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• Home: Your Virtual World Sucks

  So it looks like Sony's Home is having a few problems, though I could have told you this was going to happen a year ago--and smugly, too, because I'm a jerk.  But rest assured; I'm not the only one on the Internet who thinks he knows everything. The general consensus with Home since its initial announcement has been "Really? They're still doing that? Well, good for them, I guess."  In this case, I think the poor developers can be excused; you have to really feel for them on this project, what with its monstrous scope and need for indefinite maintenance as a permanent beta.  What's blameworthy in the whole Home fiasco is the fundamentally flawed idea of a virtual world, which seemed like the coolest idea in the world until we all got computers and discovered all the things we wanted them to do were completely asinine.  As a society, we shared a day of lament for ever liking Lawnmower Man. Read More... Posted Jan 02 2009, 04:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: home, persona, ps3, virtual reality, virtual spaces

• Playstation Home: All Your Worst Fears Realized To Hilarious Results

  As previously noted, Home is upon us, and yea, it is utterly pointless. Right now, Playstation Home is Second Life with more load time, more frequent advertisements, and fewer people to interact with. Oh, there is the promise that someday there will be content and it will be a glowing interactive testament to our lives as gamers, and even that doesn't sound particularly attractive, but for now it's pretty much a waste of digital space and real time. Well, actually, I take that back. Home so far has been good for one thing: painting an accurate portrait of its users. I, apparently, have been lucky my whole life to have had the social grace and fortune to talk to and befriend girls. All the jokes about gamers being Dungeon Master mouthbreathers who'd never seen a real live girl before seemed like wild charicatures of fictional persons to me. I would like to thank Playstation Home for finally showing me what kind of imbeciles I'd been ignoring this whole time. Read More... Posted Dec 18 2008, 02:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: playstation 3, home, derrick sanskrit, sony, joystiq, Playstation home, quincy

• Getting Started With Home: A Diary

  Home is here! After waiting for countless months with fairly few details on what exactly Home is, it’s finally here! To build up my expectations, I’m going to pick a screenshot at random and base all of my presumptions on that: Okay, so…nothing is happening. No, wait! I see one lady doing a crotch thrust at another lady. At a party that’s only ladies. Except for that one guy, who I think is about to do a cartwheel up the stairs. How illuminating! 4:41 – Alright, Home Home Home. Where is it…ah, Sony put an icon for it right on the XMB, no asking, no explanation. That’s kind of presumptuous of it. At least it’s only 77MB, and it asks to be installed. 4:45 – Wait, I spoke too soon, the first thing Home does when you start it up is ask to reserve 3077MB. You 20GB PS3 users might want to make note of that. I’ll give it the space, for now. I’ll even accept the End User License Agreement without reading it, a habit that I’m sure will result in having my kidneys forcibly removed one day. 4: 48 – Okay, now Home is playing a fun minigame with me. It’s called “count the connection errors.” So far I’ve gotten two, the plain vanilla “connection error” and the uncommon “request timed out”. It’s like an MMO launch, except I'm not 100% sure I even want to connect at all. 4:54 – Read error! That’s three. I’m totally winning at Home. 5:12 – Response parse error. That’s four. This is probably a good time to remind everyone that when a company releases free software as a “public beta,” that’s code for “don’t be surprised if we bone the launch.” 5:29 – Things to do while waiting for Home to start working:     Find and clean up the Bluetooth headset that fell behind the printer six months ago. Ugh, I don't think I want to put this in my ear.     Check out Echochrome’s newly updated trophy support.     Dream of having something better to do on a Thurday night than reading the words “request timed out” over and over. 5:49 – Wow, I’m actually connected to Home. Only took 68 minutes! Time to create a character. I’m choosing “Preset 4,” because I love fauxhawks and wife beaters. Read More... Posted Dec 11 2008, 07:10 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: playstation 3, home, sony, joe keiser, Playstation home, connection error

• Heading Home: Revisiting the Curious Case of Playstation Home

  Sony said it was coming before 2008 breathed its last and, hey, here it is. Playstation Home will finally be open to the public as of tomorrow, close to two years after it was announced and a full year after its original release window. But even though PS3 owners across the world will finally be able to download Home 1.0, it still isn’t abundantly clear what they’re going to be able to do in Home once they get there. Here are the things I am one-hundred percent certain you will be able to do in Home on Thursday. Read More... Posted Dec 10 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, grand theft auto iv, playstation 3, home, sony, far cry 2, Playstation home, the watchmen, red bull

• The Curious Case of Playstation Home

  I sometimes forget that Playstation Home, Sony’s proposed Frankenstein Monster that blends Xbox Live-like online service with an American Apparel-ad-meets-Second Life 3D space, even exists. Following its debut at GDC 2007, I was intrigued by the idea, but in the intervening eighteen months, Home has yet to materialize in any meaningful way. A closed beta trial of the service launched way back in April 2007, preceding a tentative launch later that fall, and that beta has since been extended half a dozen times. Home’s actual launch is out there, somewhere in the unknowable vaporware-future, and thankfully so. According to any and all hands-on reports from beta testers, Home is a ghost town, empty but for a scant few trendy avatars wandering the eerie Logan’s Run-style wasteland, hunting for an awkwardly animated dance party that may never happen. Read More... Posted Sep 23 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: home, nintendo, microsoft, xbox 360, sony, animal crossing, Playstation, uncharted, warhawk

• SCEE Playstation Day 2K8 Roundup: Killzone 2, Home, Little Big Planet Dated

  Sony kicked off the summer announcement season in a big way this past Tuesday at their Playstation Day event. While the lack of original IP announcements was disappointing, the details and release date information on a number of their high profile sequels painted a very healthy portrait of the Playstation 3 in 2008. Read More... Posted May 09 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, little big planet, playstation 3, scee, motorstorm, killzone, home, resistance