I recently happened upon an old video file that I still have around. The name of the file is “Teh SONY is back bitches!”, it originates from March of 2007 and its content depicts Phil Harrison – whose bald noggin, non threatening visage and laid back demeanour shall forever be missed – holding his famous GDC 2007 keynote speech. In hindsight I can definitely sympathize with the state of mind we all were in at that time which could have prompted us to name a file as such in excitement over what it depicted. The two things that it did depict were two big things that had been waited for long before anyone even knew what they were. What they were was of course something for SONY to set themselves apart from their competitor and prove that they were not destined to be delegated as the irrelevant party this generation.
You see, irrelevant was exactly what everyone was quick to label SONY as in early 2007 because a series of unfortunate events with roots stretching back for years had reduced SONY to the industry’s favourite battering boy. I remember fondly seeing the GDC 2007 video for the first time, not knowing quite what to think of Home, although being overjoyed by the fact that SONY had something, anything at all, and smiling all the way through the LittleBigPlanet demonstration, while realising that it was not something I personally wanted to play I never the less knew that the title would put SONY back on people’s radar again.
Both those amazing things were promised for a crucial Q3-Q4 2007 release, and why wouldn’t they come out then? Looking at that video again I am baffled at how polished and seemingly complete both titles looked as they each were being demoed live in front of dozens of journalists. Ultimately they were both delayed by over a year and as it suddenly hit me while I was watching that video again, Home, at the very least, has been delayed by over a year with little to nothing to show for the added development time.
Think about this for a second, the Home that we are now all waiting to get a Beta version of by the end of the year, is promised to deliver to us pretty much nothing more than what was demonstrated, seemingly already very polished and fully functioning back in March of 2007. So, I got to thinking, what was and is planned to happen in those intervening 20+ months? The previous schedule of Home, if I am not mistaken, was to provide us with a open Beta in Q3 of 2007 culminating in the full release in Q4 of the same year. Under the current schedule we are to be provided with the Beta version exactly a year later than the original full release date with the new full release now taking place sometime in 2009.
Perfection takes time.
Why did Home miss its original release date? I know a lot of people, Kazuo Hirai among them, excuse the delay with needing time to make sure everything is perfect, but everything we were shown in the demonstration back in March 2007 already looked like it was ready to go, and in the few videos we have been shown of the service since then no significant changes are apparent and more importantly nothing appears to have been added. The full list still reads, lobby, game room, theatre, game/product spaces, your private space and the trophy room. The last new additions to Home that were shown were the in Home launching of a game that was demonstrated at E3 of 2007 together with a revamped and bigger lobby, new personal spaces plus even more customizable avatars, but since then nothing else new has been shown, announce nor been rumoured or hinted. To paraphrase, E3 2007 took place in July of 2007, a short 4 months after Home being unveiled at GDC 2007. So, basically from our point of view the only thing Home has gained in almost a year has been delays excused with abstract reasons such as not wanting the service to launch until it is “perfect” or “ready”.
I’ve been doing a little digging and I’ve come to discover that Home currently exists in 2 different layers. Currently, and for a long while now, a select few have been chosen to participate in a closed Beta program for Home. Those that are hotly anticipating Home have been envious of these lucky few who got to experience it in all its glory long before anyone else got have a taste. But it seems that there exists another even more privileged group above that group because the Home that beta testers are testing is not the same Home that SONY is testing internally because the former has a lot of its pieces missing. The trophy room, for an example, has always been completely absent from the build of Home the closed Beta testers run around in. Several other parts of Home, including ones shown off as far back as GDC 2007 are also still absent or have been very late comers to the various builds given to the closed Beta testers.
It’s a mystery to me.
This discrepancy between what should be in the Home beta and what actually is seems strange, especially since SONY has been pretty tight lipped about Home in general. The inner workings of Home development is shrouded in mystery, and it is in that mystery that I place my hope that some cool new features have been in the works at the top end of the pyramid of secrecy. Knowing SONY though I do not put much stock behind this hope and am prepared to be fully disappointed to find out that once Home launches, more than a year late we get to only experience exactly what we were shown back in March of 2007. But it makes you wonder though, wonder how things could go so wrong with Home. What events taking place behind the scenes were responsible for the service that for all intents and purposes looked good to go to be delayed by over a year with absolutely nothing to show for it while at the same time reducing the impact and positive effect it could have had for SONY.
Software projects are always a rough beast to ride, and the bigger they are the harder they are to control or predict. The delay of Home could simply have been the classic case of incompetent people in charge of scheduling and assessing the progress of the project, ultimately culminating in an embarrassing premature revelation on SONY’s part. But it really is rather hard to accept that everyone involved could have been so daft as to not see that launching a full scale Beta in six months time was completely unrealistic and off the mark by well over a year. I mean, there was Phil running around in Home and showing us all the things we would be able to do, and it was all working. Everyone involved must have been pretty convinced that six short months was all they needed to tidy up all loose ends before unleashing the Beta upon the PlayStation community. They must have been, right? For them to go through all the trouble of preparing the keynote and unveil Home with much fanfare. What more, remembering that GDC was a developer centric show Phil put a lot of emphasis on them and the tools they would be provided with in order to be able to develop for Home and how easy it would be. Every way I think if it I can’t see how Phil Harrison, a dependable man, like all baldies are, could stand there and openly court the likes of EA and other big third party publisher and developers to create content for Home without having the SDK and tools ready to be delivered into their hands immediately once they approach SONY to get them. Anything else would have just been insane, but to this date I have not heard even one developer mention having received any such tools or SDK’s to start working with Home.
Maybe I am reading too much into it, but honestly, isn’t it all just a little surreal? Home, as we all should know, is being developed by the European arm of SONY, and Phil Harrison, who always had tight relations with Europe, was Home’s personal cheerleader and indeed it seemed it might have been his personal little pet project that, due to its unconventional nature, he no doubt must have pushed hard for to see developed. The budding conspiracy theorist in us all would waste no time in trying to find some connecti
on between the seemingly illogical delay of Home and Phil Harrison’s sudden and inexplicable departure from the company he had been with since the very beginning, in favour of Atari no less, a company with a history so rich in misfortune that one has to wonder if it has not become the target of some offended god. If you think I am going to continue building on this theory then you would be wrong, because that is all I got, the Home delay seems queer and Phil Harrison leaving SONY out of the blue doesn’t make things any less bizarre.
The Greatest Trick.
Home is a very hard thing to define in terms of purpose or target audience, but we can all agree that its ultimate purpose must have been to compete with the online and community aspects of SONY’s competitors. Bearing this in mind it would have been in every way in SONY’s best interest to see the service launch as soon as possible so that it might become widespread and accepted by as many gamers as possible as soon as possible. Phil Harrison, like some bald Houdini, pulled that white rabbit out of his hat at GDC 2007, catching most of us off guard and dazzled us by how they could have kept it all so secret long enough to have brought it to that level of polish. Everything was set to go, everyone actually expected to see it before year end, developers were already planning how to tie their games slated to come out in Q3-Q4 of 2007 to Home, trophies and all, but then nothing. The only time the trophy room is shown was at GDC 2007, and not a peep nor peek of it ever since; to the point where most people thought the feature might have been dropped. Phil raised many eyebrows by announcing their ambitious micro-transaction plan for things as absurd as t-shirts, furniture and houses inside Home, making us think sarcastic thoughts like, “what is next, virtual food for our avatars lest they starve?”, but then made up for it by telling us that crafty developers could create items that could be unlocked inside home when playing their games.
Unlocking items permanently available for use inside Home through games sounded like the greatest of all the ideas presented in Home, at the very least you must admit that if used right it would have a lot potential, even to the point of being able to compete with an abstract point award system. But, once again, since GDC 2007 that feature has not been shown or spoken of neither by SONY nor by developers who might want to use it. I hope it is still going to happen, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it might have been axed. Phil also presented another very cool feature of Home, one that could have potentially rendered game title specific websites moot. I am of course talking about the idea that third parties could create their own 3D spaces dedicated to their own games and offerings within Home. If used correctly then that feature could have allowed for an infinitely more cool ways of learning of a new game than by clicking into a boring old website. What more, other cool ideas such as meeting game developers and even holding live events within Home were mentioned.
Fool me once…
All of these things, if indeed they are still planned to roll out with Home, could have benefited immensely from the extra year to become adopted, developed and matured if Home had launched on time. When doing something so new and different usually a long while is needed for people to get used to it and understand it, specially the ones who will be contributing to the service independent of SONY. In other words by delaying Home SONY has shot themselves in the foot twice, and while they say it is because they want to get it right I say if you are just using that year to make small changes and tweaks then we would have all been better off if you had done those things after releasing it, because you are going to do it anyway as it is bound to be an ever evolving service, just like with the PS3 and its many firmware updates.
When a game is delayed people get pissed but all ends up being well when it actually does launch with the delay having little effect beyond making people wait a bit longer. But Home is not a game, it is a service, a service that is meant to continue running and be used for the duration of the PS3’s life time. It is also a service whose success to a very large degree relies in users accepting and using it and to a much larger degree on developers adopting it. For that reasons the over one year delay of Home has consequences, dire consequences in fact. That one year delay robs the service of an entire year to mature under real life conditions while at the same time giving developers time to get used to supporting it and make it better.
Home, and the many services it brings with it, like trophies should have launched with the PS3 and every month it is not available is a month where SONY is not being competitive in this particular genre and a month where the service is not evolving. I hope for Home going to launch for real this year and I cling to my hope of it bringing at least something new and cool with it to offset the negative effects of the long delay.