If There Was No Home
by CheekyGuy, HSM team writer
If there was no Home, it would be a sad day for all of us. It’s the social networking that I really like. When I come home from a tough day, it’s nice to be able to chat to people.
Home has a huge impact on people right across the board. There are people out there that can’t get out much, who have social problems or are not able to ‘fit in’, yet they can come onto Home and have a real sense of belonging. It’s not hard to see why. This is a place where you can hide your disability or your social awkwardness under the veil of anonymity.
You could be a person that doesn’t sleep much and needs to talk to somebody, anybody. You are guaranteed to find somebody awake on Home, someone willing to talk to you and happy to play a game.
Yes, I know there is drama. But there is drama anywhere that you go. In the virtual world or the real one, there is no difference. It shouldn’t stop you from enjoying a little piece of Utopia.
Home is an enclosed world compared to other virtual realities. This is your story — you can be what you want to be within it, within broad boundaries. With the freedom of expression to fully customise and clothe your avatar to your liking.
There is a nervousness that hangs in the air about whether there will be a Home program on future PlayStation systems, and whether you will be able to port your current saved data to it. If not, your huge cash investment in furniture, clothing and accessories, and all the time you spent here will be wasted. Perhaps the next console could transfer data from the cloud, letting take your information with you wirelessly.
I think electronics consumers must be very surprised to find Home on their new console, the one they bought alone or bundled with a few disc games. They fire up the PS3 and discover Home, then learn it is a gaming platform, with plenty of games of its own to discover and explore, such as Cutthroats and Novus Prime. Since Home isn’t openly advertised (at least not in Europe), this will amaze them.
I was initially opposed to the idea of Home as a gaming platform, perhaps because I am an older gamer. I just wanted a chill-out space, a break from my disc-based gaming, a place to relax and chat with other gamers.
No Man’s Land surprised players at E3; yes, this game comes from Home.
But I also understand there is a younger demographic that complained there was “nothing to do” on Home. Now they will find it impossible not to find something to attract them, endless opportunities to play or “do stuff”. This new generation of gamer comes into Home expecting more and more of what’s on offer here right now. What if this was suddenly taken away from them? Sony could very well lose this new younger gamer audience.
There are some fantastic games to play on Home. Aside from the incredibly addictive Cutthtroats, Juggernaut Game’s MiniBots really has made me sit up and take notice. The simple concept of playing a game within your own private space is one of the most innovative gaming ideas I have seen in Home in a very long time. And now that a multiplayer version of MiniBots is coming soon, it is an exciting time to be gaming in Home.
VEEMEE is releasing a third-person shooter for Home (yes, if you are part of the Call Of Duty / Battlefield crowd, you read that right) — and No Man’s Land, for all of its controversy over its freemium business model, appears to be drawing quite a healthy crowd.
Older gamers still need a place of which they can socialize with like-minded Home users.
But I would still like Home to cater to its original audience of older gamers, and provide a space in which we can chat and relax. (An open air park perhaps? A riverbank? Or some other wonderland?)
A PlayStation system without Home on the XMB menu is as incomplete as a console without a bundled dual shock controller. I just can’t see it happening.
I would like to see Home ported over to the next generation of Sony’s most famous console. And perhaps Playstation Vita can benefit from having Home ported onto it. Can you imagine still being able to play and keep in touch with friends while on the move or on a break? On the down side, it would be a huge distraction.
3D-compatible Home, for TV sets that support it? Perhaps some portions of Home could cater to this. Most PlayStation disc-based titles now have 3D compatibility. But to be honest, the current electronics consumer base have only just bravely made that magical leap over into buying a HD TV set. But as prices are now dropping rapidly, it’s very possible that there will be a gradual shift to a 3D audience.
Home is a fantastic place to demonstrate new talent among developers and game designers. It can open up a whole new door for in-world advertising and marketing, perhaps from real world sources. I still stand by my belief our avatars will be wearing Nike sneakers and holding Coke cans in product placements some time soon.
Home is a place for developers to experiment and push the console’s graphical limit. The PS3 hasn’t finished its life cycle yet. Who knows what we will be seeing in the future.
So much potential. So many directions to go. But what if this was all taken away from us? What would you do the fill the void?
July 11th, 2012 by CheekyGuy | 15 comments
CheekyGuy is a loveable, mischievous Brit who first entered virtual reality via Second Life, and now frequents Home as a Grey Gamer to keep in touch with friends. In real life, Cheeky is a video editor who has just completed a Master's degree in screenwriting from Liverpool John Moores University.
sadly, i would go back to irc, which now is just a nightmare to think about.. which in itself is very weird considering i have been there for more than 2 decades.. home is awesome and i do not want to give it up
Homes strenth in comparison to other VR life programmes has an uper hand for one simple reason; unity. Everyone on the planet that uses Home gets the same experience because the hardware matches. This single fact is the reason Home has been the sucsess it is.
If Sony shut down all the Home servers and proclaimed to everyone that to enjoy their Home experience, they’d have to forgo the 100’s (1000’s?) of dollars/pounds/euros etc they’d already spent and just start again, how many of them would simply settle for that? How many would be quite happy to not just start from scratch, but leave behind their investments and become a stripped-down n00b for a new machine?
Actually, those are rhetorical, I’ll tell you; very very few. It would be a monumental mistake for Sony to try something so rash. Also, each well established business would be back in their race boxes, waiting for the gun shot. I can’t imagine they’d be best pleased either. No, Home’s not going anywhere in light of the PS4, things will be transferred across, servers will cope and PS3s n’ 4s will mix. For a time.
PsHome would be a very hard void to fill, for alot of people out there. I myself have enjoyed this service very much of the years now and would fill as if my PS3 was incomplete, without it on the xmb bar. I would like to think and believe that Sony has plans to move this to the PS4. Along with all of are rewards earned, items bought, and all other saved content. Nice article Cheeky keep’em coming.
I have two quick points. One, I don’t think Utopia would have drama, but Home is more interesting with it. Two, I would never consider my time and money spent on Home as waste. I HAVE consider both of those a waste with some movies I’ve seen.
I just don’t see a playsation console without Home. I think it’s PART of the brand now. However niche that part currently is.
At this point in my Home life I can’t imagine what I would do if it was gone. It would not only end the fun I have in Home itself and a lot of friendships, it would end my participating in this magazine as the source of what we write about would be gone. I agree with the consensus though, Home isn’t going anywhere, the people involved behind the scene at Sony will work to see that it doesn’t happen, they all want to keep their jobs too you know.
Home means too much to too many and Sony would risk alienating a lot of customers if they just took all the time and money we have invested here and suddenly made it disappear. If that happened I would probably go back to gaming with what I already have and never buy Sony again and I think that would be true of many others as well.
We can be sure Sony wont just turn the PsHome switch off the day the next console come out. It would just be a PR nightmare/suicide. But cold hard fact is:
-- Home in it’s current state will become obsolete.
-- The next generation console will have faster transfer rate and storage capacity.
-- Every old items we own wont be recreated in “a new PsHome”, if that ever exist.
What i think, is that Home will be eventually left to die by itself. Once they’re wont have any good money to be made there. Dev will stop creating new contents.
I hope some peoples at Sony are thinking about us and planning on something for the future. But accountants are not known for their sympathy.
Agreed, but the current assets of Home COULD be transferred. They don’t need to be “re-created” just imported. Unless they scrap the entirety of the Home engine and create a new engine from the ground up, I really don’t see why this couldn’t happen . If there is an evolution of Home they must allow us to keep certain things. If they don’t they will lose a LOT of customers.
It could be that if you bought it in Home you may be able to use it in the next HOme iteration but you won’t be able to buy it in the stores. This sort of transfering has been seen MANY times in gaming history. .Hack did it very well. It can be done, just will it? Time will tell!
Practically, at some point, Home as we currently know it will no longer be supported. That could happen two years from now or 10 years from now. There’s only so long that users, even the most dedicated users, are going to endure the limitations of old technology. Seen any rotary phones lately? How about monochrome screen cell phones?
Closing Home is really no different, from a business standpoint, then moving to a new console generation. No one expected SNES cartridges to work with the N64. As gamers, we’re accustomed to throwing away our investments in consoles after a certain point in time and starting over. Home, ultimately, will be no different.
Certainly the question will be raised when the PS4 is announced. Is it possible to make it compatible with the current Home? Certainly; anything is possible with software. Would you want it to be is the better question to ask.
Expectations for next-gen consoles and software are always that they will surpass what’s possible in the current gen. So the smart thing to do is to have Home2 (or whatever they decide to call it) available as soon as the PS4 launches, and to keep the current Home alive as long as PS3 use remains strong. That will fracture the community for a while, unless they create some cross-platform lounges, which might be a nice transition, but ultimately we’d all wind up in the same place again in a couple of years.
The performance of Miiverse will be worth watching, as it may send a clear signal about the future of console-based virtual worlds. Phil Harrison’s presence at Microsoft as they develop the Nextbox’s capabilities probably isn’t coincidental. Sony started something with Home and has proven that there’s room for a different type of gaming platform that could, executed properly, become a selling point for a system. What that’s ultimately worth in dollars and cents determines whether or not it’s viable. If Miiverse is a success, then a platform-specific virtual community is now a competitve necessity. If Miiverse crashes and burns, Phil Harrison’s probably back on the street and Sony’s debating whether or not it’s worth continuing to develop Home.
And even if Home ends, that’s not necessarily the end of the line for social gaming. With a growing community of developers getting their heads around monetizing freemium business models, there’s an opportunity for a web-based or PC-based platform to arise, one that would have the added benefit of being free from the audience limitations imposed by hosting through a specific console.
Heck, with all this Kickstarter fuss over ORLY, OHYA or whatever the heck that pile of fail is called, an enterprising person could probably design and market a purpose-built console that streams a virtual world to the TV and invite third party developers in to share in the fun.
No gaming experience is ever permanent. No gaming experience has ever been permanent. We’re all conditioned to this. Ultimately, any money that we spend on games is lost, either because our PCs won’t support them anymore, the console stopped working, or Blinky ate Pac-Man and we’re out of quarters. Home is no different. People will scream when it happens, but they’ll move on to the next virtual world eventually.
That is such a crazy idea that it just might actually work, and be a massive success.
No gaming experience is permanent? Tell that to my copy of Xenogears (now playing digitally) that is still in my gaming rotation. Or to the The Elder Scrolls: Arena game(first of the series) that’s on my Beast of a laptop. Not all gamers are willing to discard an old generation when the new comes out. For many, gaming isn’t disposable.
I don’t think Home will always be “active” but I think it will evolve. Someday Home may be VASTLY different from the Home we know now. I think THIS Home will be around at least until the PS3 is no longer supported by Sony (2016?). By then the next Home will be well on its way. If there is going to be a next Home.
It’s possible that users of Home2 will be able use the entirety of Home but Home users won’t be able to use Home2. This would be a good strategy to pull Home gamers to the new console. Eventually the old Home spaces would go dormant because people will be using the newer, prettier, more advanced spaces and the old Home spaces will be removed, just as they are doing now.
I own two Intellivisions, Gideon, and there’s a ton of older games I still love to play. But if I broke down the time I spend on new games versus older ones, new games win by a huge margin. I think that’s true for most gamers.
If Home was still the same in 2017, I doubt many of us would still be using it. Sooner or later, we want it to evolve into its next generation.
! How awesome was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Intellivision. I remember when that game was “new” the purr/roar of the dragon would just freak me out! LOL good times. good times.
I remember when a friend showed me that you could simply ignore the Minotaur in Dungeons and Dragons and keep exploring as long as you wanted. I spent entire afternoons wandering around those dungeons.
Space Spartans is still in my Top 5 of all time. I know the games have been ported, but nothing beats those original controllers for playing them.
SNES carts work in N64s!!!?