Home open beta in the next 10 days, says The Times

Typo in title.

I’m looking forward to seeing if this thing is as poor as it sounds to me. I hope I’m proven wrong, but I really doubt it.

I’m sick of hearing about betas for this. Just release the damn thing already.

Fixed, Truk. Ta.

I’m in the Beta, and have to say, I think it’s good, endless possibilities, especially when all the game specific areas are introduced, quite a few strange weirdos on it unfortunately, but overall a positive experience I say.

I’m in the beta, I don’t know why, and I think it’s deathly dull and uninvitingly sterile. Also, loading and install times are horrendous.

“I’m in the beta, I don’t know why, and I think it’s deathly dull and uninvitingly sterile.”

If you don’t know why, then why do you believe that to be true? One’s opinions are only ever true if one understands the reasons behind them. I am willing to believe that what you say is true, but I’d like to know why. But if you don’t know why, then I never will.

“Also, loading and install times are horrendous.”

Really, in what way? I read that they introduced background downloading to deal with the ‘install times’ of different areas.

Yes, they did but if you enter and exit different parts it still has to load for around 10 seconds, which isn’t long but it’s already on your HD and the people that populate the area you are entering will still be ghosts or simply invisible once you are in there.

As to why it is boring, in my opinion obviously, there is hardly anything to do that justifies entering Home. If I want to chat with my friends I can do that from the through the XMB already. If I want to watch trailers I download them from the store and watch them full screen without having to wait for the Home, the Cinema and the specific room to be loaded separately.
The only thing that could tempt me to use Home is if they allow me to switch from game to game with the group I’m playing with, but I’d prefer if I didn’t have to load Home for that in the first place.
It’s sterile because from a few seeds there is nothing moving on the Plaza and there are a lot of invisible walls and you can’t even jump over small obstacles like a rubber duck.

Oh, well let’s see how it turns out in the full version next year.

I am in it too (as well as Killzone 2 which was meant ot end last night, shockingly, it’s still going!) and on a features level, it’s bad, you can do anything like game launch or stuff like that.

But on a community level, it has potental, alot of potental infact if done right.

So far, the glass is half full for Sony.

Esha, apologies for not being clear, but I meant that I don’t know why I got sent the code to download the beta.

I was quite keen to try it out, but I haven’t enjoyed it so far.
I can’t elaborate as much as I’d like as I’m posting from work.

:-I