Playstation Home Beta Hands On
The construct of Playstation Home is simple: create avatar / hang out in virtual world and do stuff. It’s a bit like a snazzy Second Life and it reminds me a lot of Shenmue ( I see*), in as much as it’s a free roaming virtual world that looks like a proper game.
You get a ‘home/appartment’ plus loads of other areas in which you can hang out. You can meet and interact with others via text chat, voice chat and other (as yet) unspecified communications methods. Currently the areas include a cinema, where you can consume content, a bowling alley, where you can bowl, play pool and interact with ‘retro’ games. Plus there’s the obligatory shopping mall, where you can buy stuff - except you can’t actually buy anything at the moment because the tech isn’t ready.
Playstation Home, of course, is going to have a lot more to it than that, but essentially (at the moment) that’s it.
So, what’s it like?
Well, I know this is the beta, and yes it looks good and the interaction is neat and intuitive, but the whole experience left me a bit cold. I think the potential for the thing is huge, admittedly I only had an hour or so and so obviously should give it more time, but I was disappointed.
Before I actually got to the ‘Home’ oddessy I was asked to create an avatar. Much in the same way as I was last week when I fired up the new Xbox OS. Neither of these experiences was hugely enjoyable, however, this one made a little more sense as I was actually going to use this avatar. Unlike the Xbox one which is just plain annoying, goofy and seemingly completely useless - what on earth are they thinking/step backwards or what? Anyway, I made an (yet another) avatar, which ironically, and despite my best efforts, looked almost exactly the same as all the others.
From then on in it was a case of aimlessly wandering about with little inclination to talk to anyone. There were a lot of people dancing (one of the character actions of which Sony are obviously very proud, see video below) and a few chatting, which seemed to be predominantly large groups of boys hanging around what few girls were there. I watched half a trailer for a crap film, played a little Echochrome and hung around a pool table like a testicle at a lesbians disco - all of which I could have done (and would have been more fun) in the real world.
Someone asked me about Home this morning and I sort of instinctively explained it as the Xbox OS with a ‘virtual world’ skin. Which it is, right? Play games, chat, consume; that’s it. Now I might be wrong, but why does that actually need a virtual world skin? Yes, I understand it’s a marketing tool and it’s a way to make cash etc. But what I don’t understand is why I’d want to spend much of my time there, especially when I am looking down the barrel of a brand spanking copy of Resistance 2.
Playstation need to enable a load of users to move this on and create the next version. If they did that it could be incredible, as it is, Home is exactly what you’d expect.
*If you ever played Shenmue, you’ll understand.
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2 Responses to “Playstation Home Beta Hands On”
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Dude. I don’t really agree with your COD 5 review. Please play it online and reconsider. Cheers.
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