Microsoft: Home is outdated
Sony may have only just released Home, but Microsoft is still lashing out at the online world.
The comments, which came from Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg, aren't the first time that Microsoft has criticised Sony's attempt to make an online 3D community for players either. Microsoft has previously claimed that the reason Sony has taken so long to release the non-game (which even now is still only in open beta rather than full release) is because Sony fundamentally underestimated the project.
"What Home to me feels like is Second Life for hardcore gamers. It doesn't feel like it broadens the experience and invites people in," Greenberg said in an interview with Kotaku.
"When they unveiled it, it seemed innovative. I think what's happened is now here we are a couple of years later and we feel beyond that...It feels like 2005 tech in 2008. I'm not sure that's what people want," he said.
Greenberg naturally then said that Xbox Live was a far better experience, claiming that even though Xbox Live had monthly subscriptions this further evidenced it as the premium online service.
Home is now freely available to anyone with a PlayStation 3 connected to the net. Have you given it a try? Let us know in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums Replyit works, but not as a gaming hub as there saying, maybe for the more elitest gamer out there that has to have everything, but this latest beta has nothing new for me.
rather use the XMB to be honest, as it seems to be in everything sony now, including there mobile phone range, which is good :)
I think the big thing that stops Home being anything other that a pointless time sink (Kinda like MMO's, in my opinon) is that it isn't a core system - It's an optional extra. Second life holds the market on the whole.. Online Sims-a-like non-games, as evidenced by Google trying Lively and dropping it almost as soon as it started.
Sony would have been better off producing a Second Life client for the PS3, rather than wasting time trying to make their own system, that is inevitably going to fail. How often do people turn their consoles on with the intention of only sending messages to their friends?
People turn their consoles on, or the vast majority anyway, to play games. Home is not a game, it's a chatroom. I don't care what Sony are planning to 'add' in terms of customising your 'loft', it's still a chatroom. A more advanced, graphically anyway, version of Habbo Hotel. Except that it's limited to people with a PS3.
I expect that most people with a PS3 will play Home for a few weeks, until the glamour of something 'new' wears off, and then it'll be cast aside.
Home is out dated. It's out dated because the time for real competition to Second Life, which is all this is, has come and gone. There are many other, arguably better, options out there.
NXE, in my opinion, is slightly better (Even though entirely ****ing pointless) in that it is a core part of the consoles now (Believe me, I wish it wasn't). There will be a time when everyone who has an Xbox has an avatar. Your avatar represents you WHILE you play other games - Your avatar is you. It's the same with the Wii. The PS3 Home avatars don't have any bearing on how you appear to other people while you're playing games.
In Home, your avatar is you, while you're logged into it. Unless they introduce the ability to launch games with people in your 'loft' or whatever, and phase out the XMB (I doubt they will do that, to be frank) to make Home the basis of everything done within the PS3 environment, it simply is not going to catch on - Regardless of what they add to its customisable options.
</ramble+rant>
"No, yours is crap, ours is better".
Well if you ever noticed NXE is nothing more than a horizontal XMB with pictures.
The 360 COULD have this, but it's just pointless. Most of the people here agree that it's just a waste of time and i think that most PS3 owners will think the same way in a very short time. For now people are trying it out (I would try it out myself if I had a PS3 just out of curiosity) but in a little while the whole novelty appeal will wear out.
I've been playing with Home for a while, I even enjoyed the idea way back when it was first announced - I thought it sounded great. However, times have changed significantly, and it really isn't worth it anymore, for reasons I've already posted.
If it genuinely does take off, beyond a few hundred thousand users, I will be impressed, and I will eat my posts. However, I just do not see that happening the way things are, with the other options and so on.
Don't get me wrong, the 'socializing with others outside of games, but rather a virtual world' doesn't apply to me either and I will not be using Home except for the rare instances that I have stated in previous posts (attending virtual E3's a couple times a year, checking my virtual 3D trophy rooms that I will be showing friends when they are over (physically), exclusive Home movie/game trailers that I can't get on the net, checking out game rooms, customizing my apartment(s) (my g/f does most of it since she's an interior designer) with whatever new stuff they make available and worth having, playing mini-games a couple times (most I've played are pretty addictive), and maybe a couple of other things like making fun of others), but that doesn't mean I should call it a waste.
In regards to the "great step forward" NXE party system, I guess my question to you TreeDude is, why do games have to be included in order to make socializing with others online not a "waste" of time? Why can't people socialize in Home w/o playing games and it still be considered "forward thinking"? Don't forget Home is a free application that everyone can use, unlike NXE where only Gold members can use it. Both are forward thinking IMO and not wastes in their own rights even if they may not apply to you.
I agree completely. And I'll add, if you want to socialize, get outside and socialize! It's boring to sit there and just talk to people for long periods of time doing nothing. I don't mind sitting for like 10 minutes, but I don't turn on 360 to just talk. I turn it on to put a virtual bullet through a virtual head. :D
Again, the app is free and it doesn't affect the way you play your games currently, but hypothetically speaking, if Home does bomb, I will be very annoyed b/c all the time/money/etc. that went into it should have been used for a better cause...hopefully Sony doesn't make this happen...
How can that be said about watching movies? That makes no sense.
Movies are entertaining for a couple hours. Talking to someone over a mic for that long, not so much.
Depends what they're saying
I thought it was funny calling xbox live the premium service, its like playing wow where you have to pay for what everyone else can do free.
But then the douche moms and dads that don't want little timmy playing this game would complain and it then would be given an X rating which would then lead to low sales then that will lead to the group of people that wants the game banned anyways which will lead to lawsuits from weak liberal pussies that hate their bodies which will then lead to increases suicide rates which will then end up on Oprah where she'll bitch about the game and her fat ass............free market pfffff....anyways YOU CAN'T MAKE A GAME ABOUT LIFE WITH RESTRICTIONS!