Home is a Success
Loads of stuff to do, money to spend.
Published: 11:45, 02/07/2010 by Peter [Colossalblue].
29It seems that you can’t go for a financial quarter without somebody, somewhere, claiming that Home is actually very good or very successful or just not the huge waste of time that we all mocked mercilessly for months after its release before deleting it from our XMBs and trying to forget about it.
This time it’s the turn of Jack Buser (Home Director) to stand up for Home. Talking to Gamasutra Buser has claimed that the service is innovative and it has taken time for the industry to begin to understand it.
I think it takes some time as the industry as a whole, whether that be consumers or whether that be the media, to start to shift their focus to these new types of platforms and see how people are actually spending their time with the console and with gaming in general, I think we are part of that evolution, part of that conversation.
Apparently there are over one hundred games now on the service, with fifty virtual spaces and fourteen million client downloads. That’s a pretty big service to provide for free. But hold on, it’s not actually free is it? The service exists, partially, to sell us virtual items (they’ve created over five thousand of them) in micro-transactions. Mr. Buser says “it’s one of the highest-margin businesses in the games industry”. So that’s why Sony representatives keep telling us how great it is!
It does have to be said, cynicism aside, that Home is a much different product to the soulless place it was in the few months after launch. Sony are putting a lot of effort into continually improving the service and it continues to be very popular among a certain sub-set of PlayStation owners. I might even venture back for a look myself.
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02/07/2010 at 17:53
Member since: Jun 2010
I might give Home another shot if it’s changed as much as people are claiming. I used it for the first three months or so and the word ‘soulless’ has been very accurately used so I never went back. It wasn’t even the sparse nature of it that lost me as a visitor though. I seemed to get disconnected every 5 minutes and every time I went somewhere I had to redownload and it just became tedious.
02/07/2010 at 19:52
Member since: Dec 2008
I´ve said it before and I´ll say it again. Home will only be good if they give me my bloody Hall of Fame
02/07/2010 at 19:54
Member since: Jun 2009
Spotted an error – “Fifty virtual spaces” should read “fifty virtual ‘Waste of’ spaces” ;)
TBH I praised home until it came out, then rubbished it for being the most hyped let down since the millenium dome. Last time i checked it had a massive makeover and now looks the part, but i (and all of my ps3 friends)just dont get it.
Had it been the standard ps3 os instead of the XMB then it might have had some legs, but i am not interested in having to load it up, then download each space, just to access crap features and ‘talk’ to people who are most likely a predatory paedophile
Cheers Sony, now where’s my cross game chat?
02/07/2010 at 22:11
Member since: Aug 2008
I’m not “predatory”. More soft and gentle with puppies and sweets!
02/07/2010 at 22:10
Member since: Aug 2008
Sodium have the right idea with Home. You can unlock stuff for free or spend £2.39 unlock a top little shooter and get loads of stuff straight away.
03/07/2010 at 00:05
Member since: May 2009
I think home can be more of a success if the were to review their architecture. I mean one of my (and other peoples) big qualms with the service is the initial downloading of newly ventured spaces and then subsequent setup/sync loading period when going to already downloaded spaces. Now I don’t play very MMO/MMORPG, but surely they could adopt a more seamless approach like the ones above where you don’t have to go through such a harsh process when going from space to space. Cloud computing is the way forward, and it just seems that Sony missed the boat on making home more server side intensive and having then just having a thin client. Unless I am missing something, in regards to development issues of such an architecture for home, I personally get fed up with it after a while. I go back again now and again but its not the great experience it could be.
I also think if they could integrate it more with the XMB that would be cool, but at the moment its a standalone application that not everyone would use so it might not be worthwhile. On the other hand though too if it was integrated into the XMB in some way, and in a decent way, it might attract more people to use it.
But now I come back to my first point, for me if they want me to use it more regularly they would need to fix the loading shit.
03/07/2010 at 20:23
Member since: Oct 2008
I love HOME and all it has to offer, im on HOME everyday after I finish playing games that is, people you have to give it a try you will like it for many reason. If your a gamer, social person or just like to go shopping HOME is where it is at. Forget about my space that is a dinosaur now, HOME is the future.