Home release date doesn’t matter, says Sony

I hope your competitors don’t follow what you’ve done, Kaz.

They’re going to delay it again aren’t they? All the PR lately is pointing to it.

Delaystation ftw!

Considering all the “I don’t care about Home anyway” talk it’s amazing to see how many people care about Home.

Or maybe they just like to criticise.

Kaz Hirai often talked about Home’s “open beta service” recently.

My questions:

How open will this “beta service” be?
Open to all users?
Across the globe simultaneously? Or US-only first (as usual)?

How long will the beta period last?
Until the official version 1.0?
Or will there be a gap between beta and 1.0?

Start answering those questions, Kaz!

@Shatner: Duh? I love to criticise PR.

I especially love ripping people apart for broken promises.

It is true what he says.

Its like with games, you get disappointed but at the end of the day, unless its been delayed for PR reasons, we all want quality and if games or services get delayed to make them great then thats fine by me.

Still, I’m still very wary of Home and not sure how much I’ll use it.

Of course we like to criticise. Is it not obvious?

Newbie… that’s fine if the delaying is actually to add quality rather than to try and buy time to get any old crap out of the door.

Look at what happened with Haze. The PR:

“Well, the simple fact of the matter is, any delay on a game is a good thing – it’s more time to optimize and polish and tweak and generally improve the whole damn thing to the Nth degree.

…

So in conclusion, rest easy – we’re still slugging away on this badboy.”

The Reality: Well, we all know the reality at this stage.

I hope they feel that it is fleshed out enough for release this year. I mean I want it to be polished, but it is something they started as soon as they launched the PS3. And it’s not that we will all use it everyday, but we need to get it done and out there without bugs just so it can stop being something that hangs over our heads.

At Quiiick – they said it’ll be a WW release that is beta similar to GMail, in that it’ll be beta while the make sure it works for everyone and after some time make it a full version. But I don’t expect full version till 2010 honestly.

Speaking of time frame, I hope that they are working on a bait game for this, I mean signal that it’l be delayed again then at TGS drop it with a thud saying, yo its ready go log in NOW!!! I mean instant release is the new trend now, Apple does it well, Sony managed it with the video service (Yes I know not beyond NA, but E3 is a NA game show, you still get PlayTV which is more interesting than movie store)

did that add up to 0.02$ yet?

True PT, crazy PR bods.

Anyone remember the famous Molyneux apology?

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=56781

ME – Yep, I agree it’s likely they’ll make a show announce then just launch, as they did with the Movie Store at E3. Nintendo, certainly, has been very heavily influenced by Apple’s style of announce-and-launch, and it seems Sony’s catching the bug. It does generate a lot more excitement that way, although they need to communicate the strategy better. I do hope you’re right about TGS.

Newbie: Yeah, full credit to the guy though… how many other producers would have the balls to come out and say “Yeah, we fucked up… we’re sorry”.

(I know of one other for the record)

Well, two things.

First, as long as it is good then once it comes out people will get over the delays. If it comes out and falls short, then people will say ‘you delayed it for this?!’ and it will quite possibly be the final straw for everyone except the most ridiculous of the kool-aid drinking fanboys.

Next, the thing that Kaz doesn’t seem to see is that people who are/were excited by the PS3 have been disappointed like 200 times now. I mean, how many people had PS2′s and bought PS3′s and said ‘screw this i’m getting a 360′? I’m betting a lot more than the people who said ‘I’m tired of all these games and great Live service on the 360…I’m getting a PS3!’. For most of us PS3=cheap blu-ray player. I have a 360 and a PS3 and I find myself turning on my PS3 and scrolling around the XMB and thinking to myself ‘well, what can I do’…then turning it off. It is a let down so far. Come on LBP!

I’m not a MS fanboy, but I do love my 360. Does anyone love their PS3?

Kaz, I think Blerk put it best…we all hope your competitors DON’T follow what you’ve done.

True, but he has that apology on copy/paste and it comes out every couple of years . I expect the Fable 2 one around the same time.

Don’t really see much he’d need to apologise for about Fable 2. His PR handlers haven’t let him say anything.

mightyhokie: Plenty of people love their PS3… don’t be insane.

mightyhokie – for the record, I do love my PS3… 360 never impressed me for a ton of reasons including GUI and the controller, which is painful to use in my opinion. But sure they have more games right now and more units sold so they can say that they’ve kept more promises.

I think the main problem is that N is a game company, MS is a software giant with tons of cash from years of great allegiance. Whereas Sony is a hardware company that has taken a few too many chances on pushing the envelop of tech and creating the premier standard, see Beta, MiniDisc, etc etc… and for some reason they are always just a step behind their first foot. this has forced them time and again to spend more than they can afford, then have to price high for their products then lose money on products sold… its a bad cycle and no wonder why they are reaping PS2 dough while they still can. Once Sony drops one of its operations they will be a better company. I think they should offload one of their divisions to a competitor for a decent load, say Vaio, HP could use a little Viao magic.

Where was I goign wiht this again…
OH yes, PS3 is a great system, just a little behind on itself. and the lack of money is not helping. Had they a bit of extra $ around I think they would give it to developers for them to hire the surplus people needed. Every company seems to be laying off right now and that’s not what Sony needs.

I like games. Consoles are just an irritation that comes between me and them.

Mad-elph,
Well spoken. I understand. I’m glad you like your PS3. I want sooooo much to love mine. I got it basically for the Blu-Ray since I use my 360 for gaming, but I did have hopes (or I guess I should say that I STILL have hope) that it will offer me more…more games, more DLC, more stuff. I just feel let down every time I turn the thing on. I WANT to love it, but it just won’t let me hehe.
I know that N has made a lot of money and sold a lot of units, but unless someone is a die hard fanboy, I can’t see anyone buying the Wii 2. The only people I know who still get use out of it are my few friends with kids. Every adult I know that has one (myself included) basically has a $250 paperweight. Really, nobody I know other than kids play it at all. Not one bit. I can’t see someone who bought the Wii and played it for a few weeks, never could find good games for it, and have it as a ‘must have item’, I can’t see them buying the next one. I truly believe it will bite them in the ass in the end.
All my friends who have 360s play the shit out of them. Even my friends who are part-time gamers still play with it a lot. With Netflix and all that coming out they will get even MORE use out of it. It has been a pretty good investment. Even if you get the RROD you can basically get a new one, and a new one that will not have problems again. It is just a great console.
My friends who have a PS3 have a whipped-dog look about them. Even the die-hard Sony nuts I know are disappointed in it and just sort of have a defeated sense about them whenever delays or whatever come out. It is sad. I really, really want to have more from it and think (hope) that it will be a great unit in the future…but for now they are getting a bad reputation and have sort of become a joke. Considering the PS2 was the greatest console of all time (I mean, 10 years of great games is pretty awesome), it is just that much worse that they are screwing up everything that they could possibly screw up.

I personally look forward to a few games for the PS3, finally. I want Home. I want Pixeljunk Eden. I want Little Big Planet. I want inFamous. If those are a great as they seem it will be saved.

I guess I’m just frustrated and confused at every move they make. I’m really not trying to bash them. I want them to be good.

The service seems as interesting as the Wii Photo Channel – so he is of course right in saying the date doesn’t matter, because the product doesn’t matter anyway.