Home’s Uncertainties
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
Ever since the 1.75 core upgrade and the announcement from Sony about the PS4 (which didn’t include anything about Home), there have been a lot of uncertainties where Home is concerned. These feelings are mixed with confusion and anger on the part of many of Homes denizens. There are people raving on the forums and in Home as well about the fact that Sony hasn’t been forthcoming with any information about Home’s future on the PS4 or even on the PS3.
Up to a point, I agree with their assessments.
I too am not very happy about Sony’s silence, at least where the bugs in the update are concerned. I think they owe us some sort of clarification on this subject, many of us spend an inordinate amount of cash in Home, and the ones that do seem to be the most affected by this inventory bug that is going around. Yet except for an acknowledgement in the forums that they are aware of the issue, we have had no official word as to whether a fix is in. Some people seem to have had their problem remedied at this point, while others are still experiencing this problem in various forms.
Sony needs to be more communicative when these sorts of problems arise. There is nothing worse than making your customer base feel they are being ignored or set aside. More than a few people have told me they won’t be buying anything in Home until this is fixed permanently. That isn’t good for anyone’s pocketbook, especially the developers.
I myself bought some things the other day after thinking that my particular inventory bug had fixed itself after the thirteen hour maintenance. I had redone mine the way I wanted and it stuck – for a day. Then I bought some clothing and it went back to being a jumbled mess. This is very disheartening, because if you have spent a bit of your precious Home time doing this over and over, only to have it reappear, it makes you want to stay out of Home and away from the stores entirely.
The wardrobe mess continues.
There have been some other issues with the 1.75 as well, like people getting booted offline when they reach the navigation screen and try to go to their spaces, or getting booted off Home totally when you try to go from a friends space to your own.This has happened to me much more than usual lately, too, and I have been getting error messages I have never seen before, like M-10? What is that? It used to be that you could look these up on the forums, but some of these aren’t even listed there.
I certainly hope Sony starts to rethink their policy when it comes to keeping us informed about things like this on a consistent basis and not just in the forums as many people, myself included, don’t go there often because of the serious vitriol problems there. How about using the message of the day for this and not just advertising product releases? It will lend itself to a much bigger sense of security for those of us who love Home and want to see it succeed and grow.
The other issue that seems to be on everyone’s mind is whether Home will migrate to the PS4. It has been a hot topic among all of my friends ever since Sony announced it, and also a hot topic on the forums. I have heard some people say they won’t continue to buy in Home if it isn’t migrating to the PS4, but I think this is a foolish way to think about this, and I will explain why.
First off, it isn’t as though the PS3 and all of the developers there are going to just disappear the day the PS4 arrives. PS3 is going to be supported and maintained for a long time to come; just look at the run of the PS2. Home is a large part of that, and I truly believe it will be migrated. The shifting of all our Home content to Sony’s servers may be a precursor to that – to make it an easier transition.
But even if for some strange reason Sony decides not to do this, we still have a few years left in Home right where we are. I don’t think that Sony has brought all of these developers into Home just to abandon them when the PS4 shows up. Just think about that for a minute: do you really believe that Juggernaut, nDreams, Lockwood and the like would continue to produce content at the rate they are if Home was going to be gone in a less than a year?
What I believe will occur is this – these developers will continue to produce for Home on the PS3 and if it does migrate to PS4, they will produce for that as well. I am no coder, but I think they may have to create two versions of each item for the individual formats, and I think we will be able to be in Home with our PS4 friends, though what they are seeing and (maybe) have access to might be different than what we have. In other words, the content they receive might be graphically superior to what we see and there might be some spaces developed for Home that can only be accessed by those with a PS4, similar to the X7 idea. This will encourage people who can readily afford it to buy the PS4 when it arrives and those of us who can’t will still be able to be in Home with them.
If they were to create an entirely new version of Home, it would be self-defeating. There wouldn’t be too many users on opening day for one thing, as many – like myself – can’t afford to purchase a new PS4 right away. Another reason I believe that PS3 and Home will be around for quite a while (to coin a phrase): it’s the economy, stupid.
Sony has a wonderful product in Home; it’s one of a kind, and though others may follow their lead in the future, they are way behind the curve. I doubt they will abandon us all, so stop worrying about it and enjoy Home while it is here, and buy to support those developers, too. The quickest way to assure Home’s demise is to stop supporting it financially.
March 14th, 2013 by Burbie52 | 11 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
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THANK YOU! Not many people are rational about this subject, I’ve seen way to many comments and commentaries that are just conspiracy theories and gigantic what-if’s on Home’s future. With the progress made in Home over the last year and the current advancements made to the system to get LMO’s along with the server migration I really wonder why anyone would believe Home is a ticking time bomb and spending money would be unwise, Home is not the stock market and you can’t avoid bottoming out by not investing in it. There would be no Holiday events or changes to public spaces for them and certainly no new dev’s entering. Today I got 6 new St Patricks hats and a new Irish pub for the holiday, doesn’t seem like they slouched on the holiday does it? Granzella added a new island to the beach along with the shark and dolphin costumes and I got a reward there, kind of frivolous if they were expecting to shut the servers down in the future right? Unless they are not going to have any app’s on the PS4 I don’t see why it would not migrate, I haven’t seen any specs yet that suggest the PS4 will be so different that Home would not work the same as it does now or that the servers would be completely different than what they use now. It’s all hogwash, Home does not need to shut down. Only a fool would believe such rumor, I can show you a forum full of fools who believe it though. :/
I believe the writer has captured the frustration of many. It’s the silence that is the killer.
If this is typical of most things, they probably have not decided whether Home will be on the PS4. My guess is that even Jack Buser does not know for sure. The reason is that likely there are some people doing some work on it to see if it is possible and what the implications are. And the reason it will or won’t be on the PS4 will be something we are likely not even taking into account. So the effort to guess is beyond frustrating and truly fruitless.
My reality is I probably won’t be getting a PS4 for my house the first year. I will likely stick with my PS3 for at least another year. So I have almost 2 more years in Home minimum. In that time, I will still be playing games and having fun as long as there is something new to do. I expect a lot of other people will also.
Its been over two years since I left the PSHome team, so I have no knowledge of their plans or their views on the subject but I personally think its worth considering the following.
First, the PS3 itself will certainly continue as a viable platform long after the PS4 is launched. It will probably get even smaller, cheaper, slimmer versions (perhaps built-in to other devices) and I’m sure Home will continue on those platforms for a while longer whatever else happens.
The PSHome platform probably won’t have any major new structural changes, but the content itself will continue to evolve as long as there is an audience interested in playing and buying content.
What happens with PS4 is totally unknown to me. I suspect that traslating assets from PS3-PS4 could be done, but the visual quality wouldn’t be great and you won’t get many developers going back to update their original assets and textures. Its the engine which would be problematic to port across. Home has a number of underlying systems in place like the version of Havok physics which have never been updated because of the impact on backwards compatibility -- moving the engine to X86 rather than Cell also might not be worth the effort I’m afraid to say. It suspect its more likely that if they wanted PSHome on the PS4 they would use Gaikai to stream it.
I think Sony left out a lot about their plans not just for PSHome, but for the PSN more generally and how Playstation as a service might operate.
Personally I believe PSHome has a long life left, but I also hope is that Sony have learnt from this amazing community of both players and developers that it has spawned; and use that experience to inform their plans for the next generation.
Oscar,
Former Home Architect
That’s what’s been going around my head. If Home is gonna be carried across to PS4, it’s likely they’ll use Gaikai to stream it. The PS4 will probably have the app tab in its menu from the word go, then it’d just be case of downloading and installing the app into the menu and retrieving your Home data via cloud/Sony servers. Least, that’s what I’m hoping will happen.
As for the not spending thing, sorry Burbie, but I can’t live with that kinda frustration where my “entertainment” is concerned. I’ll just wait till it’s fixed before buying anything again. Besides, what kind of message are you sending Sony by financially supporting a broken system? We should be looking for product assurance, not empathy for a company. This is a business, not a charity.
As much as I am a SonyHomeFanGurl, I have to agree, KF. They won’t listen or respond to us here, on the forums or other media, so I say MAKE them listen with our pocketbooks. It’s the only power we really have.
Burbie, as always, a great article. I am looking at the first part wherein you discuss the Sony ignorance of the consumer. I absolutely agree with you 100%. I lean also in the direction that as paying participants, and some of us have paid a whole lot, we are entitled to more than a single comment in a forum. I contend that this is very poor public relations that should not be accepted. What can we do, really nothing. Sony holds the reins in that sense, but for better relations with a spending populace, they need to and should do a far better job of addressing the issue with the public that pays. I too have held off on purchases because of some of the issues, and I apologize to Granzella, Lockwood, Konami, Juggernaut,and all the rest. I want to buy and enjoy…but Sony is making that an iffy deal right now. I will spend again, but I want Sony to fix what should of been done right in the first place. This level of quality is unacceptable and if it were a plate at a restaurant, would of been sent back.
Just simply put….
FACT: no announcements have been made about Home. The only thing we, as consumers, can do is just sit back and wait. We can demand, shout over “as consumers, we have the right to know” bull but the fact is everyone has been talking about that since PS4’s announcement. Until they provide concrete information on it, let these Dorm Room Journalists keep yapping and allow the people on the forum give out conspiracy theories. It’s all hogwash, as what Steven said.
MY Opinion: people desire for Home to go away due to their lack of aesthetics for the application. They diminish all credibility of what Home’s purpose is and put no effort to contributing to the community, aside from the obvious excuse of “I only get on for my friends.” If you dislike home so much, stay off of it and play your games. Breath some fresh air, perhaps go to the Library and talk to that very sweet, fine Liberian.
Home has been successful, has immensely accrued figures that’re much higher than IMVU and dang-near topped Second Life by a 3 to 1 margin. Home is THE first virtual social application for any console system and have gained even media attention. Yet, it’s the Forums and the dwellers lain in that Dungeon that spouts how Home is “trash” because of bugs that’re inconvenient but fixable.
Anyone can create business theories and botch how Home has a grim future ahead of themselves. For me, I’m going right back to doing my fashion shoots and continue to allow others make a complete mess of themselves.
…
QUOTE “and I have been getting error messages that I have never seen before, like M-10? What is that?”
…
lol Burbie… I totally agree. What IS that?
As far as the storage issue, this has been heavy on MY mind. It is a huge discomfort for those of us whom are very involved in modeling, cinema and deco clubs. We need organization to participate in Home. I cannot even imagine what 4 years of items scrabbled in your inventory could be like, when I am having issues with only a year and a half of items.
We also really need an additional overflow storage bin. So we can put the things that we NEVER use in the overflow and use the other storage for our non favorites that are seldomly used. If Sony would give us the option of “purchacing” an additional storage…. they would make bank on it!
Please fix our storage!
Just like with any new technology I understand that there are always updates that are required, but no clarification on these matters are not fair for Home’s high paying customers.
This was a great article and thank you for bringing importance to this matter…OUT.
I shudder when I read someone saying they would pay for an upgrade to our Home services. Don’t we pay for enough already? People said for a long time that they would pay for new emotes and dances. Guess what? We’re being charged as much as $10 and $15 for emote and dance packs.
Every time someone says they’d pay for something and others agree, Sony LISTENS. Why not? If I was giving away apples from my tree and someone came along and offered me a dollar for each of them, I’d be crazy not to take it, wouldn’t I? Right now people are saying they would pay for new hair and pop-up colors like the ones offered to “Plus” users. Have you seen any new hairdo colors lately with a price of $1.49? I have.
That is how much the storage issues is bothing me and many others. If Sony can’t help us with organizing our storage because they won’t make a profit out of it, “I” am willing to “pay” to have an overflow storage.
I am “not” willing however to pay for “other” upgrades. I “do” agree that we should “not HAVE to pay,” for storage organization, but I am willing to do so if it has to stay the way it currently is.