Gaming Amidst Home’s Uncertain Future
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
I am an avid gamer — have been for as long as I can remember — especially when it comes to video games. You’ve seen in previous articles that I have been gaming all of my life in one way or another, so it is no surprise that I have been diving into one of my favorite series, Final Fantasy, with a great deal of fervor.
When Final Fantasy XIV came out on the PS3 this past year, I was lucky enough to be given the chance to be a part of the open beta testing, which was a first for me. I had previously done this for Mercia in both closed and open beta, but had never been in a video game beta outside of Home. I was both excited and unsure of what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised — and I love the game, which is why I decided to actually pay to play it. Another first for me.
I love PlayStation Home as well. I have been a fervent user for over four years now, and I am very involved with a lot of different projects within Home’s embrace. Fashion clubs and shows, filming machinima, my own club (the Grey Gamers) and this magazine are examples of what I do in Home, and I have always been open to new experiences and friendships as I travel about.
But lately I have had to wrestle with time constraints and my love for Final Fantasy XIV, which is a very time consuming venture in itself.
This is a trend I have been seeing in a lot of my friends lately: they are spending a lot more time playing games like Final Fantasy XIV, Grand Theft Auto V, Minecraft and DC Universe Online, and commensurately less time in Home then they previously did. Many of these people are the so called “whales” who have been supporting Home for several years, and I find myself wondering where this leaves Home’s future.
I’m not sure I like where this trend is going. Even if it does seem inevitable.
I can’t blame anyone for loving a particular game; I am guilty of the same thing as they are and have found my time in Home dwindling as I divide it with gaming more than I had in the recent past. I can now go a day or two without even going into Home at all. It has become harder to split my time, as I delve deeper into the online community of FF14. I always make my Friday night Grey Gamer meetings a priority; I rarely miss any weeks there, and I never will until Home closes its doors, but the only other time I go in is to do specific projects like fashion shoots or shows and filming with friends. I am also always there for updates on Wednesday, as it is always good fodder for reviews in this magazine, and I need to see what I want to buy each week.
I think a lot of the focus away from Home has been fomented by its uncertain future. With Sony being so tight-lipped about everything Home related, it makes a lot of people nervous. I will continue to support Home and its economy until the developers stop adding things to buy, don’t get me wrong; but at the same time, I think that a great deal of Home’s future depends upon the people who use it. Stop using it and it will die. Stop buying and it will die.
The advent of the PS4 has also put a dent in Home use, as the friends I have that bought them are using them a lot, of course, and Home isn’t on it yet. It may never be. Which is where many of us find ourselves in a quandary. I am one of those who wants to remain guardedly optimistic about Home on the PS4. I am hoping that the powers that be recognize that they have created an incredible community here and continue to support it at some point in the future by adding it to the PS4. Sony’s current silence on Home’s future implies a “don’t go away mad, just go away” strategy, hoping that Home will slowly taper to quiet and “natural” death, rather than being seen as the bad guys who pulled the plug on their loyal consumers. But still, I remain optimistic. If you’re a fan of Home, ultimately, that’s all you can do and be if you truly wish to support it.
I can really understand why Home didn’t appear on the PS4 right away; after all, many of us can’t just afford to go get another PlayStation right away. I know I can’t. You will need a good-sized consumer base to make anything like Home fly if it makes the transition, something that won’t happen for quite awhile. Home wasn’t on the PS3 immediately, so I would not expect anything different for the PS4.
Some of us want to wait til they get the “bugs” out of the new console and others want to wait for more gaming options and apps to come out for it. Many I have spoken to have been a bit disappointed with what they have available right now, as many of the game release dates have been pushed back. The one game I heard of that I would be interested in is Morrowind Online, as I am a huge Skyrim fan. I can’t wait for that one. But when I get my PS4 and I have to choose between Morrowind and Final Fantasy, it is going to be a hard decision, especially if they both cost money to play.
Does Home have a future? That is a question that I think will go unanswered for a long time. I wish they would say something one way or another, but I know they won’t. If they say it is done, people will stop buying things for sure and the developers in Home will all lose their shirts on what they have planned for us in the coming months — and they do have some fantastic stuff yet to come. If they say it will be on the PS4 then they have committed to it, when they aren’t sure there will be enough of a market when the PS4 has so many other social options built in already. Home’s best chance at cross-platform reincarnation is via PlayStation Now, but given the necessity of monthly costs associated with a streaming service, it would almost certainly reduce the number of active users on the platform.
Here’s the issue: Home is obviously profitable, or it would have been euthanized years ago. But is it profitable enough to warrant the long-term support resources it requires? That’s the real question.
All in all, time will tell. But for now it seems that the games we have been given in the past few months have taken the front seat and Home is sitting in the back for many users. I wonder where this will lead and how it will affect Sony’s decision — if that decision hasn’t already been made.
January 17th, 2014 by Burbie52 | 2 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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:^/ As I see it, it doesn’t make sense to port Home to PS4 until the installed user base is large enough to support Home in a meaningful way. Maybe in a year or two.
The need to rewrite Home’s core for the PS4’s different processor architecture can be seen as a opportunity as well as a hurdle. This would be Sony’s chance to add in support at the ground level for features that would be too challenging to retrofit into exitsing Home now. They could also speed up loading times and increase security while they’re at it. They would be armed with five years of hindsight, too.
:^/ The potential would be amazing. Would we even recognize a New Home as being derived from the original?
I would welcome a new Home, a fresh new approach to its base ideas. Maybe if it were like a large city you could physically travel through to reach different areas; land sea and air could utilize proper functioning LMOs to get you there. Anyway, I’m day dreaming again.
It’s true I’ve put Home on the back-burner for the last few months, mainly due to GTA; the freedom it affords me as a social experience in private servers with friends is just much more than Home could be right mow. Although, I fear for my life regarding the new Elder Scrolls Online game, that will eat, my, LIFE!
If it weren’t for the Challenges, I’d probably never have visited Home at all in the last few months! It’s on the verge of saturation regarding content now too, unless those devs can get more freedom and squeeze more power outta the PS3 all I see is regurgitation.
Home can keep going easy, it just needs fresh ideas implemented in newer ways.