Playstation Home: Beginnings
by Gideon, HSM team writer
As the best lain plans tend to do, some would argue that those for PlayStation Home seem to have gone astray.
Since the first hints of the service, Sony’s ambition and excitement for PlayStation Home was apparent. Many of the initial features announced for Home have fallen by the wayside, and Home has evolved from its initial vision. Many players who have been active within Home since before Open Beta – and many of those have been watching the development of Home since its official announcement – still yearn for some of the planned and abandoned features of this much loved service, but the ideals that lead to the creation of Home continue to drive the development of the service, even today.
The Hub
At its conception, Home was originally to be a program released on the PlayStation 2. With the budding online community, the success of the PS2 Network Adapter and the release of the internal hard drive, Sony began planning their online strategy. One of the more compelling ideas was that of a simple 3D space that would serve as an interactive connecting point for multiple games. This space was known as the Hub. Not long into development, Sony realized the potential of the Hub and transferred development to the PlayStation 3.
Cyber World would let you "jack in"! Sounds fun!
Cyber World
The first public inclinations of Home trickled into the gaming consciousness at E3 2004. There, Sony announced their vision of player interaction through the PSN Network, then referred to as the Cell Network.
This vision, which they called Cyber World, would utilize the power of multiple connected PS3 systems to synergistically create the citizens, vehicles and buildings to populate an online community. Sony envisioned that users would be able to navigate Cyber World seamlessly to interact with their games and movies. Sony believed Cyber World to be the future of broadband entertainment.
While it isn’t completely certain whether or not the Cyber World vision directly evolved into what is now PlayStation Home, it is easy to see how some of the concepts of Cyber World and the ideals Sony established for their online agenda have materialized through Home. At the same E3 conference in 2004, Kaz Hirai announced that Sony’s online vision depended on three factors: community building, commerce and customization. Each of these factors have always been at the core of Home and Sony sought to support each factor vigorously with the official announcement of PlayStation Home in 2007.
Home
By the time Home was ready for an official reveal, Sony had a long list of functional features ready to show to the world. At the Game Developers Conference in 2007, Sony demonstrated a working version of Home Closed Beta. Within that version, there were many announced features which have since been either stripped from Home or were never implemented. There are also a few observed features that are apparently missing from Home and are only noticeable through familiarity with the Home we know today.
With this, you could "Phone Home". Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Missing Announced Features:
- The ability to take pictures with your cellular phone and have them automatically uploaded to a picture frame in your personal space was functional and demonstrated. This feature, while interesting, would likely have little use within Home and only serve for users to take pictures of themselves to directly upload to their apartment to share with friends. The service also allowed users to upload images to the picture frames directly from an external device, such as a MemoryStick, without leaving Home.
- A PlayStation Home cellular phone client was demonstrated where an XMB like interface would allow users to access their Home content on the go. It was also announced that the PSP would somehow be able to interface with PlayStation Home. These features were briefly mentioned and one can only speculate as to their actual functionality.
- An external web-based Home social networking site was planned and demonstrated. This site would be fully integrated within Home and allow for users to blog live from within Home and automatically post pictures from Home to their profile. This site would be accessible from within Home and through any standard web browser.
While PSHT is a wonderful service, it would be great to have social media integration.
- Continuing the concept of Home-to-reality was the announcement of the eventual plan to allow cross merchandising and the selling of physical goods through Home. This was briefly realized through the preordering of Killzone 3 through a customized Killzone themed Central Plaza that was briefly available early 2011.
- The Home development team firmly believed that user-created content was an important element of Home’s ongoing success. While it’s unclear as to what this user-created content would actually be, it is known that this content was to be available, usable, and transferable from one user to another from within Home.
- An auction and trading service was planned that would allow users to sell and gift their user created and purchased items to other Home users. This would have created an in Home economy that would not only rely on the purchasing of items from the mall, but would also include a fully functional community bazaar.
- Live and viewable game matches were planned to be an aspect of the Home system. This would foster competition within Home and could have even been the basis for game leagues and competitions, which could be attended within Home. While one could argue bowling and pool could be considered live and viewable game matches, the announcement seemed to be more about viewing external game matches while inside Home.
- Public Voice Chat is a feature which many users remember being available when Home first launched. This is a feature which was removed due to abuse issues and the functionality was somewhat re-implemented with group-chat.
- The arcade cabinets were more varied within the demonstration than what is currently in the Bowling Alley. An Evac game was shown and it was explained that the arcade cabinets were to be user definable and allow for additional games to be loaded within the public arcade cabinets.
Without the hall of fame, how do your friends know you're better than them?
- PlayStation Home Hall of Fame was a feature that allowed users to choose select trophies to display in a dedicated personal space. The Hall of Fame served as a navigable three dimensional trophy room which allowed users to not only browse their own personal trophy collection but provided access to the Hall of Fames of their friends.
- Perhaps the most coveted of the announced and demonstrated features of PlayStation Home were those that allowed media sharing within Personal Spaces. TVs and Stereos that allow users to stream (not give) the media they have stored on their PS3 with whoever they invited to their personal space were fully functional during the demonstration. This would have allowed for movie nights and dance parties to be hosted within PlayStation Home personal spaces. While many of us have gotten around the lack of a stereo by using the voice chat feature to play music within our personal spaces, these are two features many users still hope to see implemented in the future.
How many times have you wished you could pan the camera?
Missing Observed Features:
- When taking a picture to upload to the PlayStation Home social networking site Camera Panning was functional. This allowed users to take off-center pictures of themselves with the built in camera.
- Friends could be given access to your personal space when you are not actually within the space. In the demonstration, the friends of the user were in their space before they arrived and were already interacting with one another. This could have been done for the sole purpose of the demonstration, but would have been an interesting feature to include in the public release of Home.
- A stationary first-person viewpoint was used multiple times to demonstrate the features of Home. This view lacked the Home Pad (then called the Virtual PSP) and would have been helpful to those who create machinima within Home.
- Picture frames allowed for a more interactive experience within the demonstration. The user was able to move a picture frame freely around the wall of their Personal Space and choose where to mount it.
- PlayStation Home trophies were demonstrated during the tour of the Hall of Fame. These included trophies from pool, bowling, meeting 100 people and from being on 100 friends lists.
Most of these features could still be added to Home in the future and we have seen third-party Home developers and the Home community provide many of these services. PlayStation Home Today provides a social network for Home users. Loot gift machines allow for certain items to be gifted from one user to another. We have also seen the release of personal space pool tables, picture frames, video cameras and portable still cameras since Home first launched. The existence of these non-Sony features and services is an indication that many of the announced (and since removed) features of PlayStation Home are still desired by the community.
(Editor’s note: On the Sony forum, someone suggested that all of these aforementioned features represented Home in its final phase — that this is what Home could eventually turn into. For me, personally, I liken tech demos to concept cars at an automotive show; a concept car might be cool to look at, but typically only a few features make it to actual production models. This does not imply that Home is in any way a “failure” because it doesn’t have the features discussed in this article; it’s simply an analysis of what Home might have been versus what actually came about.)
While the lack of these features does not prevent the three core concepts of Sony’s vision of online entertainment (community building, commerce and customization) from being implemented within Home, their absence stifles Home’s development as a social networking service. However, this is not terribly surprising, since the direction of Home has taken a decidedly different path from what was originally planned.
Is it the direction that the user base desires? Only time will tell.
June 24th, 2011 by Gideon | 5 comments
Gideon is a team writer for HomeStation Magazine and likes cheese in all its forms. Whether it be block, slice, cream, wheel, log, string or aerosol, Gideon cant resist the pungent bitter taste of good cheese. Heck, he'll even take mediocre cheese, as long as its slapped between two pieces of whole wheat bread with a little bit of mustard.
Of the 3 core concepts the 1 that seems to have taken the hardest hit is customization.Idk why most of these things were removed or never made it but there are some pretty cool options that aren’t being implemented.Atm Home has no real competitor in providing a virtual world so these omissions are not severely damaging,I think that if a competitor came along though that offered these options and maybe more then Sony would need to worry,’til that day arrives I’d be surprised if many of these things you talked about came to Home.Thanks for the Home time-line,i was unaware of many of these things.
Great job explaining the whole picture to us Gideon. I wasn’t here for the closed beta as you were and I didn’t know about many of these features. Of all of them I think the one most wanted is the music and video streaming. I can’t tell you how many people I have met who believe this should be allowed. If you have bought a cd or have rented a movie in essence you have paid for the right of its use. What is the difference between renting a movie and having a bunch of friends over for a movie night in real life and doing the same in Home? Or a music night with your friends? I know the copyright issues are always quoted as the reason for the lack of it in Home, but if a movie was rented say for a 24 hour period and allowed to be shown, I think Sony would make a mint overnight between the personal spaces with screens and the movies themselves.
Thank you, Gideon! This is the first time I have heard of The Hub and Cyber World.
Home now has its first serious competitor on the PSN in Free Realms. I look forward to seeing how Home evolves, now that people can vote for another social platform with their wallets. Will the RPG features of Free Realms appear in Home? And, if the Second Life client ever makes the jump to gaming consoles, will its deep customization and economy affect Home’s evolution?
It’s a fascinating world we live in. Since I discovered Home early 2009, there have been incredible changes in some areas. But others, such as user-provided streaming content, seem to be hopelessly mired in the Slough of Legal Complications. Where will we be a year from now? I intend to be here to find out.
Thanks so much, Gideon. Awesome article.
We’ve come a long way, Baby!
And its only the beginning.. how exciting is that?!