Sony claims their Home service came before Second Life?

When you leave, can I have your stuff?

The problem with getting the kind of stability and control you want is that you have to give up a lot to get it...you have to accept restrictions on what YOU can do, and create. When you find out what virtual life is like in one of these placid, controlled environments, you might not like it as much as you now imagine you will.

Do you all remember the -last- "baked" virtual world to not include custom user content?



Where are they now?

*listens to crickets*

Basically the similarity (IMO) is Sony trying to ride the coat tails of Second Life while failing horribly in the main points (user created content, etc etc). As has been said, SL was in development long before the PS3 (which Home is riding on) was released, let alone put into preproduction. I myself remember hearing about SL ages ago, back when my computer system couldn't even have a hope of running it.

Its sad that a company as big as Sony would stoop to such low levels, but thats my 2 cents on it and its where im gonna stay until theres more hard evidence from Sony (which, in all honesty, is highly doubtful)

Well,

SOE has been dealing with online 3d environments since at least 1999 when they launched EverQuest. And that's not counting how ever long they had for beta, development, etc.

Granted the users are seriously limited in what they can make and look like when compared to SL, but it still had a ton of customizations.

Will Home =<> SL? Only time will tell but given the recent track record of Vanguard and EQ2, I think both SL is pretty safe from Home, although LL seems to be SL's biggest opponent with the constant addittion of shinies and ignoring of existing issues.

Time to get back to basics, slow down the new stuff, get the base stable, fix existing issues and then build up.

Just my two copper/cents/lindens

I think Sony, no boloney is jealous that a company other then themselves can get something up and running, altough with all the quirks. We know LL has existed since 1999 but Sony says longer? Not.

Sony used to make great products, but that has changed the last few years...

Sony is always getting in to segments of markerts that are eitehr deading out, or are out of reach.

Heh- if Console System sales figures are any indication of how well it will do, Sony's in trouble.

At least it'll give the few PS3 owners out there a place to meet & play some A-List-Must-Have-Game-Of-The-Year PS3 Titles...... oh wait, nevermind... they dont have one of those yet either.

heh

went to my buddys house, they were playing halo 3, then i noticed that he had a ps3, and i was all giddy with questions

what games do you have?
none, all the good ones i already have on 360

is it better than 360?
hell if i know, the games ive played are identical to the 360 versions

hm ok what do you plan on doing with it?
ebay, before people wise up and ends up like the Saturn i have in the closet (ouch)

Funny you say that because I read another article somewhere around when the Tokyo Game Show 2007 happened that Sony announced new development for Home called Dress. It is supposed to allow higher customization for users avatars and then they dropped the bomb that they are looking into including a built in modeling engine, similar to Second Life's, that allows users to create model objects and eventually custom build their own apartments. It was that article that actually make me realize how similar Home was going to be to Second Life after that original article I posted saying how it wouldn't be similar.

Not to thread jack things further into a console war discussion, but I own all the consoles and yes the PS3 isn't getting that much love at the moment - at least not until Home comes out. Despite what many consumers or average gamers think (I'm currently working on a game development bachelors) I feel that once exclusives like Metal Gear 4 and Final Fantasy 13 roll around - it'll start to niche its own market again. PS2 got abysmal reviews when it first came around during it's first two years and history is just repeating itself, except hopefully this time I won't go through three PS3's with disk read errors like I did with PS2. Knock on wood my launch 360 has yet to overheat and die on me.

Also I got my results back on the essay and got an A. He found the topic fascinating and his comments were that Second Life and Home will be a further catalyst for a new trend in unique socially evolved communities where people interact with avatars instead of chat rooms or forums. He said he believes it will be the next evolution of internet socializing for both PC and console platforms.

Nice to see you received a nice mark. hehhe I like to see Home on a PC computer and comapre it to SL. Might make a good A VS. B paper.

Home, which is like going to New York's Times Square only with twice the ads and only 1/10th of the places to go is going to make the PS3 amazing? Note the phrase "advertising will be a big part of Home" in the second paragraph.

Wikipedia:

========================================================

Commerce and Content

Although the service itself will be free of charge, content will be available on the PlayStation Store, such as clothes, furniture, and game specific accessories, which can be purchased, but some might be available free of charge. Content can also be unlocked on specific games. Larger apartments can be purchased that come with games such as billiards or a swimming pool.

Advertising will be a big part of Home, and Sony expects retailers to create their own lobbies and deploy them for commercial purposes. At first, Sony will stream advertising from their own Home servers. Later, other companies will be allowed to insert their own ads into the network, including dynamic advertising targeted at particular users.

All transactions within PlayStation Home will use the Sony Wallet system within the PlayStation Store, although ultimately transactions will be possible without leaving Home.

Users will be able to make money in Home by using an auction service that will be implemented which will allow users to sell their Home assets and user-created content to other users. In a 2007 keynote speech, Phil Harrison described Home as a "Game 3.0" game.

In addition to content sold, users will be able to earn certain content based on certain milestones in a game.

========================================================

It does mention user created content, but it doesn't explain this auction service. Sounds like it'd be like SLex, where I already know it's impossible to find anything one might actually want to buy (I've tried searching for my own products and have failed--30,000 results and maybe 1/10th are close to my search parameters--I have no idea how people find my junk and buy it, I really don't).

I envision mixing Times Square, Las Vegas, and The Ginza, then throwing in Cleveland......

What that sounds like to me is something I've seen in other MMO's, where you can't really "make" something, but instead you've won or bought a ton of crap from the "Item Malls" and slapped it together.

Like getting a Fancy sword from a monster you've killed, then buying a gem or scroll to make it a unique item.

In one MMO I play, some people would buy Decorative Items from the game website then sell it In-World.

And here:


This sounds like if you do something like play a game for 24 hrs you get some kind of unique item.

think your getting your xbox mixed up with your ps2, ps2 stopmped all ass untill xbox finally got some games to play, which for that first year almost wiped them off the map

okok no more console BS from me

i would be interested in how sony plans to do their content system as of now its all smoke and horsecrap, bah blah blah sony says, well sony says alot of stuff thats vaporware so we will just have to wait and see

I'd just like to say....

BetaMax

Yeah, but BetaMax was supposedly a superior format; "Home" doesn't even have that going for it, even in vapour stage.

I just wanted to state for the recored: HOME is not a gimmick. No one is trying to compare the two (SL & HOME), other than them both being 'virtual spaces.' So let's not bash HOME because it ain't no Second Life.

With that said, let's give HOME the kudos it deserves. It gives PS3 users the opportunity to cruise a highly detailed, social, virtual space from their couch. It looks damn pretty, has great in-world physics, and is extremely user-friendly.

Second Life is a much broader piece of software (for now)...so let's not compare the two.

Sure Mike, now just tell that to the Sony execs



Finally trying to find ways to incorporate custom content:

http://tso-e.com/blog/?cat=7

I find the reply quoted a while back from the Sony exec kind of telling.

First, re: Home having been in development for a long time, I suspect you could find a way to spin that into the truth. Sony has been thinking about online gaming communities for a long time, of course! And, perhaps what this exec does is trace a continual line back through all of that and argues that that is the development of "Home". By the same token, he can claim that the PS3 has been in development since beginnings of the original Playstation. Hell, given that it's also partially a media player, he could probably draw the line back to the Sony Walkman.

Second, re: solitary vs. community experience, that just makes me laugh. The PS3 is under the TV, so you're probably with other people when you're using it!?!? Does he really believe that most of the gaming that happens on consoles is people next to each other? I mean, sure, *some* of it is. But that's *not* going to be people cruising around home, that's people playing games with each other. It's clear that he says this because of all the (unjustified) attacks that use of computer networks get for "separating people from each other".

Third, re: pre-programmed content vs. Wild West, it's neat how he manages to spin being locked into predefined content as an advantage It's not the fact that it's Wild West chaos that makes Second Life so neat -- it's the fact that the residents themselves are so empowered in their creativity. However, we must bear in mind that Sony is a Big Media corporation who views creativity as Content and Product and views individuals as Consumers. The attractiveness of individual creativity on the part of individual customers is something that is antithetical to the entire business model of that company. As such, no surprise that they miss that that, and not the chaotic atmosphere, is what differentiates Second Life from what they're planning.

Heck, I remember when I was playing Morrowwind on my Xbox. i'd cruise around some websites, and realize that people who played it on their PCs could create and upload new clothing for it, and I thought, damn, that's cool!

Home is going to be the 3d game lobby. it will be a hugely enriched experience over even a much more flexible MUD-like game lobby, no doubt! But it's really quite a different beast from Second Life.

SL did of course, but both are based on concepts and worlds that have come before. SL's interface has the hand of F. Randall Farmer in its GUI design, and it shows. He consulted for Linden Lab back in 2003.

For those who don't know who he is, he's the guy who was instrumental behind Habitat and Worldsaway. Habitat was developed by LucasArts, and was bought by Fujitsu and later developed into WorldsAway, respectively. Today it still exists as VZones.

Sony's concept of the apartment is clearly influenced to my eye, by the "turf" of Worldsaway - its version of the private apartment, which exists only as the user enters it and invites others to it. The whole feel of Home's general design (not the 3d graphics, but how it approaches community), strikes me as very much more like Worldsaway than SL is. One should keep in mind that Habitat had quite a popular run in Japan on the Niftyserve network there, so not a huge surprise.

However, Worldsaway and Habitat had problems with their centrally planned virtual economies, and rampant inflation. Fujitsu couldn't crank out the goods fast enough. and eventually people had far more tokens than anyone could ever spend, and all the virtual goods too. This situation only really got remedied to any actual extent after the service was sold, and the next owners started to accept external artists to create content and sell it. (still in a very controlled fashion compared to SL, though)

I suppose Sony wishes to counteract that by having more than just themselves, but other game dev companies do content creation who also develop games for the PS3. I've seen jobs for artists at studios involving Home advertised, so that seems to likely be the case. Certain to not have the dynamism of SL's economy, but as its just a social space, likely it will do ok.

So SL and Home ... if you want to be really honest, their heritage and relationship could be best characterised as cousins. And if you want to go to the company which was the source of where that common thread of virtual world design originated, that source is ... LucasArts.

Mhaijik rightly pointed out Habitat and Worldsaway, but didn't go deep enough in detail. Their ideological heritage is certainly right here, right now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)

However, that CrossMediaBar software interface, I've yet to see anywhere else. That's pretty unique onto the PS3 and Sony is expanding it into their other home entertainment systems offerings, as far as I can tell. So yeah, they can likely claim that, if they are referring to it. Unless someone has examples to the contrary, of course.



This is so funny I just had to quote it.

Since when were F. Randall Farmer and Phil Harrison, your "cousins" from the mainland? Even Peter Edward isn't Japanese.

Can't get more "gaijin" there. Sony and Fujitsu long ago stopped being simply "Japanese" companies. They're multinationals now, and their software architects come from the world over.

Oh, and LucasArts is American... just in case you didn't know.

I sure hope so, it is after all the company owned by and named for one "George Lucas" who, you know...made those movies.

Star Trek??

Nono, not the Star Trek Wars, the Star Wars Treck