PS3 Home Beta: All Hope Is Not Lost
With the Home Beta underway in North America and Canada, there are lots of folks left out in the cold, folks like me who got the initial invitation to apply email but were not accepted. Originally Sony announced that there would be a closed beta, followed by a larger beta to start in August if memory serves, with October or so as the launch window for what is hoped to be the PS3′s big online service. A new email arrived in my in-box last night which told me all hope was not lost.
It says that while the current phase of the beta is full, they will be expanding it weekly and after that, may have other beta test opportunities with the software. Don’t lose hope, it says.
I appreciate that, and will be keeping an eye out for an invitation. If I’m lucky enough to get in, I’d want folks on my friends list to be chosen as well so we can kick the tires and put things to the test together instead of having to rely on the cooperation of strangers.
See also:
Stor3d: Home Beta
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I honestly don’t get why anyone cares about home. It just seems like a colossal waste of time. It’s warcraft without the ability to kill things or quest.
I don’t care about home, it’s Sony’s advertising channel. Who wanna dwell in a city where every building represents a brand not to mention having moving adds everywhere. well ok to be fair there is a bowling alley too.
I have to agree with you two, I’m hardly interested in what Home has to offer. It might be great for the MySpace crowd but honestly, I’m not at all looking forward to it.
How about dropping Home and focusing development on:
1) Seamless voice chat in and out of games via the XMB. As far as I’m concerned, if there isn’t any voice chat, it isn’t online.
2) Browsing the XMB directly from the PS button while in-game, reading messages and browsing the web.
3) The ability to send links via the PS3 browser to others in messages that they can click. It would then launch the browser.
4) A non-PS3 link to the Playstation Network like Xbox.com where I can read messages and respond to them.
I could go on and on.
I think that Sony is trying to one up Microsft with home, but in the end it looks way to involved, almost a distraction from the lack of games. Just give me a good friend system and a decent online store and I will be happy.
I agree that it will likely first be judged on the core Xbox-Live-like functionality every PS3 owner is craving and then on the extras.
But since it’s free for everyone, I’m wondering if they’re expecting it to be the starting point for all of your online gaming.
As a more technical person I agree with James — I’d much rather see these things in firmware extensions instead of a full-blown Home service first, and then have Home be some very pretty icing on the cake of solid online communications and matchmaking functionality.