Playstation 3 - Home

[Nysuatro]

This is very inpressive stuff. I really like it.

(GDC 07 PS3 Home Demonstration)

http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=2185

[Fletch]

The console still costs $700 and doesn't feature a game I'd be willing to spend $60 on.

[Nysuatro]

Very good point indeed

[Meotwister]

what a great way to get ad revenue. pssh.

some stuff was pretty cool but it's all pretty superfluous... I'd like to see decent games not like a supped up version of the Mii concept.

[JamesL]

At work I sit next to the guy who wrote the original design for Home. Three years ago.

He's kinda gutted that everyone (understandably) thinks that Sony have ripped off the Mii concept as a knee jerk last minute thing, when that's not actually the case at all.

Personally I do think the Mii's look cuter though.

[Defrag]

It's cool and all... but all I want to do is:

A: Play games.

B: Let my friends know I'm playing games so they can join the game easily.

If they make it totally seamless it could be interesting, but I'm wondering what the angle is, really. Do people really care about having dancing avatars and kitting themselves out with hats? D:

[JamesL]

Personally, no. couldn't give a ****.

[Taylor]

Do people really care about having dancing avatars and kitting themselves out with hats? D:

Have you seen this website? The answer is yes.

[Fletch]

I'll be the first to admit, i love the idea on paper. You're playing HL2, unlock an award, and all of a sudden, you've got your very own HEV suit for your Home Avatar. It's pretty cool. Like Animal Crossing and XBL Achievments.

But man, do I have any confidence that Sony won't fuck this up? Hell no. They've managed to fuck up everything about this console. I've stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt. If they deliver it as well as they promise it, then they'll win back some credibility, but until then, I'm just taking it as PR bullshit.

[General Vivi]

I could never agree with fletch more...

[JamesL]

I disagree. (I am really not trying to start a flame war here just giving a different point of view ).

I think there has been a lot of bad press and a lot of hate directed towards Sony, but if you look at whats been going on I believe there has been a large shake up in the corporation. As the hardware has moved from PS2 to PS3 a lot of the old Sony old school has failed to make the transition, sitting on top of the market thinking that PS3 was untouchable. A ridiculous thing to think of course, but when you've been Market leader for so long, kind of understandable.

Ken Kuteragi the Godfather of PS 1&2 made a few very bad press comments, the "Next Gen starts when we say so" being the worst. If you've followed the news, he has very recently been shunted to a position of no real direct power anymore and Kaz Hirai is now dealing with the practical day to day rollout of PS3 tech. Heard a bad word from this guy? Nope he's shut up and dealt with getting shit done.

Over here in the UK we've had a few what I personally would call "dumb" comments come out recently too. David Reeves (Sony Europe Boss) telling the press that the emotion engine (PS2 hardware) would be removed from the PS3 and software emulation would take its place, with a consequently reduced range of backwards compatability (AT LAUNCH) was a dumb thing to say. Also the press release was very badly skewed in its coverage. The point of this chip removal and replacement by emulation was that it removed one of the barriers to producing cheaper PS3's. Everybody has been screaming out that PS3 is too expensive and that Sony needs to make it cheaper. Well this change to the machine removes one of those barriers to turning out a cheaper future versions.

As I understand it from Phil Harrison's subsequent comments PS3 will have 1000 titles backwards compatable on European launch, with the internal test depts looking at something like 5k titles as an ultimate goal. What does 360 have? one hundred and something?. Sony were just stupid to say it would be fully backwards compatable in the first place, something I once again attribute to the old school of management being arrogant and not really in touch with the practicalities or realities of the tech.

Behind all the stupid comments from execs and unfullfilled promises made by dinosaurs from the previous generations of management there are still a bunch of people working real hard to try and make PS3 a really cool and good fun console. I for one, just wish that the management and marketing would STFU for a bit because as Fletch so clearly puts it everything Sony say right now sounds like PR bullshit and no one believes them anymore.

Anyways this is a long post for me. I generally don't like getting too involved in this kinda thread but I just wanted to post something that didn't say SONY= LYING CHEATING SCUMBAGS SCREW THEM.

[Fletch]

I don't think they're liars, cheaters, or scumbags. I think they're poor businessmen.

Let's look at business screwups:

1) DESIGN - People prefer smaller, sleeker consoles. Ms learned this when they designed the 360. So did Nintendo. Sony made theirs much bigger, rounder, and uglier (and I'm using the fact fact multiple design agencies have said so, not just my personal opinion).

2) LAUNCH TITLES - Resistance? Really? That's all they could come up with? Sony Entertainment has literally hundreds of franchises to work with, and their premier title was Resistance? First off, John Q public had never heard of the game. Second, it didn't look light years better than stuff already out on the 360. It's not a system pusher. Third, it's not a game that you see at a friend's house and immediately turn around and say "Shit, I need to go get a PS3."

3) PRICE - $700 to play games? Whu? I get it has Bluray, but seriously... A very small fraction of the hardcore gamer market can even afford that price point, let alone spend the money willingly. Bluray as a tech is still #2 in the market, and neither of the HD formats has gotten any sort of market traction warrneting the purchase. All that aside, if you're banking on the top .01% of the market to be your launch base, you need to treat them better (see below). At the end of the day, it's hard as a consumer to want to buy one when you can get both a 360 and Wii for the same price and get two consoles with multiple "must have" games.

4) NO-HASSLE - It takes less than 5 minutes to get a 360 up a running and have an XBL account set up. The Wii only needs a few boxes of info filled in. The PS3 clocks in at about 15 minutes. The UI is atrocious, and there is no excuse for that. People are excited when they turn on their console for the first time. They can't wait to play their first game. Making them sit for 15 minutes, going through endless prompts and "Are you really, really sure?" boxes kills that joy, so the first taste is disappointment.

5) CUSTOMIZATION - The 360 has XBL avatars and achievement points. Nintendo has Miis. Sony has... a feature to be delivered nearly a year after launch. I understand when companies can't be feature complete out of the box, but when something comes a year alter, that pretty much means that it was never targeted for launch.

6) RESPECT THE CUSTOMER - This is where Sony fucked up the worst. Let's see, first they lied about the degree of backwards compatibility in both America and the EU. Then they claimed they outsold the Wii, when they didn't. Then they called the Wii a console for little children. Then they called people liars for saying there were a lot of PS3s just lying around stores. Then they claimed their feature set was greater than the 360, which is just a dumb statement to make. Then they blamed the fact it doesn't run on certain HDTVs on the manufacturers, when it was a Sony firmware flaw. Then they went off on Kotaku, who were probably the last people saying anything nice about their console. Sony just keeps fucking up. Shit, hire a PR director who knows what they're doing. Look at Reggie over at Nintendo. When the Wii was announced and everybody made fun of the name, he brushed it off with a good joke at E3, and then everybody backed off and said "Hey, it's not that bad of a name." When people take pot shots at Sony, they send them cease and desist letters. If you're going to sell a feature incomplete console at $700 with no AAA games, you need to make damn sure your base is happy. When that base abandons your console, you're just left with overpriced hardware that no casual customer is going to touch (Sega Saturn).

[Ginger Lord]

Two thumbs up.

I still don't know anyone who's going to get a PS3 at Uni. Theres four of us with Wii's and two with 360's/

Hell, don't know anyone with a HDTV either. The PS3 certainly wont go down well in the student sector.

[Izuno]

A minor canary in the Sony cave: At E3 2006, Pandemic Studios was touting Mercenaries 2 as a PS3 only game, or at least implying exclusive on PS3 for a while and then maybe 360 and other platforms. Then just a month ago after EA signed on as the publisher, Mercs2 is now on PS3, PC, 360, and PS2 in simultaneous holiday 2007 launch.

No, this doesn't spell doom for PS3, but it is another data point that the PS3 is still struggling.

Yeah...Resistance? Resistance to PS3 does not equal Halo to Xbox, though I don't think anyone is claiming that anyway.

[Ginger Lord]

Yeah the first one wasn't that good, so the sequel as the main launch title....