Watch someone walk around Home for 15 minutes

That has to be the most hideously misconceived piece of software in the history of games.

A nightmare world where the most interesting things to look at are endlessly looping adverts.

Kill it. With fire.

(Please tell me that SOCOM advert is a spoof)

If this is so repugnant to the average person (as we see above) then I’m sorry but I’m going to revel in it with sick perversion.

I can understand that some people might not be interested and may wish to walk away bored, and if that were the case I’d likely want to as well. But the more this seems to raise screams of “Won’t somebody please think of the children?!”, the more I want to throw myself into its bloomed embrace.

Why?

I suppose it’s because anyone who’d actually be offended by a piece of software (and I’m still amazed at how many people are actually being quite loud about their hatred for it, despite it being what Sony always said it would) is still stuck in the dark ages, and they’d probably burn a witch or three if they actually got the chance. I’ve seen so many screams of “Kill it with fire!” around the Internet and that’s really all I can think of, and it leaves me somewhat ashamed to be human.

So if this is something that is so stunningly disgusting, I’m going to stand by it, through hell and high-water.

So there!

lol

I… just… wow.

It’s free after all, if you don’t like it, don’t use it, end of.

@esha
I’m with you on this one the more people hate it the more I like it…

So you’re both mental, then? I think there might’ve been a breakout somewhere.

How utterly useless.

The whole thing is baffling to me. Maybe I’m just old.

Wow. And I thought watching the TV shows in your apartment in GTA IV was going to be the dullest thing you could ever do on a games console.

“I suppose it’s because anyone who’d actually be offended by a piece of software (and I’m still amazed at how many people are actually being quite loud about their hatred for it, despite it being what Sony always said it would) is still stuck in the dark ages, and they’d probably burn a witch or three if they actually got the chance.”

Personally, I don’t hate it. I just think it’s pointless and boring. It’s more a case of “Why?” than “Why not?”

“…despite it being what Sony always said it would”

Technically, it really isn’t. They’ve already ripped out half of its best features, and limited user interaction in a number of really stupid ways.

Think of it like this. You have a console that your friends across the world can interact with you using. Then you release a game that everyone enjoys. But here’s the catch… only your friends in Europe can play the game with you.

The social interaction stuff actually looks half decent… but what’s the point if I can’t even invite my own friends to play them?

This is the pinnacle of the PS3.

Take Second Life. Remove all of the features that made it ‘good’; full avatar customisation, user-owned public spaces, scripting tools etc. Create a nice, bland, non-offensive corporate environment populated by ads and avatars that have been lifted straight out of the ad man’s Bumper Book Of Metrosexual Human Furniture and you’ve got Home. Its kinda like a little Happy Shopper version of The Truman Show for histrionic personality disorder sufferers.

IF it turned out to be a useful lobby system then I’d use it, even if I did feel like I was taking part in some GAP advert. But after playing around with it for a bit its obvious that it’d be way too clunky to be practical (find players, choose game, put disc in, wait for everyone to get ready and stop dancing/spamming emotes, disconnect from Home to start game etc) the vision of jumping into a game with all of your friends is just a myth.

The social aspect is just bollocks. Or maybe just wasted on an old bastard like me.

While I’m not condoning Second Life (which is basically the internet version of Mos Eisley, and if it were a real world we’d probably have sent the troops in and turned it to glass by now) what Sony have done with Home is create the perfect marketing conduit. Granted, its unfair to judge it in its’ present state, but you can see where its heading.

I don’t hate it. I’m not about to hijack a PS3 and fly it into my lovingly re-created digital marina-side studio apartment in protest, but once I’ve witnessed the train-wreck of launch day it won’t be sitting on my hdd anymore.

Wow, a list menu for emotes using a joypad. It’s like radial menus never happened.

Radial menu’s don’t really work when the amount of options is an arbitrary number.

They do if you use the spiral kind from Beyond Good and Evil.

I got an beta invite and gave it a quick go on Monday. I’m of the opinion that it’s 3d interface for the sake of it and
a 2d menu would work much quicker and better. However there were a couple of plus points.

Avatar customisation is much more advanced and customisable than NXE – though I prefer the more cartoony look of the NXE ones, they just need a lot more options.

I quite like the idea of games you can just walk up to and play with a random who happens to be there waiting too. It’s a nice social idea and you are more likely to get someone you add to your friends list from an interaction like this than connect to game, find random opponents, end game done. So if you are looking to expand your friends
list then it’s a good place to start.

The adverts as posters and videos playing on the wall sit a lot better than the stuff in NXE which I think clutters and already clumsy interface. After the initial wow factor has worn off from NXE and you break it down to the bare interface it really is a poorly designed mess. The shortcut stuff and extended guide button menus are a godsend.

It is a nice engine which works well.

Overall it’s interesting but I’m guessing they have spent a lot of money and time on this and it would have been much better spent on getting the basics of XMB up to the standards set out by MS. I think that last point is the key behind the hate this generates. Why do all this when you haven’t even got the basics up to scratch.

Why they made the pool game not feature your avatar seems a bit silly. Overall it probably makes the same mistakes as most things as in not enough to interact with in a realistic manner but at least you can use the frigging seats – take that GTA!

Looks alright to me. Not sure why people are getting so upset over it.

Most of you are talking like this video is showing everything that Home is and will ever be. Sony have made it perfectly clear that this open beta version is very limited in its content. The Wikipedia page makes a fair attemp (for once) at detailing what we know is coming, but no doubt Sony has much more in store for the future.

For now, I’m content with playing pool, bowling, chess, checkers and several single-player arcade games (including a version of Echochrome) and meeting and adding new people to my friends list (including an awfully nice chap I played a thoroughly enjoyable game of chess with last night, and another with whom I played about ten frames of pool).

You dont understand Cort (and Ecu for that matter), its a SONY product… SONY! I havnt seen anything myself, but the way other people go about, there must be something to them, like, they EAT BABIES! Or BEAT KITTENS! Isnt it obvious that Sony is RAN BY HITLER?!

”Looks” good graphically, thats for sure. but…HOORAY for loading times!

If Sony found a cure for all cancers and handed it straight over to the WHO gratis, some people would find a way to criticise and complain about it. Or say they ripped it from Apple. ;o)

I had a funny conversation with someone at work last week who said he traded in his PSP for a DS because he hates Sony’s “proprietary UMDs”. I didn’t bother asking him how he was getting on loading his new universal DS cartridges into his games console, hifi, DVD player etc…..