthwhile by comparison.
I'm not sure what is worse home or BD live.
Oh, so you Endorse Lies, Mr Ass (referring to avatar)?
Commitment like that from Sony is what makes people not bother to spend $$$ for virtual crapware, like Ghostbuster costumes, etc.
Just commitment? I'd say the term 'virtual crapware' sums up the real reason people don't buy Ghostbusters costumes for their virtual selves.
Definitely a huge waste of development resources. Sony should have focused on improving online gaming experince (i.e. XBOX live)
if they woulda taken the money from home and invested in some 5 dollar blue-tooth headsets to be included with the console so people would actually talk when playing we might have something.
The only difference between playing single player and multiplayer on PS3 is that on multiplayer you get lag.
screw home, get play tv out in the states already!
It's second life with a PS3 skin. Home shouldn't have even been invented, instead they should have just focused all that money and time at making Playstation Network good!
Ever since I installed the new PS3 firmware update... Playstation Home hangs on the loading screen for me...it's a bummer..I kinda enjoyed it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--KAq8V4phY
This is about the only enjoyable activity in Home
To fix the issue, uninstall home and reisntall it. Mine did that too until I googled it.
I tried it once when it was in beta. I found zero value in it. Never touched it since. Hopefully they kill it and focus on continued improvement of the firmware.
I really hope Sony scraps this thing, its useless, I see what they envisioned but its just not working out.
And finishing off the PlayStation Home priorities controversy, the service/virtual world's community manager has told users on the official Home forum that the Sony executive was misquoted in reports that he'd said Home is "not a priority."
From CydoniaX:
Allow me to put your minds at ease about this recent press. The coverage of what Pete Edwards said at the London Games Conference was not only a misquote, it was a misreprentation of what he actually said.
Edwards was saying that monetizing Home was not as big a priority as building a great platform, with a compelling environment and a strong community. Home is still a top priority for Sony and will continue to release quality content and provide a positive experience to our users.
And yes, we will continue working on fixing bugs, login problems, and other user issues.
Additionally, Michael French, the editor-in-chief of Develop Magazine, which hosted the event in question, tweeted to Stephen Totilo this afternoon that Edwards was in fact misquoted: "Edwards was definitely misquoted at our event. His point was that Home is a community platform first, and 'a business' second"
So this should all make Sony's position on Home crystal clear. It's not dead, it's not going away, it's still a priority and it continues to have the full support of the company.
Truth is, 'virtual reality' has never taken off - and Home is really VR without the goggles. As accurately portrayed in Pixar's WALL-E, do we really want to spend our lives plugged into machines or go outside and enjoy nature and partake in physical sports and gaming? Go try paintball or lazertag and you'll be hook - and keep fit. The odd blast of an immersive 3D game, Gears Of War etc, is fine, but social is about tactile living breathing reality. Else we'll all going to die of diabetes. Nasty.
and you say that after watching Wall-E....an animated film about a robot.
Virtual reality is still ahead of the technology curve. You're underestimating things.
Augmented reality is filling the gap until technology can catch up with what we desire.
Once it's immersive enough, humans won't be getting diabetes anymore without severe neglect anyway.