Home’s Social Expansion
by Gideon, HSM team writer
The concept of social media within Home has been brought up in previous articles in HSM, posts on the PlayStation Forum and been thrown back and forth in many a roundtable discussion. There is a core concept – which many of Sony’s PlayStation Services have neglected to take advantage of – that cannot be ignored in the coming years if Home and the PlayStation brand as a whole is to grow in today’s growing gaming community.
This is the concept of interconnectivity.
The PSN is, and seems as if will continue to be, a secluded experience that differs greatly from much of today’s interconnected technologies. Even with the growth of Home and the announcement of The Hub, the PSN is still a service that is isolated to the PS3 and requires its users to segment their social life to the point of maintaining multiple social circles. Even with The Hub and the four other connected spaces and Homes re-focus to more game-centric activities, there is still need to allow users to connect their PSN life with the rest of their life. The main focus of this article will be how Sony can achieve such an interconnection and how Home can enrich or be benefited by the external services of social media.
Instead of providing a ‘wish list’ of pie-in-the sky features for Home that have been screamed for time and time again, this article will focus on ideas that meet a set of criteria that will limit the list to practical concepts. There will be no cries for cross game chat or video streaming within Home. These concepts, while not necessarily new, are more community focused than that.
All concepts within this article are such that:
- They build upon the existing framework of Home and other services;
- They do not require a ground-up restricting from Home or any other service;
- They will be directly beneficial to Home and its community in some way.
Following this criterion will ensure that these concepts are ones that would be beneficial to Sony and Home and provide the community with growth and additional connectivity options. A few of these concepts would require some development time, but the benefit would far outweigh the costs. The goal of each of these concepts is to bring Home to the forefront of everyone’s attention, allow it to gain some exposure, draw in new members and suck existing members deeper into its folds. It’s amazing how many people out there don’t even know PlayStation Home exists or understand what it is.
Concept One: Re-Locate Home on the XMB
Home navigation via the XMB? Yes Please!
It was originally planned for the Home icon to be located on the main XMB, not tucked away under the PlayStation Network icon. There it sits, patiently waiting for people to accidently click on it when they are trying to go to the PSN Store or to be overlooked all together. The Home service is one that needs to be on the front lines on the main XMB menu. There, Home will be in the face of each and every PlayStation gamer, battling alongside the Game icon for the attention of someone looking for a distraction and a potential customer.
When the Home icon is navigated to in the XMB the sub-menu would reflect the options of the main navigator menu in Home. There would be the “My Home,” “New and Recommended,” “Featured Games,” “Explore,” and “Shop” sections. When each section expands, they would provide the same information as the Home navigation menu, but in the style of the other offerings of the XMB, in grid form.
This would enable Home users to go directly to their desired destination and allow non-Home users to see what they are missing. This will become an even greater asset to Home when the Hub is launched this fall. Users will inevitably congregate toward whichever space they find appealing and there will be, in a way, multiple centrals for the multiple sub-cultures of Home. The ability to hop directly to a destination will empower Home to become an even more regular part of a gamers’ social life.
Many users who have never been in Home or have not been in Home for a while would likely come into Home out of intrigue. How many non-users know of the Aurora, Conspiracy and Novus Prime games? How many are aware of Midway 1 and 2, or the dolphie raising and racing of Hudson Gate? As it is now, Home is easy to ignore and very easy to overlook. With this small change, everyone wins and everyone stays informed, and Home would broaden its audience to include anyone who uses the PSN.
Concept Two: Expand the Home Section of the PSN Store
Gotta dig a bit to get to Home content on the PSN Store.
This one almost seems like a no-brainer. Every item for sale in Home needs to be purchasable through the PSN Store. The PSN Store needs its own section in the store left menu bar, not just a hidden chip in a sub-menu. Again this is all about exposure. There are many-a-PSN shopper who likely never see the Home items for sale, or even know that there are items for Home on the PSN Store.
While the items that are currently for sale on the PSN are great addition to the offerings within Home, they could be expanded with additional bundled offers to players. Bundles could range from company specific bundles, such as the Lockwood bundle, to bundles that include items that can’t be purchased independently. Sales and promotions could be used to promote Home and keep the service in the forefront of every PlayStation gamer’s attention. This exposure will become vital as Home evolves into a more gaming centric platform. How many gamers are left unaware of the games which are available in PlayStation Home because you have to be in Home to learn about and purchase them?
This section of the store would work hand-in-hand with the new location of the Home icon on the XMB. When a user navigates to the “Store” icon of the Home XMB sub menu they would be taken into the PSN Store instead of Home itself. This would eliminate the additional loading and would allow users to quickly purchase items to check out later when they have more time to hop onto Home. This would also allow for background downloading of Home items, thereby saving time with each PSN Store Home purchase.
Having the Home items included in the PSN store would also allow for the Home items to take advantage of the features of the PSN Store. The opportunity to see recommendations and customer rating of items is an invaluable tool that needs to be used in order to expand Home purchases. It could even offer cross promotional opportunities between PSN and Home games. If a user is looking at the Super Stardust HD game, why not recommend Sodium? Under the Ratchet and Clank section of the PSN store, the Ratchet and Clank Home space could be offered for sale. Ratings, recommendations and cross-promotions are all features which the Home stores could greatly benefit from as well.
There could even be some select items which are not included in the PSN Store’s Home section so that there is some incentive to visit Home to shop in the mall. The obvious store that would fit well into this concept is the “Exclusives” store. Sony could include a chip in the PSN store for the “Exclusives” store but simply display a message: “Please visit PlayStation Home to discover the exciting offerings of the Exclusives Store.” This would be a simple way to attract users directly into Home itself.
The PSN Store Home section could also include special offers for PlayStation Plus members. Currently members of the successful program are treated to discounted and free games, early access to demos and minis, and special promotions which are not available to non-PlayStation Plus members. This could also be true for Home users. Early access to personal spaces, special public spaces, exclusive and discounted personal space items and clothes and extended trial editions of the purchasable games of Home are all things which could entice existing PlayStation Plus members to try Home for the first time, or return if it’s been a while since they logged into the virtual world.
Concept Three: Playstation.com Integration
BRING DOWN THE WALL!
The community within Home is nothing if not passionate. There has been, since the beginning of Home, a strong community which gathers on the PlayStation forums. The fact that a user must leave Home to access an independent system which uses the same login information as their PlayStation3 PSN login data, and also houses a completely isolated data set, seems counterproductive to what the ultimate goals of the PlayStation website, PSN and Home could be: to attract as many gamers as possible onto the network and into the virtual world.
There are a large number of users who already use their laptops and personal computers to access the PlayStation forum while in Home to give them a patchwork-integration, but this couldn’t be the only option for gamers.
There could be a seamless sharing of information to and from the PlayStation forum. The friends list could be the same, which they are not. The message boxes could be the same, which they are not. A user could be able to log into the messaging system of the PlayStation forum and check messages sent to them via the PS3 XMB, and vice-versa.
From the Home Menu Pad, users could be able to access at least the Home forums to give them an expanded reach as a community. Imagine the synergistic energy that would escalate the success of parties, events, groups and clubs if everyone was able to access the PlayStation Forums from within Home? This could even be a function which is limited to clubs, which would be better than the complete isolation Home and the forums must suffer now.
The PlayStation Blog – PS.Blog.Share – could also be integrated into the PSN and enjoy accessibility options from the XMB and within Home. PS.Blog.Share is a service which many are likely unaware of. It allows users to submit suggestions to Sony and have other users vote and comment on their suggestions. It is a great place for users to let Sony know exactly what it is they want. XMB and Home integration would go a long way in supporting this success of this relatively new sister site of the PlayStation Blog.
The news of the PlayStation Blog could be the forefront of a Home news delivery system, which will be discussed in another article here on HSM. It could be something each PlayStation gamer has easy access to when they log into the PSN so that every user is kept up to date on the comings and goings of the PlayStation brand.
Concept Four: Facebook and Twitter Integration
Want to tell your friends about an item? Better get working, right now there's no easy way.
This is likely the most pertinent of the features missing in Home and the PSN. There are many ways both Facebook and Twitter can be integrated into Sony’s existing PlayStation Network. To allow gamers to express their love of Home to the world would help attract their friends into the program and would help bring an entirely new audience into the world of PlayStation Home.
Expanding the comment on each gamer card to encompass 140 characters and allowing the comment to be attached to either a user’s Twitter or Facebook status would go a long way to helping each gamer feel that interconnectivity the PSN needs.
Full Facebook and Twitter access could be available from within Home, whether it is an active laptop users buy for their apartments for Facebook or a function built into the menu pad for Twitter, both services would vastly improve the social networking capabilities and reach of PlayStation Home. If this were implemented many users would directly link their own personal Facebook accounts while others would create new accounts just for PlayStation Home. This would create a new sector within Facebook itself and build upon the already existent web of sub-culture support within Facebook.
The PSN and Home Stores would benefit from the ability to “like” and “tweet” the individual items within the stores. Like a particular outfit? Like it and your friends on Facebook will be updated. Holding an impromptu Storm Trooper flash-mob? Tweet it and gather your friends en-masse. The camera functionality could be improved to allow direct to Facebook posting. The mini-games could allow you to tweet your scores to taunt your friends. Activities in the upcoming Hub could be posted to keep your friends up to date of your Home progress. These and other possibilities could positively energize almost every aspect of Home.
Concept Five: Smartphone Apps for Home/PSN
Would you like 24 hour Home access?
Home has one limitation that seems absolutely ironic in this digital age: location. If a gamer is not at home, in front of their television or near their PS3, they cannot access Home. This irony could be easily squelched with the development of a PlayStation Home smartphone app. This app would not be a portable version of Home; rather it would give a user access to certain Home features which would give the gamer-on-the go twenty-four hour access to the Home community.
The ability to view the friends list to see who is online and what they are doing would be paramount. Changing your status or sending and receiving messages would be ideal as well. This communication could go even further to allow a Home App to access the Home chat system, to send PM’s to friends who are within Home, and to create and join chat groups so that full conversations could be had with friends who are in any one of Home’s many public or personal spaces.
This app could also go be beyond the realm of simple communication and provide access to the Home stores. There are many individuals who eagerly await the weekly updates but cannot hop on Home as soon as it comes back up each Thursday. Having the ability to access the stores and go shopping on the go would increase the access to the stores and increase the amount of time individuals spend shopping for Home items. Taking this a step further and enabling the functionality of remote download to the PS3 would allow users to use their items immediately upon returning to Home.
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It’s through these sorts of enhancements that Home can grow to encompass a much larger community. In this growth, the games and offerings of Home will be an attraction which will pull new customers in and keep those customers returning time and time again. Instead of the existing community being the only support for the publishers of Home, this outreach into the existing social networks and Home-unaware gaming community would allow for Home’s offerings to be offered to those who are not currently Home users.
The need for this interconnectivity will be especially true with the recent announcement of the PlayStation Home evolution with the inclusion of The Hub. With Home becoming a more interactive experience, Sony is hoping that individuals will include this virtual world as a more regular part of their everyday routine. If they implement ways to connect to their favorite social networks through Home, people will have more options on how they access their friends. If an individual is still limited to their PSN social circles then it is very likely that the allure of The Hub will not be enough to pull people away from their existing social networks.
These are but a few of the many possible solutions to bring Home out of the confines of the corners of the PS3 and display it loudly front and center of the PlayStation brand. These features, which are readily available through interconnection with existing social media sites, would enable each player to feel a greater interconnection with their gamer self, increase ownership of their account and would likely lead to more spent time on the PSN and Home, translating to more sales for Sony, which is the embodiment of an “every-body wins” situation.
August 26th, 2011 by Gideon | 13 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.
This is the kind of stuff I was talking about when I said that if Home didn’t generate the kind of profits Sony was looking for it was from under-utilization.1 side benefit of adding these things is that it would make banning an account more effective as ppl would have more to lose,potentially.
And it was VERY hard for me not to respond to what you were saying with some of these concepts, spoiling the article. LOL
I think you have hit the proverbial nail on the head Gideon. Much of what you said is so simple to implement and will make our home experiences so much more enjoyable. I think it is a shame that many people who come on the PS3 haven’t ever been into Home or even knew what it was, I have met a few playing RDR for example. When I convinced a couple of them to come in and check it out they walked around with me like kids in awe of what they saw there. These simple changes, especially the on about moving the icon on the XMB would help a great deal, and the idea of store integration there is a wonderful one too. Kudos on a well thought out article.
I have taken IRL friends to Home. They usually say something like “I clicked on it once by accident” or “Oh so THIS is what that is. I was curious.” Home just seems to be hidden!
Relocating the Home icon on the XMB is a good idea. Nor can I argue with making Home items available for purchase through the PSN store, or making PS.com available from within Home, as those are both ideas I’ve suggested myself. However, integration with Facebook and Twitter is not something I’d like to see. Facebook is not a secure application, not by any means. Few things irritate me more these days, than navigating to some website and being asked to sign in with my Facebook account. We shouldn’t need to have a Facebook account to use Home, and if we do have such an account, we shouldn’t have to disclose it to the people on our Friends Lists unless we wish to. Having Home available as a smartphone app is also something that I am leery of due to privacy concerns. I’d much rather see Home made available on the PS Vita.
good points about facebook and smartphone. I think these functions would be optional. Some people don’t even have facebook.
Putting a Home app on the vita would be a good cross-promotion for Sony and if they dont have anything for Home on the Vita, I will be surprised.
Points I particularly like within this article are:
-smartphone app (awesome idea!)
-making all items in Mall available in PSN Store (I hate going to the mall because of the obscene lag and load times)
-forums integration on the XMB and/or Home (like you said a no-brainer)
Nice article!
Use the navigator through the menupad at Harbor Studio to shop at the stores. The speed difference is insane!
Brilliant ideas, Gideon. I agree that, in some ways, Home is a very much isolated experience when one takes in the larger WWW picture. Facebook is the monster it is, in part, due to how it has been integrated into just about every other part of the ‘net. Home would be served well if it allowed the inclusion of other social media as well as its own forums; considering that this would entail smaller modifications to the current system as opposed to a huge update the cost would be minimal -- on the other hand, the pay off could be huge.
If I may add one more notion: Many Home users would like to see the ability to play their own choice of music and videos in Home. I haven’t seen any official stance on why this hasn’t happened yet, but the general assumption is that there would be too much of a legal or bandwidth hassle to allow for streaming from the console itself. But if we could utilize a decent browser from, say, the Loot EOD or similar device we could access various music and video streaming sites which could then be viewed/listened to by anyone in our personal spaces. This would not only curtail the bandwidth problem a bit, but also the legal one, as the onus would be on the site being streamed from (like Youtube or Bandcamp) as opposed to Sony to make sure that content was legit.
Well done article, Gideon…lotsa food for thought.
Thanks Johneboy. I actually had originally planned to include youtube streaming in this article but wanted to stay away from that subject matter because of the white noise it creates. Im sure as soon as some Sony employees start to hear about “video streaming in Home” their attention just checks out because they have heard it time and time and time and time again. lol. Great points though. Youtube would take care of the Video and Music streaming desires of the Home community, and Sony/PlayStation already has ties with Youtube so the concept doesn’t seem far fetched.
Indeed, ‘White Noise Syndrome’ can be a detriment to conversation, heh heh. I’m very optimistic about some of the changes we have coming down the pike…perhaps some of the points you brought up (all good ones I might add) may be addressed sooner than we expect. Fingers crossed :>
If they are… I might start using social media! LOL