Comments on: Top 7 Reasons Why PlayStation Home Will Succeed

By: Henry Harris

Henry Harris — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:57:30 +0000

I agree Darrin and I’m hoping some creative person at Sony will take the reins. They have the resources. They just need a vision. I would replace their cutesy popup menu with a 3D globe of the Earth, not hard to do and that would be the first step to provide a sense of space. Select a game from a menu and the globe would rotate and then zoom into the game (if it took place on Earth). Then I would make a rule that anything you can see should eventually (as budget permits) be reachable. When you get a house or apartment, the view should be different for each place and reachable by foot. I would replace the “transporter” effect with just walking out the door and going to where you want. The PS3 is certainly powerful enough to do all of this. They can limit memory resource requirements by dividing the Earth (or universe) into sections.

In other words, Home needs to be a place, not just a postcard.

By: darrin

darrin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:38:53 +0000

Henry, I agree with pretty much all of your criticisms.

Personally, I prefer big, ambitious, ground-breaking products with tons of glaring flaws over a simple, safe product that simply adds polish and small tweaks to a well-established formula.

Home is definitely in the former category.

By: Henry Harris

Henry Harris — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 12:02:08 +0000

When I first heard about Home I was really excited. With the resources of a big company like Sony, I knew they could create an exciting virtual universe. That’s what I thought. Unfortunately I forgot the downside of big companies AKA bureaucracy.

The absolute dumbest thing about Home is that in their hurry to sell games and make money, they forget what it is they were trying to do. Home only makes sense if it creates the illusion of a physical space. Instead the design is more like an extremely awkward interface to a computer. Want to go somewhere? Select from a menu. In fact everything in Home is menu driven. If all you’re going to do is select from menus, what is the point of drawing a virtual space?

Okay, I have an apartment. Pretty cool, except it has exactly the same view that everyone else has! And I can’t go to that view. It’s just a picture. In fact everyone has the same view! This has got to be the most boring attempt to create a virtual space ever.

Okay, there are also places you can go to inspired by PS3 games. How do you get there? Use a menu, which completely and utterly destroys any sense of physical space. There is no creativity at work here. Try selling a game where locations are items on a menu. Even the makers of the first primitive graphic computer games knew better than that!

And to take the cake, the latest version is jerky. You can’t even walk somewhere without the computer reminding you that this is just a bad, menu driven, stuttering piece of bad, bad programing.

It’s sad when a good idea is given such an incompetent realization. The really sad thing is all it would take to be successful would be one creative person to straighten this mess out. But, unfortunately, that’s not the way most big companies work. More likely, they’ll form a committee and vote on it while being very careful not to bruise the egos of those in power. And that’s the problem. They forgot that Home should be work of art. Instead it’s just a very staid and boring business.

By: Franklin

Franklin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:50:47 +0000

Home is rubbish, its only use is to annoy the idiots that take it seriously.

By: Darrin

Darrin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:17:50 +0000

All valid gripes: Fix loading, remove startup screens, improve clubhouse, cross-game chat, more character customization… Also stop constantly looping the Godfather trailer while I try to play the poker game. That is maddeningly annoying.

Bottom line, today it’s mostly a prototype for what’s to come and a great chat client. Xi is pretty cool also.

I love WoW (gave it up) but I wouldn’t say I love Home yet… it’s just not fleshed out enough yet. But I expect that I will love it in the future.

By: mrbeab

mrbeab — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:57:42 +0000

Home sucks! There is no use for it other than to see other gamers upgrade and show off their avatar. I went to Gamestop to look for a game, I couldn’t find any game that I like that I don’t already have. Where are all the RPG and adventure games. I love fps/3rd person shooter games, but so sick that every game that comes out is a shooter.

By: ChrisW

ChrisW — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 09:24:19 +0000

Quick question. For those that say they LOVE it, do you also really like other social rooms (ie. 2nd Life) or even MMORPGs (ie. WoW)? I really think there’s a common link.

By: Squidgy

Squidgy — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 02:22:14 +0000

I love Home, I’m a big fan,
And i agree, it has a future.

But like you say, The loading times are horrible. It’s annoying pressing X to continue and then having to wait for my area to load.
and then when your actually in Home, i dislike the wait to get from one location to another (such as main square to bowling) it takes about a minute just to load.

Maybe they could do a no loading screens thing just like that Tony Hawks game did on ps2. Even though you had to walk through a building with nothing to do but walk, it was better than watching a screen saying “loading”.

But that’s pretty much it… otherwise its good (unless my downloads are capped, and it gets extremely slow)