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Post by TheUndertaker85 on Aug 23, 2011 10:33:18 GMT -5
blog.us.playstation.com/2011/08/23/the-next-evolution-for-playstation-home-coming-fall-2011/"Hi everyone. I’ve got some huge news for you. As you know, we’ve been working hard to fill PlayStation Home with hundreds of games – everything from pool tables and dart boards to full-on space shooters like Novus Prime: Escalation, zombie slashers like Dead Island Zombie Survivor, and massive online racing games like Sodium 2: Project Velocity. Today we are excited to announce a complete redesign of the heart of PlayStation Home to reinforce our evolution into the ultimate social game platform on consoles today. This redesign will connect you with the world of hundreds of games in Home faster and better than ever before. Coming in Fall 2011, this new core experience for PlayStation Home features a “hub and districts” design that will help you find games, people and places that fit your favorite game genres. The design features a new Hub that integrates games, quests, community events, and user-generated content, while providing you with additional navigation, shopping, socialization and entertainment options. The new, futuristic Hub (shown below) brings an ever changing roster of games right to the center of Home, including Cogs from Codename: Lazy 8 Studios which will be featured front and center on day one. The Hub will also feature a new Activity Board filled with games to play, rewards to be won, a new UGC events system, and cool stuff to discover. Powering this Activity Board is a massive new questing system that literally transforms Home itself into a game if you so choose. From frequently updated community activities to huge, branching narrative adventures, this questing system will provide game play options delivered to you in ways never before imagined. Additionally, surrounding the Hub will be districts based on game genres to suit your mood. Whether you want an intense, in-your-face experience, or a more chill, laid-back environment, these districts will be packed with games and navigation points leading you to content that suits your style. - With a gritty, urban aesthetic reminiscent of a first-person shooter level, the Action District (shown above) is the perfect destination for gamers looking for action, shooter and horror games.
- Come experience the outside-the-stadium feel of Sportswalk, which features up-to-the-minute major league sports scores, headlines and highlights, and sports-themed games.
- Enter a lush beachfront jungle full of sights to see and adventure-themed games to discover in the Adventure District.
- Pier Park (shown above) is your destination for carnival, puzzle, outdoor and arcade games, featuring a waterfront boardwalk, Ferris wheel and a fun party zone that is linked to dedicated indie and arcade game spaces.
On top of all this great news, I’m excited to announce that we are going to upgrade Home’s core client to provide a streamlined initial user experience, getting you in and playing games faster than ever before. This upgrade will be deployed as a separate release from the redesign, and together they will underscore PlayStation Home’s evolution into a world filled with hundreds of games ready for you to play, making Home the ultimate social game platform on consoles. We hope you’re as excited about PlayStation Home’s new core experience as we are!"
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Post by x-champ-x on Aug 23, 2011 11:58:09 GMT -5
Gonna feel weird without a bowling alley and especially no central plaza space now, but it all looks great so far. I hope they aren't focusing all on games for home though.
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Post by TheUndertaker85 on Aug 23, 2011 14:04:19 GMT -5
That makes two of us. Plus hopefully this isn't just another background update with updates to spaces and server stuff. I really want to see more features coming out for Home, IE content watching/listening/streaming and more overall links with the PS3.
They've got outlets available for streaming now. Qriocity and Netflix gives them a small loophole into the content rights thing. Since Qriocity and Netflix users can all access the same content (Or just about) this gives those users the rights to have that content streamed to their system. All Sony has to do at this point is make a link between those services and Home then... Streaming content would be extremely possible without the worry of content rights as essentially, everybody using Netflix or Qriocity has rights to that content already.
It would be nice to be able to listen to my own music in Home also though or watch my own video stored on the HDD. Not talking streaming, just being able to access it and watch it without leaving Home. Plus after all this time... We've got cameras in Home and can take pics of just about anything in Home including our avatars. How hard is it, really, for users to snap a pic of their avatars in Home to use as their avatars for PSN?
Oh well. Maybe with all these talks of games the Home team realizes that they could at least get trophy whores into Home if Home had trophies for certain objectives/marks. I always found it really stupid that since Home has went public, simple things like scoring well in bowling doesn't net you anything, including in Home itself.
The least they could do is start allowing upgrades of clubhouses. People have been asking for that for quite awhile now and really, it needs to happen. Better options for clubhouses could give owners better options for customizations and really help to give clubs in general a meaning again.
I know, I know. I'm being a Ranty McNancypants. But if this all turns out to be just cosmetic changes and background uses that normal Home users will never see, I'll be a tad pissed. Its about time Home gets better things rather than just more shiny things that will get old after about a week.
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Post by TheUndertaker85 on Aug 23, 2011 14:27:41 GMT -5
community.us.playstation.com/message/36255996#36255996"Hey everyone, Wanted to hop in here for a moment and address some of your questions. To start, I want to assure you all that your inventories will remain unaffected by this update. While this is evidence of Home's continued evolution as a social games platform (with an emphasis on both "social" and "games"), there will be no reset on the backend that would result in any collections you have amassed since the launch of Open Beta being altered in any way. Your virtual item collections, personal spaces, personal games, clubhouses, etc. will all remain intact. Central Plaza will disappear when this new core experience launches. The Bowling Alley will remain but will be attached to Pier Park. The games that are included in the Bowling Alley will remain untouched and will continue to be 100% free. There are storefronts and video screens integrated into the Hub, but there will continue to be a standalone Mall as well as a Theater. While this redesign will allow for more streamlined and natural navigation to content as categorized by genre, the Navigator will also remain as an option for you to easily transport to and from the wide variety of spaces available in Home. In that sense, it really is a "best of both world" scenario - as a player you can say "I'm really in the mood to play action games and socialize with hardcore FPS fans" and head to the Action District, where you will find other people that share your current interest as well as content custom-tailored to appeal to that social group. However, if you decide two seconds later that you'd like to play a sports game, meet Giants fans, view real-time scores and updates, etc. you can pull up the Navigator and easily transport yourself to the Sportswalk. As far as the content that will be made available in the Hub and the surrounding districts goes, you will continue to see a variety of games that utilize a variety of models. Some will be 100% free (like the Dead Island TGI event), some will be freemium (like Sodium 2, Novus Prime: Escalation), some will be pay-to-play (like Midway 1&2), and some will be available outright for purchase (like Scribble Shooter). In terms of events, the new core experience allows for more events than ever before possible, thanks to both the questing system (which allows developers to quickly and easily build events around their games) and the activity board, which allows YOU the ability to create and host your own events and share them with your friends. While you've heard us state multiple times that the focus of Home is on games, I want to clarify we absolutely recognize the importance of events and are committed to not only the creation of community events - as evidenced by the development of the E3 2011 virtual booth, for example - but also the development of tools such as the Activity Board that allow you, the community, more options in terms of creating public events that serve to bring players together in ways only possible in Home. One thing that should be made clear is that this announcement is not a core client update. That said, new features and functions on the core client level are continually being developed, and updates will continue to optimize Home's performance and provide you with a better experience. More news regarding the next core client update will be shared with you all soon. Honestly, I cannot think of one negative side effect of this update.I sincerely hope this post has helped alleviate any anxieties you may have had as a result of this announcement. Best, L_S"
Well, there you all go. Sounds to be just purely cosmetic, in which case this is all BS. You can change the look of the spaces in Home all you want and add in little bits but without that core change with better features and interactivity, Home will still be the same damn thing it is now. It's either that or LS doesn't have a clue what he's talking about again which wouldn't be a shock. There's a few places in his post that are filled with BS and completely contradictory to what Jack Buser said in the blog post. Like LS states that,"One thing that should be made clear is that this announcement is not a core client update" But yet Jack says, "On top of all this great news, I’m excited to announce that we are going to upgrade Home’s core client to provide a streamlined initial user experience, getting you in and playing games faster than ever before. This upgrade will be deployed as a separate release from the redesign, and together they will underscore PlayStation Home’s evolution into a world filled with hundreds of games ready for you to play, making Home the ultimate social game platform on consoles." So... Is there going to be a core client update or isn't there? These are instances where it really shows that Home management in general doesn't have a clue about Home or what's actually going on.
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Post by xlr8life on Aug 23, 2011 15:38:08 GMT -5
I'm wondering if it has to do with SCEE (the Home Core team) not giving all the information to the other Home's. I mean yeah I agree there are time it sounds like they couldn't find their way out of a paper bag, but since Jack made this announcement from GDC, in Germany, he had the Home Core team to consult with, since he was in SCEE territory.
Jack did state that the changes would be coming in 2 waves basically, almost sounds like 2 different core updates from what one post says to the next.
I think the only reason Locust says it wont be a Core update is because at least from SCEA's (SNEA) side it wont be a core update, those come from SCEE and got out to all 4 Home's at once. But that's were Locust shouldn't say it wont be a core update if he doesn't know, because Locust isn't on the Core team. And as of right now after looking at EU's forum's, they're as clueless as we are right now because they don't even have any HCM's right now, so they're all speculating whether or not the change is for them as well too, lol.
Bottom line it's mass chaos across both Home's and I'm sure the other 2 are just as confusing too, lol
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Post by SEEimage on Aug 23, 2011 18:42:02 GMT -5
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Post by xlr8life on Aug 24, 2011 17:55:02 GMT -5
ok so I did see a misread that has been adding to the confusion.
From Jack's post on the Blog:
"On top of all this great news, I’m excited to announce that we are going to upgrade Home’s core client to provide a streamlined initial user experience, getting you in and playing games faster than ever before. This upgrade will be deployed as a separate release from the redesign, and together they will underscore PlayStation Home’s evolution into a world filled with hundreds of games ready for you to play, making Home the ultimate social game platform on consoles."
So Locust was half correct with his comment about it not being a core update. According to Jack's post, we'll see the changes to the spaces first, which does not require a Core update just a normal weekly update/maintenance, then later on we will receive the Core update with the streamlining and whatever else gets added between now and whenever SCEE and the Core team decide to make the announcement that Locust is refering too. (You know that all NA posts about Core updates are are just copy and pasted posts from the SCEE Home team posts to EU, lol, well it's true, and actually that aint a bad thing because at least then we know if one Home is getting it we're all getting it, lol)
So it does seem we've been adding to our own confusion. Now the only part that seems to be coming some what clearer is if it's just an update coming for NA (alphazone4 seems to be hinting that the spaces and format of districts and hub will be just NA but the features for the core update are for all homes and it would also explain why NA has only been informed about the new look instead of all of the Home's finding out at once.) or is this change coming to all the Homes
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