Welcome Home
Think the PlayStation 3's online experience is bare bones? Think again.
Published: March 7, 2007
"It's like someone puked an IKEA catalog all over Second Life and then the Wii's Miis and the 360's achievements played in the aftermath."
Okay, so nobody actually said that aloud, but it's probably the easiest way we can think of to describe PlayStation Home, Sony's grand scheme for linking game-specific rewards, social networking, custom avatar-based online personas and... well, that oh so slick design aesthetic that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe does best.
Maybe a better analogy is all the best parts of all consoles' online experiences chopped up, seasoned with some PlayStation spices and cooked up in a sexy HD omlette. The basic idea of the other guys are here; custom avatars and rewards for in-game accomplishments, but they're given that Sony sum-sum that makes it all seem... cool.
Here's the basic idea: When Home launches at the end of the year (after a handful of beta trials both internally and externally), it'll be coughed up as a free download that allows you to log into a main hub where you can customize your character's face with an EA Sports level of depth, throw on a bunch of clothes (either from what comes with the game, stuff you find on game discs, or things you actually pay for) and start shooting the shizz with any other PlayStation 3 users that are also online and all decked out in their various online personae.
From the main lobby, you can jump into a private space with someone (a while lot more on that in a second) play a handful of simple arcade games like bowling, pool or even old-school 80's-style coin-op distractions, all from within the HD-resolution world. All the while, streamed adverts and HD-quality video are running all over the world, and will be refreshed with what are sure to be the first of many major product ads (hey, gotta monetize a free service somehow, eh?), but they're just the tip of the media iceberg.
In a sign of what we hope is growing convergence between the media empire that is Sony, a theatre offers a common lobby, where trailers will play (yes, in hi-def), and side rooms show specific trailers or movies that are pre-set. Even within these rooms, you can chat with folks or zoom in on the flick and enjoy it all movie-style. Immediately, it's obvious that this is not the segregated Sony of old at work, but the kind of spirited minds that put the original PlayStation in UK clubs to build the cool factor in the first place.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in what you're allowed to do in your own personal space. Ranging from smallish apartments with Scandinavian- and UK influenced-influenced furniture and a massive two-wall windowed view of the HDR bloomed lake that snakes past a futuristic bridge and far-off verdant hills to nigh-palatial split-level pimp cribs with an outside deck that nearly kisses that same stream, your online digs are merely a channel for presenting all the stuff on your PS3.
Specifically, anyone chilling at your digital pad can listen (or, uh, are forced to listen) to your MP3s stored on the PS3 hard drive. The tunes blare from your stereo, and the closer or farther away you are, the louder or far-off it sounds. Moreover, any photos you have can be shown on a simple frame hanging on the wall, and any videos you have are streamed from a TV you have in your house (in the case we were shown, a Bravia LCD).
All of these things -- including all the furniture in the house -- are physics-based, and you have absolute control over where they're placed in the room. (Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios head cheese Phil Harrison even joked you could stack a bunch of couches in the corner if you wanted to. Later on, he had someone toss that oh so sexy Bravia down the stairs). When you've got a handful of friends kicking back with you, everyone can jump into the same game and play together, then when they quit out, they're right back in your Home.
Of course, round-about matchmaking and hooking up with that hot girl who is really a 300 pound dude chilling in a dank basement somewhere in the Midwest is all well and good, but all nerds have inherent need to show off their accomplishments in game, which is where the Hall of Fame comes in. In sort of an evolution of the PlayStation 2 save icon concept, game-specific 3D animated trophies can be earned and showcased around the middle of your hall of fame. Other users can then pull up a simple carousel with awards for games, and, in a rather dramatic show of the scalability of things, an almost unlimited number of trophy cases waited outside the main foyer.
It was, in a word, cool -- all of it. It reeked of Sony Europe's particular approach to things, but more importantly, it was a detailed look at the future of the PlayStation 3 when the silence coming out of Sony was near-deafening. If the vibe from last night's press event was any indication, people were starting to see that all that silence and bad press Sony had scooped up -- sometimes for no other reason than folks just trying to be sensationalistic -- wasn't because they didn't care. It was simply because they were waiting to show this.
We've got plenty of media from the event, including a descriptive trailer of Home and some screens and movies of the other big surprise out of the keynote that we'll talk about soon. For now, though, dig into Home via the images and videos we've got on hand, and we'll update you as soon as we learn more.
Okay, so nobody actually said that aloud, but it's probably the easiest way we can think of to describe PlayStation Home, Sony's grand scheme for linking game-specific rewards, social networking, custom avatar-based online personas and... well, that oh so slick design aesthetic that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe does best.
Maybe a better analogy is all the best parts of all consoles' online experiences chopped up, seasoned with some PlayStation spices and cooked up in a sexy HD omlette. The basic idea of the other guys are here; custom avatars and rewards for in-game accomplishments, but they're given that Sony sum-sum that makes it all seem... cool.
Here's the basic idea: When Home launches at the end of the year (after a handful of beta trials both internally and externally), it'll be coughed up as a free download that allows you to log into a main hub where you can customize your character's face with an EA Sports level of depth, throw on a bunch of clothes (either from what comes with the game, stuff you find on game discs, or things you actually pay for) and start shooting the shizz with any other PlayStation 3 users that are also online and all decked out in their various online personae.
From the main lobby, you can jump into a private space with someone (a while lot more on that in a second) play a handful of simple arcade games like bowling, pool or even old-school 80's-style coin-op distractions, all from within the HD-resolution world. All the while, streamed adverts and HD-quality video are running all over the world, and will be refreshed with what are sure to be the first of many major product ads (hey, gotta monetize a free service somehow, eh?), but they're just the tip of the media iceberg.
In a sign of what we hope is growing convergence between the media empire that is Sony, a theatre offers a common lobby, where trailers will play (yes, in hi-def), and side rooms show specific trailers or movies that are pre-set. Even within these rooms, you can chat with folks or zoom in on the flick and enjoy it all movie-style. Immediately, it's obvious that this is not the segregated Sony of old at work, but the kind of spirited minds that put the original PlayStation in UK clubs to build the cool factor in the first place.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in what you're allowed to do in your own personal space. Ranging from smallish apartments with Scandinavian- and UK influenced-influenced furniture and a massive two-wall windowed view of the HDR bloomed lake that snakes past a futuristic bridge and far-off verdant hills to nigh-palatial split-level pimp cribs with an outside deck that nearly kisses that same stream, your online digs are merely a channel for presenting all the stuff on your PS3.
Specifically, anyone chilling at your digital pad can listen (or, uh, are forced to listen) to your MP3s stored on the PS3 hard drive. The tunes blare from your stereo, and the closer or farther away you are, the louder or far-off it sounds. Moreover, any photos you have can be shown on a simple frame hanging on the wall, and any videos you have are streamed from a TV you have in your house (in the case we were shown, a Bravia LCD).
All of these things -- including all the furniture in the house -- are physics-based, and you have absolute control over where they're placed in the room. (Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios head cheese Phil Harrison even joked you could stack a bunch of couches in the corner if you wanted to. Later on, he had someone toss that oh so sexy Bravia down the stairs). When you've got a handful of friends kicking back with you, everyone can jump into the same game and play together, then when they quit out, they're right back in your Home.
Of course, round-about matchmaking and hooking up with that hot girl who is really a 300 pound dude chilling in a dank basement somewhere in the Midwest is all well and good, but all nerds have inherent need to show off their accomplishments in game, which is where the Hall of Fame comes in. In sort of an evolution of the PlayStation 2 save icon concept, game-specific 3D animated trophies can be earned and showcased around the middle of your hall of fame. Other users can then pull up a simple carousel with awards for games, and, in a rather dramatic show of the scalability of things, an almost unlimited number of trophy cases waited outside the main foyer.
It was, in a word, cool -- all of it. It reeked of Sony Europe's particular approach to things, but more importantly, it was a detailed look at the future of the PlayStation 3 when the silence coming out of Sony was near-deafening. If the vibe from last night's press event was any indication, people were starting to see that all that silence and bad press Sony had scooped up -- sometimes for no other reason than folks just trying to be sensationalistic -- wasn't because they didn't care. It was simply because they were waiting to show this.
We've got plenty of media from the event, including a descriptive trailer of Home and some screens and movies of the other big surprise out of the keynote that we'll talk about soon. For now, though, dig into Home via the images and videos we've got on hand, and we'll update you as soon as we learn more.
