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[AndyD]

Don't buy that..kits started going out the middle of 2007, version 1.0 was out since GDC this year at least.

I don't know what was in those kits, but I assume home matchmaking was in there at least, if not also item unlocking. Warhawk patched in home matchmaking ages ago now. There was no reason Sony couldn't have cracked the whip to have all their games supporting this for open beta. Namco Home Museum has item unlocking, so I guess the tools for that have been available for at least a while also.

I dunno, maybe we'll get the open beta and find other games that have support for matchmaking, who knows..but they've been keeping very quiet on that.

Actually one of the home devs said recently that while initial kits went out a while back, they have been tweaking the settings and abilities throughout. I don't imagine a "final" final kit went out until much more recently, if it has yet. And like trophies, any mandatory integration wont come until 6 months after launch of a feature (so June 11) as Sony said their policy is 6 months from something being out.

They also said the game launching hooks are a piece of cake to implement, as they are just command line commands essentially which are already related to the way PSN servers work.

So while we may not see mandatory Home support for every Home feature, we may see mandatory game launching abilities. I hope.

 

[sajj316]

One thing that I would like to point out is the importance of synergy...

HOME needs to be driven by a trophy reward system (which I think it will be). Trophies will help the drive of sales in retail if you get something out of it thus supplementing the game experience. I buy games for trophies. I get trophies for items in HOME. The more items I get in HOME the better my user experience all around. In the end its a win-win for both you, me, Sony, and third parties.

Just my thoughts ...

 

[VictimOfGrief]

Basically HOME is the Facebook of the PS3 network. What's not to love?

 

[gofreak]

Actually one of the home devs said recently that while initial kits went out a while back, they have been tweaking the settings and abilities throughout.

The API interface should have remained pretty stable though. And Warhawk has kept working throughout.

Just to put some more precise dates on this - the Warhawk patch with launching support was released in April. Furthermore, the details of the patch, including the Home support, was announced as early as Febuary, suggesting that the team had the tools for doing that back then.

If the Warhawk devs were able to start doing this nearly a year ago, then why Sony couldn't have mandated to even their own developers for all games from Fall 2008, at least, to have these hooks is beyond me entirely. Certainly, there should be a lot more support for it than one title! And maybe I'll be surprised, and there will be, whenever they get the open beta up.

But I'm really surprised that such support hadn't previously been confirmed in all of Sony's late 08 games, if not even more broadly than that. If games were going to support it, you'd think they'd say so, so I kind of doubt there will be (m)any more supporting titles out of the gate.

edit - Also, the dates above suggest that these tools were in fact there in preparation for a Spring launch, the second date Sony put on Home. When Kaz Hirai said he was delaying to focus Home on games, I figured that it was to give devs more time to integrate their games..yet here we are 8 months after Warhawk integrated that support, and to our knowledge, there are no more supporting it, even amongst Sony games.

 

[fatigues_gasolini]

Basically HOME is the Facebook of the PS3 network. What's not to love?

People pretend like they have to pay for it, and they are forced to use it.

 

[radioheadrule83]

To be fair, warhawk has fairly spectacular online implimentation and support, not all games may have been done so well. I can't see Littlebigplanet getting that group-jump-in functionality for a while for example... thats sometimes ropey enough from in the game itself. Only isolating and picking on that game because its one of the very few I've had a bad experience with btw.

 

[AndyD]

The API interface should have remained pretty stable though. And Warhawk has kept working throughout.

Just to put some more precise dates on this - the Warhawk patch with launching support was released in April. Furthermore, the details of the patch, including the Home support, was announced as early as Febuary, suggesting that the team had the tools for doing that back then.

Or it could be that they used Warhawk as a testbed to develop the APIs. We dont know what changed behind the scenes. And surely both Warhawk and Home have been updated quite a few times since.

But like you say, we wont know what really happened. As long as most first party games get the feature within a months or two its no big deal.

 

[radioheadrule83]

Basically HOME is the Facebook of the PS3 network. What's not to love?

Hopefully it won't enable people to ask me to join vampires or warewolves, fill in a quiz or ask me to join some other lame spam scam, but I hope it retains the social networking usefulness of something like Facebook. For all people hate on it, its good for keeping people in touch in a user friendly non-commital sort of way.

 

[Pizza Luigi]

I totally missed all of this and I accidentally read that Home would be launching today, so please inform me for a bit.

Has it launched already, because when I turn on my PS3, I see nothing that points to the HOME Release.

If yes, how do I get and it and if no, when will it arrive?

 

[radioheadrule83]

I totally missed all of this and I accidentally read that Home would be launching today, so please inform me for a bit.

Has it launched already, because when I turn on my PS3, I see nothing that points to the HOME Release.

If yes, how do I get and it and if no, when will it arrive?

Your guess is as good as ours I'd expect

http://community.eu.playstation.com...thread.id=58096&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

 

[patsu]

Basically HOME is the Facebook of the PS3 network. What's not to love?

There is a big difference. Facebook dwells mostly on your existing friends, and your friends' friends, so on and so forth.

In Home, it is also important for Home to encourage people to make new friends. The existing gamer friends circle is rather "small" compared to a full-fledge social networking service on the Internet.

Home should also focus on extending the value of games (DLC and what not).

 

[MThanded]

Will they be eventually launching a community site or at least a facebook plugin? That would make this even more useful. I am excited to use this.

 

[WinFonda]

One thing that I would like to point out is the importance of synergy...

HOME needs to be driven by a trophy reward system (which I think it will be). Trophies will help the drive of sales in retail if you get something out of it thus supplementing the game experience. I buy games for trophies. I get trophies for items in HOME. The more items I get in HOME the better my user experience all around. In the end its a win-win for both you, me, Sony, and third parties.

Just my thoughts ...

I agree with you. If they can tie in the individual games to home in meaningful ways, the experience will blossom and people will want to use it. It should evolve to a point where you couldn't imagine yourself wanting to play a game without the Home integration.

If you look at trophies and achievements as mini game experiences unto themselves, then Home should be like the next level of that meta-game. And as you said, a synergistic Game <---> Home experience would bolster sales of all types of games.

 

[Oni Jazar]

Comment on the PS Blog:

December 11th, 2008 at 11:41 am

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to quickly jump in and let you know we're not live yet. We'll let you know here on the blog when we go live.

Hang tight!

Jack

 

[chespace]

It wouldn't take a huge dev team to do basic stuff like messaging, chat, and invites standardized across all titles and integrated with the XMB; it would certainly be a smaller dev team than you need for Home. I'm making an educated guess (I could be wrong) that the problem is SCEJ controls the XMB and they just don't get the whole online thing.

This.

From talking to my friends at Sony, this seems to be what they all tell me. Japan just doesn't get online or the importance of investing dev resources into online functionality.

 

[anonymousAversa]

So we're not live yet, right?

it's 2:55pm EST here, making it 11:55am PST and 7:55 UK time I believe

 

[andycapps]

Anyone else from the internal US beta notice that the beta forum is completely gone? That or I got removed. :lol My bookmark doesn't work and the beta tab isn't showing up on my Playstation account there.

Obviously open beta is here, I just didn't think they'd take down the private forum this fast.

 

[WinFonda]

This.

From talking to my friends at Sony, this seems to be what they all tell me. Japan just doesn't get online or the importance of investing dev resources into online functionality.

Pretty sure you're taking that out of context. That's a comment made specifically towards Japanese developers designing games. SCEA has for the most part an autonomous arm and they can add to the PSN/XMB however they like. See: Eric Lempel.

 

[fatigues_gasolini]

This.

From talking to my friends at Sony, this seems to be what they all tell me. Japan just doesn't get online or the importance of investing dev resources into online functionality.

This is very disappointing. You'd think a company that tries to be on the bleeding edge of technology is still bogged down by cultural influences in its worldwide business practices.

 

[andycapps]

This.

From talking to my friends at Sony, this seems to be what they all tell me. Japan just doesn't get online or the importance of investing dev resources into online functionality.

Sadly true, except that I don't have friends at Sony... :lol

I really don't think SCEJ understands the west's obsession with online features and gameplay. Hopefully Yoshida can make some changes and change this mentality. The game output from SCEJ (in terms of quantity) has been horrendous thus far, so nowhere to go but up.

 

[Beer Monkey]

People pretend like they have to pay for it, and they are forced to use it.

Alternatively for some of us the problem isn't with Home itself, it's functions that shouldn't be tucked away inside of some app that you can choose to run. More basic community functions should be built right into the environment that everybody boots into when they turn on the system.

 

[chespace]

Pretty sure you're taking that out of context. That's a comment made specifically towards Japanese developers designing games. SCEA has for the most part an autonomous arm and they can add to the PSN/XMB however they like. See: Eric Lempel.

The context of our conversation was specifically on the shortcomings of XMB and PSN so it was the correct frame of reference. As for whether SCEA is autonomous to act in terms of pushing firmware upgrades for the entire platform, you could be right as my friend did not specify beyond that "Japan just doesn't get it."

 

[sajj316]

This.

From talking to my friends at Sony, this seems to be what they all tell me. Japan just doesn't get online or the importance of investing dev resources into online functionality.

My thoughts as well. Even though they might be small projects from a western perspective the company initiatives are very much eastern driven. Until SCEJ and largely SCE take this focus seriously ... it will always play catchup to companies like MS where networking and online functionality is important. I've always wondered why Phil Harrison left worldwide studios but who was Mr. social gaming + networking + Mr. HOME + Mr. LBP etc? I bet those initiatives weren't well received by SCE execs in Japan.

 

[Dedication Through Light]

As I did when this was first announced. Im still sitting and twiddling my thumbs. Im so anxious for it.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

Home is fucking awesome. It's one of the "I've turned on the console. What should I do?" thing. When you don't know what to do, you go Home.

That said, I can't wait to see more content. I really hope US Theatre gets as awesome as EU Theatre.

Hell, I hope US Home gets all the good stuff from other locations. I need more chess tables too!

 

[WinFonda]

The context of our conversation was specifically on the shortcomings of XMB and PSN so it was the correct frame of reference. As for whether SCEA is autonomous to act in terms of pushing firmware upgrades for the entire platform, you could be right as my friend did not specify beyond that "Japan just doesn't get it."

Phil Harrison made similar comments when he was at SCEE and basically said it's tough working with the Japanese developers because they don't get the importance of online functionality. I don't think that applies to the overall functionality of PSN/XMB though, seeing as SCEA definitely has a branch dedicated to improving it.

 

[chespace]

I don't have any hard numbers to back this up, but I have a hunch the Japanese are slowly starting to come around to the concept of online gaming -- a trend that would be very much appreciated by Wii and PS3 owners in America I'm sure.

 

[AndresON777]

This open beta is going to suck for my pool games, there's only what...6 tables?

 

[Nafai1123]

This.

From talking to my friends at Sony, this seems to be what they all tell me. Japan just doesn't get online or the importance of investing dev resources into online functionality.

One word...Wii.

Can you really blame them?

 

[sajj316]

I don't have any hard numbers to back this up, but I have a hunch the Japanese are slowly starting to come around to the concept of online gaming -- a trend that would be very much appreciated by Wii and PS3 owners in America I'm sure.

White Knight Chronicles

 

[Revolutionary]

This open beta is going to suck for my pool games, there's only what...6 tables?

Yeah but there's several instances of the Bowling Alley so you'll probably be good.

 

[Stinkles]

Home is fucking awesome. It's one of the "I've turned on the console. What should I do?" thing. When you don't know what to do, you go Home.

That said, I can't wait to see more content. I really hope US Theater gets as awesome as EU Theatre.

Hell, I hope US Home gets all the good stuff from other locations. I need more chess tables too!

Fixed.

 

[andycapps]

To expound on my previous post, apparently the private beta forum has now been moved to an open forum here. At least now I can repeat what they say here and not worry about spilling info that shouldn't be spilled.

They've mentioned should be up soon but don't have an ETA, just some technical server side issues they're working on. Can be downloaded from PSN store by anyone, etc etc etc. I'll actually be getting online later to check out the new main square, Uncharted and Far Cry 2 spaces.

 

[radioheadrule83]

Even playing catch-up to MS, Sony're still ass-pounding Nintendo in this arena.

Frustratingly, Nintendo might be getting the message that it doesn't matter thanks to their runaway success. Miis were a great opportunity to create social networking identities for a cohesive network, firmware updates were an opportunity to introduce new functionality that would persist through already released games, but they designed Wii as such that the system menu terminates once it launches a game. Friend codes. Its a shame, because games like Mario Strikers and Mario Kart are wonderful fun online, as you would imagine many Nintendo IPs would be

Anyway, I won't digress further on that -- my point is, even Sony at their delayed suckiest are still pretty good and offer a lot thats taken for granted.

 

[antiloop]

I don't have any hard numbers to back this up, but I have a hunch the Japanese are slowly starting to come around to the concept of online gaming -- a trend that would be very much appreciated by Wii and PS3 owners in America I'm sure.

It's a big problem that they don't play shooters.

MMORPG's aren't that common on consoles so far..

 

[radioheadrule83]

This open beta is going to suck for my pool games, there's only what...6 tables?

Can you put change down on the table?

 

[gofreak]

At the original E3 '05, SCEJ presented what was a far more ambitious vision of their online service than what was subsequently delivered (at least until in-game xmb arrived). They also seem to have bought into Home pretty readily, even merging trophies into the SCEJ XMB team (trophies are no longer the sole remit of the Home team).

I can very well believe there's huge incoherency between various teams and departments even within SCE in this regard, but I don't know if I believe SCEJ is basically cockblocking stuff, particularly now with a more Western-attuned head (i.e. Hirai) who ought to be very well acquainted with, and sympathetic to the advice of his western departments on this front. PSN's core stuff also isn't solely under SCEJ...a lot of the work is/was done by SOE people too.

 

[anonymousAversa]

*twiddles thumbs*


still homeless, even though its later than 8pm in almost all of the SCEE countries!

 

[Ello]

Very sorry about the delay here. The PSN outage really set us back a while but things are picking up again. And apologies for the delay in updates, I had to get home to continue with this. Looks like we're not far off now though.

http://community.eu.playstation.com...thread.id=58096&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

 

[Barso]

SONY sort this shit out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have been on the beta for 8 months and you still can't get this up and running on release!
YEAH,YEAH,YEAH I know its free and what right have I to complain but come on for fucks sake!
No wonder people take there PS3s into game shops and trade for a 360.
Sony really,really needs to get all their departments working together as a unified business.
They own sony columbia pictures with access to the james bond and spiderman franchise etc. and the 360 gets netflix.
Where are the movie downloads?
You already lost me street fighter HD sale to the 360 because SCEE can't get off their arses and release it to the EU market.
I mean we can only take so mant little big planet costumes ( the game was a flop sales wise now move on)
SORT SONY OUT, SSO the new ad campaigh begins.

 

[brandonh83]

GAF's new ad campaign should be CTFO (Chill the Fuck Out) :lol

 

[Nightz]

SONY sort this shit out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have been on the beta for 8 months and you still can't get this up and running on release!
YEAH,YEAH,YEAH I know its free and what right have I to complain but come on for fucks sake!
No wonder people take there PS3s into game shops and trade for a 360.
Sony really,really needs to get all their departments working together as a unified business.
They own sony columbia pictures with access to the james bond and spiderman franchise etc. and the 360 gets netflix.
Where are the movie downloads?
You already lost me street fighter HD sale to the 360 because SCEE can't get off their arses and release it to the EU market.
I mean we can only take so mant little big planet costumes ( the game was a flop sales wise now move on)
SORT SONY OUT, SSO the new ad campaigh begins.

We have our first meltdown.:lol

 

[radioheadrule83]

It sounds like they've nearly got it sorted. Its only - what - 2 or 3 hours since the shop update?

They really shouldn't have posted that it would be up today until they were closer to doing it. Unless their intention was to provoke interest so they could stress test their servers.

 

[EktorPR]

http://community.eu.playstation.com...thread.id=58096&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

:/

 

[lionelhutz]

SONY sort this shit out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have been on the beta for 8 months and you still can't get this up and running on release!
YEAH,YEAH,YEAH I know its free and what right have I to complain but come on for fucks sake!
No wonder people take there PS3s into game shops and trade for a 360.
Sony really,really needs to get all their departments working together as a unified business.
They own sony columbia pictures with access to the james bond and spiderman franchise etc. and the 360 gets netflix.
Where are the movie downloads?
You already lost me street fighter HD sale to the 360 because SCEE can't get off their arses and release it to the EU market.
I mean we can only take so mant little big planet costumes ( the game was a flop sales wise now move on)
SORT SONY OUT, SSO the new ad campaigh begins.

 

[Catalix]

I'm in! (US)

Re-downloading my Summer House now...

 

[cameltoe]

^ you son of a bitch

 

[gofreak]

Yeah, seems to be up now.

 

[Crisis]

Hey guys. Home is up in the United States. And it's rated eC. :lol

The new Central Plaza is very nice indeed.

 

[LowParry]

Well then. I best get this HOME started up with downloading. Fun times!