Sony Computer Entertainment America has announced that PlayStation Home will be getting a massive redesign later this year. The new PlayStation Home will feature “an all-new hub that integrates games, quests, community events and user-generated content, while providing players with additional navigation, shopping, socialization and entertainment options.” Here’s the rundown of Home’s “new core experience” from today’s press release:
- The Hub: The new, futuristic Hub brings games directly to players with a featured game front-and-center upon login, the Activity Board where players can engage in quests and community activities, and a direct path to free games via the teleporter.
- Action District: A gathering place for the hardcore demographic, the Action District has a gritty, urban feel reminiscent of a first-person shooter level and provides a direct travel point to action and horror games.
- Sportswalk: The Sportswalk has an exciting outside-the-stadium feel with instant major league sports scores, headlines and highlights, ample space for sports-themed games and provides direct travel points to sports-related games.
- Adventure District: The Adventure District drops you in a lush island jungle with an air of mystery, hidden treasure and discovery, where players will be able to launch directly into adventure-themed games.
- Pier Park: A waterfront boardwalk leads players to carnival, puzzle, outdoor and arcade games. Take a ride on the Pier Park Ferris wheel or visit the arcade for some bright entertainment.
I really wanted to like PlayStation Home when I first learned about it. Unfortunately, the project I learned about was nothing like the product that launched. Dueling ideologies transformed Home into something I was looking forward to into something I find extremely boring. Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand that Home is very popular. I just don’t understand why people are digging it. Perhaps the new PlayStation Home will be more to my liking.
How about you? Are you looking forward to the new PlayStation Home? Or does it still seem boring?
Thats pretty funny. i just downloaded last night. I haven't used PSHome in a very long time and it wasn't installed on this PS3. Got in got bored got out, but mostly due to the copious amount of downloading I had to do.
Yeah, the download times kill any potential for coolness.
The times weren't too bad individually. 30 Mb took a few minutes, but since there are 30ish places to go and each one has to be downloaded THEN is got bad. I set them all to download and walked away. Came back and just didn't care to do anything with it again.
I don't know about that, it seems even cheesier than Home now.
I've always thought that PS Home would be the default "startup" of the PS3. I guess I thought it would be cool if you could start off as your Avatar in your home space and the different options available to you through the XMB (or whatever the normal interface is) would be things around your "home". Like if you wanted to listen to music, you would go to the boombox on the shelf. If you wanted to watch Netflix or Hulu, you would turn on the virtual TV in front of your couch. If you wanted to play a game, you could go over to the arcade machine in the corner, and if you wanted to contact someone on your friends list, you'd go over to the phone.
(continued…)
To do a party chat, you would walk out of your virtual house and go to your friend's house, and maybe along the way, you could see other people walking down the street and have a chat with them if you want. You could also walk across the street to a virtual marketplace where you would have all sorts of companies like Capcom or EA would have virtual storefronts and advertisements. You could go into their stores and buy content for your house or your games. Everything in your house would be fully customizable from the furniture to the wall paint, of course.
I guess it would be kind of like a Second Life thing, only better.
-M
Wow, I haven't heard someone mention Second Life in a long, long time.