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PlayStation Home coming tomorrow

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DVDBack23 @ Dec 11, 2008 01:56 | 18 comments

Sony has announced that the highly anticipated PlayStation Home Beta service for the PS3 will be available to many regions beginning tomorrow, December 11th.

Sony describes the service as "a ground-breaking 3D social gaming community available on PS3 that allows users to interact, communicate and share gaming experiences. By leveraging the power of PS3, PlayStation Home delivers overwhelming visual graphics and rich gaming social experiences only possible on the PS3 platform. Within PlayStation Home, users can create and customize their own unique avatars and explore the virtual community in real time where they can communicate freely through text or voice chat. PlayStation Home users will not only be able to enjoy variety of entertainment content such as mini-games, videos and special events along with their friends, but will also be able to create their own community by using the “Club*2” feature to create clubs with other PlayStation Home users who share the same interests. PlayStation Home also allows groups of users to launch directly into their favourite online games together from PlayStation Home."

The service will launch from its own icon on the XrossMediaBar and will be a free download as of tomorrow.

“PlayStation Home is truly a promising network community service on the PlayStation platform, made possible with the powerful combination of PS3's overwhelming computational power and PlayStation Network that covers many countries around the globe,” said Kazuo Hirai, President and Group CEO, SCE. “We are committed to providing PS3 users with exciting gaming experiences with PlayStation Home and together with our partners and users, expand the new world of interactive entertainment as we move forward.”

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Comments

Comment by: core2kid (Dec 11, 2008 02:14)

Finally! I wonder what the size requirements on the HDD will be.

Comment by: SSSJDanny (Dec 11, 2008 02:36)

SWEET!

Comment by: CrowDUDE (Dec 11, 2008 03:52)

Alright! It's been a long time coming for sure... I'll see you all there my fellow PS3 users.

Comment by: canuckerz (Dec 11, 2008 04:43)

Originally posted by core2kid:
Finally! I wonder what the size requirements on the HDD will be.

It sets aside around 3.2gigs for downloads. The app itself turned out to be already embedded in the firmware, so it will only need to be updated and not installed.

Comment by: PantherM (Dec 11, 2008 13:25)

About time!

Comment by: core2kid (Dec 11, 2008 15:17)

Where do I download the open beta? It's already Thursday.

Comment by: woolf67 (Dec 11, 2008 15:44)

it`s 4gb

Comment by: ooZEROoo (Dec 11, 2008 16:31)

Originally posted by core2kid:
Where do I download the open beta? It's already Thursday.

You have to wait until the Playstation Store updates. I was a closed beta tester and Home is down right now. It should be back up soon.

Comment by: Vicious88 (Dec 11, 2008 20:04)

I've heard from several people that they believe Sony shut down the closed beta version of home for an initial 12 hours prior to the release of the open beta because of some changes they were going to make within Home (for instance changes to the center lobby and such).

If that's true, then we could probably expect Home to Re-launch as Open Beta sometime around 19:00 (-6:00 GMT) this evening.

That said, I've read all sorts of articles about exactly how Home will appear in your cross media bar. Some say you'll simply have to restart your system once a packet from the update server has been sent out (they claim the basics of Home were stowed away in the last update). Others say it will have to be downloaded via the PS Store. And others say it will be a unique system update all it's own.

So frankly, I have no idea, and I doubt Sony is willing to answer my questions on the matter, though I suppose there is no harm is giving them a call...

Comment by: Vicious88 (Dec 11, 2008 20:16)

I called SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment America) and upon stating the purpose of my call, I was transferred to a PlayStation Home Public Response Department. Tragically, however, the phone rang for only about a minute and a half before a robotic female voice came on the line saying "Due to high call volume, the person you're trying to reach [change of voice and the gentleman said his first and last name] is unavailable at this time, you may either leave a message or press 0 for further assistance."

Seeing no need in hassling an operator who would just transfer me back to the same over-stressed department, I left a message introducing myself as an online media personel (which is true, as I often report news on my own website, just rarely do I have to actually call anyone) and asked my questions real basicly and left two forms of contact, should they be able to spare the time.

Almost instantly I recieved an email at the address I had given them, so as you can imagine I nearly destroyed my laptop in rush to answer it, but sadly it was some spam about realestate in my area.

As soon as I know anything official, I'll post it.

Comment by: D3SI (Dec 11, 2008 20:44)

Home is out :)

Comment by: Vicious88 (Dec 11, 2008 22:55)

And 77MB in size. The link appears in your XMB directly between your login to the PSN and the PS Store.

Comment by: rvinkebob (Dec 11, 2008 23:51)

And it doesn't work.... didn't they make the closed beta to get a realization of how many people were gonna use the service on day 1? Well their service is shot and at least four other friends keep getting a timeout as well. I'm not gonna bother trying until next week. They're probably gonna pull the service like they pulled FW 2.40.

Comment by: Globe08 (Dec 11, 2008 23:51)

not hearin the feedback one would expect with the wait and hype given

Comment by: comawhite (Dec 13, 2008 01:52)

I was just one of the lucky ones that got chosen for the closed Beta. I messed around with it for awhile, it got really old, really fast. Home has great potential, but don't get overly excited about the Open Beta release, it still gets old, really quick. Just my opinion, some people might spend hours on it, don't know how or why, but they might. I'm looking very much forward to the full version or some significant updates, until then.....

Comment by: Globe08 (Dec 13, 2008 13:43)

Originally posted by comawhite:
I was just one of the lucky ones that got chosen for the closed Beta. I messed around with it for awhile, it got really old, really fast. Home has great potential, but don't get overly excited about the Open Beta release, it still gets old, really quick. Just my opinion, some people might spend hours on it, don't know how or why, but they might. I'm looking very much forward to the full version or some significant updates, until then.....

Yeh its more for the alternate life crowd. people who arent there to game but to make internet friends.

Comment by: core2kid (Dec 13, 2008 14:31)

As it was said earlier, I like home and how its the alternate life but I don't like how:
-The bowling alleys are always taken up
-The Pool tables are always taken up
-It takes several tries to connect

I see huge potential for home but right now its alright. Still better than NXE in my opinion.

Comment by: Globe08 (Dec 13, 2008 20:02)

Originally posted by core2kid:
As it was said earlier, I like home and how its the alternate life but I don't like how:
-The bowling alleys are always taken up
-The Pool tables are always taken up
-It takes several tries to connect

I see huge potential for home but right now its alright. Still better than NXE in my opinion.

I think Home and NXE are tough to compare to one another. MS and Sony are going different directions with it. MS is trying to be accessible while adding cool functions and Sony with HOME is trying to be an alternate life. Its not a gamin purpose its more sims life than a gaming function. I mean NXE is there to help aiding in find friends to play games with, and easier to get in and out of things as opposed to HOME which is supposed to find friends to find friends. Its a makshift version of EA's sims and plus with the hype HOME is given in comparison to XNE isnt even close.