Sony announced this morning that it plans to overhaul PlayStation Home, completely redesigning the PS3's MMO/lobby system/chat room. Sony plans to create 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.
Below the "Read More" tag, you'll find a full, official description of the new changes to Home, including a listing of Home's new districts.
- 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.
Also planned to be released this fall as a separate core client upgrade is a revamp of the underlying user experience in PlayStation Home. This update will deliver a more streamlined experience upon login with customized tracks for new, returning and regular PlayStation Home users, minimizing the time it takes for players to get into games.
So who out there is still in Home? Are you guys excited for the changes?
Comments are Closed
Comments
Displaying 1–20 of 27
122
Betty_Dizzle
Im on home everyday... mostly to play pool or meet up with friends and it would be nice to see a new design on it...
E-Xane
What is Home? JK. I have long said that both microsoft and sony need to start giving you something back for playing their games. Have trophy points. Or give you rewards based on what trophies you have earned, for use in your home spaces, or as avatar items.
Specifically i had a rather good idea recently, with all the game providers fussing about game sales. Say..just for instance, capcom sets up a Home store. When you buy a new game, you enter the activation code from the box, which allows you to get points for the trophies you earned, which can be used to purchase items from the Capcom store. In addition to psn points of course. That is your bate. Here's the hook. If you get the game as a rental, or used, you have to buy into it... nothing expensive, 2 to 5 dollars. Better to pay for that then to pay for multiplayer. And you potentially make your money back by not having to spend your psn points on a resident evil pistol for your avatar, or a zombie head to hang from your apartment wall.
What is the benefit to capcom? They potentially make an extra 2 to 5 dollars, on every single reactivation. Say one copy of a game circulates through 30 game fly customers before being lost, bought, or broken. 20 of them buy into the program at 5 dollars each. Capcom just made 100 dollars off a game that at this point was probably only retailing for 40 dollars. And seeing as it really costs them next to nothing to develop avatar items, the bulk of which will be bought by psn points anyway, it is cake. Free money. The icing on the cake is if you get the top trophy, the one you have to work the longest and the hardest for, you get an item that you cant purchase, Something you cant get any other way, which actually draws gamers in to home, to show off. "I got the platinum trophy in KIllzone 3, checkout out my new bullpup assault rifle!" and while they are there, they may or may not spend more money.
Game companies get more money. Sony gets more business out of home. Gamers get free stuff. TROPHIES ACTUALLY MEAN SOMETHING. And it is easy to implement. Everyone wins!. It'll never happen.
RogPD
i would really love if they could implement the MOVE into the home..i could see it now running around the virtual world with a paintball gun and shooting just about anything that moves with the precision of the MOVE hell yea that be a whole lotta fun and which they should probably do more then just shoot a paintball gun maybe make it so you can hold stuff, punch ppl etc
RogPD
i would really love if they could implement the MOVE into the home..i could see it now running around the virtual world with a paintball gun and shooting just about anything that moves with the precision of the MOVE hell yea that be a whole lotta fun and which they should probably do more then just shoot a paintball gun maybe make it so you can hold stuff, punch ppl etc
kinghunter64
Home has so much potential, it looks like they are finally going to start to utilize it.
KingGainerXan
I rarely go in Home, but it definitely needs an upgrade. Every other country's Home is 10x better than the US already.
And for those who say nobody uses Home, you are completely, utterly wrong. At any time of the day (in the US Home), there are thousands of people around, and that's just the areas I 'frequent' (or INfrequent, rather). I have NEVER seen Home uncrowded, not since the closed beta.
BlackKillerKong
I hope they make X-Play G5 brand new good as always.
BlackKillerKong
I must say you got some big giant park.
BlackKillerKong
I wish they had a god of war district and a borderlands 2 district.
Cryptomaster420
WHAT ABOUT PS HOMES LAG ?
theantigzus
OMG HOME is still around??????? well good for it, its like the little engine that could :)
animeandmangarule
I got home when I first got my PS3 Slim, but I deleted it from my hard drive because it was a waste of space. I only went to the Playstation Home area maybe once a moth if that,. Before I deleted it I hadn't been to it in like almost 2 months, and even this wont get me to rejoin it, it's kind of a boring thing. I think its great their trying to make it good, but I still wont re-install it, no thanks.
DPsx72
Are you serious that people use it? Nobody I ever heard from said such a thing. Always sounded empty and boring.
Really though, we have video chat with up to 6 people and that works quickly and easily. Who's going to waste time loading Home just to use the on-screen KB (which I hate using) and 'talk' to some goofy virtual environment? Any of the content available there could be found online anyway. Like the E3 stuff.
Wildcard273
The thing that frustrated me was the fact that you couldn't get into the games on there. I'd wait for 10-20 minutes just to play some little social game. The only one that wasn't was the saucer pop.
It was a free service, as is the PSN as a whole, so I can't really complain too much.
2ply
Not sure what people that are saying no one uses Home are on, I don't use it very often either but it's always packed whenever I do.
Sounds like they're tackling a lot of the issues with it though, like simply finding things for one lol.
Nothing was worse than wandering around for 5-10min just trying to find out where you go to start a game (in some rooms anyways).
They also need to do something about the "must download before you can enter" thing too.
That was always a turn off for me. Might grab 1 or 2 of the new things, but using it every 3rd month or so makes it a lot of dl's to catch up on..
And 9/10 times it was never worth it in the first place lol.
jcreaper666
I use to go on Home back when it was still a closed beta, other than that I was on there to watch some E3 coverage. Its a shame Home bombed like it did.
JohnnyBuku
The one thing $ony absolutely needs to do if they expect people to embrace it, is to eliminate the exceedingly long loading times. I really have no use for Home but would still probably go there from time to time if i knew i wouldn't have to spend 90% of my time in loading hell. As it is now i forgot completely it existed until this article.
QDOG8
Haven't been on PS Home in a long time, but. I was just on it to watch GamesCom, and it was pretty fast. But more speed is never a bad thing.
NinjaVanish
ahh good because it sucked !
cardinalsfan1122
I go on PS home occasionally to see whats going on talk to some friends and play some of the games. Actually I went on like 2 days ago and the place is packed! There are still people everywhere(and the dead island area is cool) I liked the way their interface is now its XMB like which is nice, but we will wait and see how it turns out. Not alot of people on G4 may play it but there is definately a dedicated community.
Displaying 1–20 of 27
122