I’ve covered Sony’s Home previously, and commented that the delay in its launch sounded primarily cosmetic. Once feared as a possible competitor to virtual worlds like Second Life, by the sounds of it all it has going for it are nicely rendered rooms.
Kotaku reports that a peek at the current beta version of the platform “wasn’t packing any pleasant surprises”.
Source: Kotaku
The review highlights frustrating loading times and what sounds like a bland (although beautifully rendered) world:
I went from an outdoor area to the movie theater lobby to an amusement area containing a bowling alley and an arcade. If that all sounds familiar it’s because it was. The Beta wasn’t packing any pleasant surprises.
Instead, what I encountered was a lot of loading. Each area my avatar stepped into had to load.
The launch delay allowed the developers to, well, offer more prefab houses for their avatars:
“Venables and Festejo also revealed that it was now possible to take your avatar out onto a balcony from your own apartment, and that there would be “around eight or nine” different apartments available at launch, although no new details on potential pricing options for the premium apartments were available.”
So while Sony’s Home once threatened to be a highly engaging space, it’s now sounding more and more like Kaneva, and last time I checked there wasn’t a lot happening over there either.
Hmm, but Sony are a major content provider with huge catalogues of games, movies and TV. My guess would be that better embedding that content into ‘Home’ is the reason for the delay not making prettier inworld environments. Sony don’t want Home to be like SL, they’ve said this already, so it seems likely they’ll use it a 3D portal to Sony-owned content.
So you make your avatar at Home, your friends do the same (or you make some new friends inworld) and then invite them round to your free apartment to watch pay-per-view movies or TV on your inworld movie wall. Or collect a gang of friends together and jump straight into a pay-per-session game of LocoRoco, or whatever…
Surely Home will be driven by content? Sony will make it a reasonably compelling place to linger but then base Home’s ‘economy’ on delivering paid content. They don’t need avatars to make the content - they own it all already!
In my view the big stumbling block is the demographics of the install base: something like 99% PS3 owners are dudes. How you gonna have a successful social virtual world when you can only socialize with other dudes?
Not sure I agree on that - most social (internet) platforms are still male/geek dominated - what you need is context. The social element in MMORPG’s is excellent because it provides instant context to 1) beak the ice - 2) Provide a topic both parties know about/are passionate about. That is the basic premise of meaningful social interaction.
What does bother me are the loading screens and limited tools to give this online place meaning. PS3 unlike pc is not something that would be ‘on by default’.
Console use is different as in whenever you start it, you pretty much know what you are going to do: Play a game. Different from PC which has reached a state of being on by default, which benefits socializing online. So why ‘hang out’ in the place ‘between games’ when yo came to play? I hope Sony can provide some good answers to that.