MTV Multiplayer › Home

Sony Developer Improves My View Of PS3 'Home,' But There's A Catch

Posted 10/6/08 9:00 am EST by in Home, PS3, PSN, Top Entries



Jack Buser, director of the PlayStation 3 virtual world "Home" project gave me a private demo of the service in midtown Manhattan last week. He was trying to impress me with "Home," which launches free to every PS3 owner this fall.

Buser was going to have to work hard.

I'm the guy who, following an unsupervised 10-minute session with the service, wrote the following about Home for Kotaku back in June:

Home is clearly still a work in progress, functioning not that differently from what you heard about more than a year ago. Whatever it needs to make it a hit, I don't think it's in there -- yet.

Here's how Buser tried to improve my view and impress me with "Home." His pitch was...psychological. Read More...

Sony at E3 2007 -- One Year Later

Posted 7/8/08 8:15 am EST by in e3, Home, PS3, PSN, PSP, Uncategorized


Sony's 2008 E3 briefing kicks off one week from today. Today we're looking back at their E3 event from last year to see what they promised and what came true.

If anyone had something to prove at E3 2007, it was Sony.

The Wii had shown it was more than a holiday phenomenon and Microsoft's year-long lead was proving more damaging than Sony had anticipated.

Whereas Microsoft's conference (we'll get to that tomorrow) focused almost exclusively on 2007, Sony needed to convince the faithful that their expensive hardware purchase was going to pay off.

It was go big or go home. At the conference, they announced:

* Slim PSP introduced
* "Echochrome," "Wipeout HD," "Infamous," others announced
* Home integrated on mobile phones, fall release date
* MMO creator NCSoft pledged exclusivity to PS3
* "Haze," "Unreal Tournament III" became PS3 exclusives

So, what's happened in the year since then?

Read More...

Impressions Of Sony PS3's Home Beta

Posted 6/24/08 6:51 pm EST by in Home, PS3


Over at Kotaku I posted about a surprise visit I had a chance to recently make to the PS3's still-in-beta Home service, which is supposed to be a virtual world social space for all Sony console owners once it launches.

The bottom line is that it was both hard to judge without other people in it and a bit underwhelming in its lack of significant new features since I saw it a year ago.

An excerpt from my write-up:

Now I know why they're not inviting the press yet. Home is still in its good-in-theory phase. In execution it's still lacking. I'm all for Betas having rough edges. That's the point. But I was surprised that the Home Beta doesn't seem to have that something special — the thing that yet makes it obvious it's going to be a hit.

The full post's at Kotaku: My Brief Surprise Visit To Sony's PS3 Home Beta

Phil Harrison Can't Say 'Alone In The Dark' PS3 Will Support Home, Trophies

Posted 5/28/08 4:04 pm EST by in achievements, Alone In The Dark, Home, PS3


Atari's "Alone in the Dark" arrives on Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, Wii and PC next month.

It won't arrive on PlayStation 3 until later, which means it could include support for the PS3's virtual world Home service and the system's Achievements-like system called trophies.

Home was one of Phil Harrison's babies at Sony, where he served as head of worldwide studios until a couple of months ago. He always seemed very proud of what Sony could accomplish with Home. But it didn't happen while he was there.

I figured that now that he's president of Atari's parent company, Infogrames, he might have some insight on whether "Alone in the Dark" could support Home and incorporate trophies later this year.

"If the libraries are available, then yeah, I would hope that the PS3 version can take advantage of that," he told me last week.

No Home guarantees yet, readers. Not even from Phil Harrison.

Sony Reveals 'Home' Trophies and Electronic Arts Wonders Why They Should Care (GDC 2008)

Posted 2/22/08 12:20 pm EST by in GDC, Home, PS3, Revenue


HomeWe were a little disappointed by Sony at this year's Game Developers Conference. Last year, they showed gathered journalists "Killzone 2" and rocked the boat a little bit with "Little Big Planet" and the first look at "Home."

Nothing of that magnitude came this time around, but they did hold an hour-long panel yesterday on the still-mostly-mysterious "Home" for interested developers.

The panel itself revealed precious little more about "Home" that hasn't already been leaked from gamers in the beta or announced by Sony. We did, however, get an interesting look at some example trophies that gamers could theoretically collect for participating in some of the mini-games (i.e. bowling) scattered in "Home"'s virtual spaces.

In an upcoming update to the Home Development Kit (HDK), companies will have a chance to start modeling these trophies themselves and playing with them in "Home."

Much of the presentation was spent looking at ways of developing and implementing objects into "Home," from the aforementioned trophies to sillier items like a bubble machine or a camera to take virtual photos with a friend's "Home" avatar. Sony says users will have the opportunity to take one item into a public space at a time, though that could change between now and the final release of "Home" sometime in 2008.

If you were wondering: yes, that release date remains completely vague; Sony made no mention of an updated release schedule for "Home" at GDC. What we did see, however, was an interesting back-and-forth between an Electronic Arts developer in the audience who questioned the motivation for even creating content for "Home."

When asked, "Why should I develop for Home?" James Cox, Senior Producer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, didn't seem ready for the question, as a long pause dangled in the audience. Eventually, the EA employee clarified his statement, instead wondering what the draw was for third parties without a clear revenue model in place.

Even then, Cox didn't exactly have a clear answer. Earlier in the presentation, Cox mentioned that publishers have the option of making items pay-to-play, but that wasn't a requirement, and he simply told the employee to call Sony if he was interested in a more formal pitch on the revenue possibilities for "Home."

I wonder if he'll actually call.

12