Home Still Far Away?
In an interview with gameindustry.biz, Sony’s Jamie MacDonald had this to say:
When do you intend to release Home to the public?
[...] It’s already out there in a closed beta and we’re going to an open beta in the next couple of months and then it will be available on the Cross Media Bar soon after. [...]
Are you going to have an open beta for everyday PlayStation 3 users?
At the moment the closed beta is employees, trusted third-parties and people like that. An open beta will be a wider audience but it won’t be open to everybody. We haven’t worked out the exact way of doing it but it will be invites to people to ask if they want to be part of it, and then depending on what the response is, we’ll have to have some way of deciding who can and who can’t take part.
This interview was posted on gameindustry.biz today. It’s the middle of September already and the open beta will begin “in the next couple of months”. Plus, they “haven’t worked out the exact way of doing it” yet either. This seems to suggest to me that Home won’t be coming to my home in September, October, or not even November. We’ll have to see…
Try now - 
September 13th, 2007 at 9:17 am
… not good news. What’s the hold up?
September 13th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Home has been completely re-built from the Beta version which is very very very very lacking….
The wait will be worth it.
September 13th, 2007 at 9:34 am
I’m sure it will be worth the wait, but at least give us a solid release date / month.
September 13th, 2007 at 9:53 am
thats it I have had … no christmas card for sony… gta got put back…. half life 2 has been pushed back and now home …. $%^@$% @^%^
September 13th, 2007 at 10:05 am
To be fair, GTA and HL2 weren’t Sony’s fault.
September 13th, 2007 at 10:23 am
you are off of the christmas card list too !
September 13th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Doh!
September 13th, 2007 at 11:05 am
The Beta of Home was sad…trust me.
The new one will be worth the wait for sure.
September 13th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Home, and Half Life 2 is delayed??? I seen Fatal Inertia came out for the freaking 360 already, WTF sony.
September 13th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
It’s software. Delays and overly optimistic ambitions are the norm.
First GTA4, then Mercs2 (not yet confirmed but it probably will be delayed), and now Home? 2007 is weakening… Still amazing though: R&C, Uncharted, Rock Band, GT5:P, UT3, CoD4… plenty of great stuff is still on track for the next few months.
September 13th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
What makes me laugh is the way Sony keeps reiterating that they’re been working on HOME since “before Second Life was around”.
OK. Second Life first launched in 2003.
Has it really taken Sony four years to get to this closed Beta. By the sounds of things it still doesn’t have the basic matchmaking functionality of the original Xbox live service. For my money this should have been feature #1. Everything else they have planned is just gravy.
I’ll admit I have the sony fanboy tendencies too, but this is hard to accept.
September 14th, 2007 at 2:28 am
I think they ment the Home Concept has been around before Second Life. Home was originally ment to be the PS2 online platform..
But Sony better get Home more open, ’cause I dont think people will wait around too long.. “..-Oh, its just overhyped Home..”