Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz in an interview focusing on the Xbox 360’s five year anniversary, Neil Thompson, general manager for UK and Ireland, and Stephen McGill, UK marketing manager, have mentioned that the company has “no plans” to “do a PlayStation Home,” going so far as to referring to Sony’s social experiment as “a nice chat room I guess, not an awful lot more.”
Thompson and McGill go on to state how they don’t see any peripherals for Kinect in the future (rubber boat fans, we’re sorry), that they’re “very happy” with the attach rate of software to the new hardware device, and fully believe it’s possible to introduce a new IP at this late stage of a console’s life-cycle. We recommend checking out the full interview. It’s a great read.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz
4lf13
It’s been months since I last went on Home. I thought it was OK and freezeball was epic, I’ve never lost a single game of it. Some of the other games were quite good as well.
Spotter5
They forgot Sodium one and that new space shooter, both subscription and free to play MMO’s…
Grey_Ghost13
I’m surprised that TSA and us members haven’t tried championing Home more and integrating it into our meets or community more? But it does need to be better.
3shirts
The trouble is that it doesn’t integrate enough. It is just as much effort to get everyone into Home as it is into any other game so it’s a pointless extra step in a meet, which is a shame.
If you could launch straight into it quickly and everyone who is online was there it’d be great.
Imagine a TSA clubhouse and everyone just goes online, walk in there, and can join whatever game straight away without hosts having to manually add people etc. This is what Home should have offered but sadly doesn’t.
(Woop, 6000 TSA pts)
shields_t
Agreed, if Home ever became that I’d be keen. But the social aspect to me of loading up something that I don’t know a single person on my friends list uses really does seem a touch pointless to me.
Juelz345
See, that sounds awesome. I went into home the other day for the first time in months. And within 5 mins i remembered why i stayed away.
But having a properly functioning Club House that games could be set up in on a service that didn’t require an update every two weeks and constant loading would be nice.
BAGPUS
I think I remember that there was supposed to be an option that Home would be used as the PS3 interface instead of the XMB – but with all the features, so the PS3 would ‘load’ straight into Home – I always thought that wasn’t a bad idea.
The problem with Home is that it just feels a bit tacked on and not integrated enough. As with so many good Sony ideas the onus is put onto developers to include functionality – eg. game launching from home, in game music, rather than Sony making it part of every game.
Charmed_Fanatic
Not as Sony described, but i like HOME :)
rossthebassist
i dont even blame sony for homes failings, i blame 3rd paty support, Game launching could have been amazing, but how many games actualy program it in.
in terms of how i would have intergrated home, 2 options for your PS3, when it loads up, it just instantly puts you in your apartmant off line, when you sign into PSN obviously you can invite friends to come into you apartment space or obviously you into theres, effectivly putting you in your friends menu system, if your the invited you obviously see whats going on so if your mate goes to quicklaunch for black ops or summit it asks if your joining the party or exit back to your own apartment. whilst in apartment mode your seperate from the “HOME” experiance. i like the idea of the apartment which just starts up in the background with your playstation, its offline and simply connects when you invite your friend into your space. obviously it instantly kicks in voice comms,
beeje13
‘its a nice eyetoy i guess, nothing more’
couldn’t resist, sorry :P
solidsteven
Home is okay, but can take ages to load. there are a lot of free games on it and you can earn rewards but i really wish that sony would tie that in with the trophies. eg. get a trophy from fallout you will get a vault suit, or a iconic weapon from said game.
MS are starting to turn into fanboys imo. the same could be said for kinect. Home can be fun, but is not for everyone. Sorry that i rambled on. Sony should start doing more things to improve home.
Juelz345
“MS are starting to turn into fanboys imo”…
If MS are becoming Fanboys, then Sony have been fanboys. Sony have taken many a shot at Kinect (from Kevin Buttler adds, to full blown web sites). The difference is that what the MS representative said is in line with the feeling of a lot of PS3 users. Me and my friends were excited as all hell for Home, and it has disappointed everyone that i personally know. Sony’s jabs at Kinect, although funny, have been borderline juvenile.
The fact of the matter is, you have two competing companies that are fighting for consumer $’s this holiday. And it’s probably ok that each company is a “fanboy” of their own product.
ElGuason
lolMS