233w ago - It feels as though I've been writing about PlayStation Home for years. I haven't, it's only been months in reality, but with its release being delayed constantly, known and unknown development issues, and questions still remaining, it feels like the service has been a long time coming. Which makes any official word from Sony very interesting indeed.
Jack Buser, the director of PlayStation Home, recently sat down with IGN to discuss Home. He talks about why we should care about it, what experience it will give us, and what is it with all these delays.
He explains that Home is going to be a place to meet friends online, to find gamers of the same skill level and into the same games as you. It's going to replace the arcade as the place to make new friends and share your hobby with them. All in all, Sony is excited about Home, and so, apparently should you be.
Great, so where is it and when can we, the great unwashed who haven't been invited to try the closed beta be able to experience the joys of Home? Buser claims the service is now entering the final stages of closed beta, with the open beta very close to launch. And he goes one further by stating:
"Like we've said, we're excited about moving PlayStation Home into its Open Beta stage this year. Once we make the move to Open Beta, everyone will have access to PlayStation Home."
That's right folks, just five weeks before the end of the year is upon us, and the man in charge of Home has categorically stated that everyone will have access to Home before the start of 2009. But even though we're all be invited, Home will still be in beta?!?
I can understand the delays, although I'm not happy with them. Home is, after all, something new and as yet untried in the gaming community. But it can't be good that the beat looks set to continue for well, forever by the looks of it. Could it be that Home is set to be like so many other Internet services and remain in beta forever, constantly being tinkered with?
I'm actually looking forward to PlayStation Home immensely, having lost my early pessimism over how good it could or would be. But to say everybody's becoming a little bit impatient is the understatement of the year. Just release it already and let us see why it has taken so long to develop.
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As a lot of people look the same, they need to make beards available for your character and more configuration options for the clothes.
There screens all over showing off videos of games and even one of them is showing off a PSP commercial. Then you have the mall where there are a bunch of stores to buy clothes, houses, furniture, etc. But nothing in them yet. On the second floor there are 3 tables where you can sit down and play chess with a friend or just some random person.
What I think is pretty cool is you can start a club where you and your friends go and have meetings, post comments on one of two bulletin boards, or just a place to hang around and chat if you like.
Oh yah you have a house which you can decorate from your wall paper to your furniture. It is pretty cool and can't wait to see what it's like in a year or two.
The benefit of them going wide open with the public beta is they can appease all the people who have been waiting while at the same time having a valid excuse why certain things don't work the way they should.
Since then, features have been added and some have been removed. I know many were disappointed when we found that video streaming from our hard drives was not going to be available. As of now, in the beta, there are no game spaces, nothing for sale in the stores, not much furniture for our apartments, no trophy room, not many clothing choices and other things.
It is in the Beta stage but, I hope that these features are soon reinserted into Home. I do wish that there were some way for Sony to get us video streaming again...