The day we’ve been waiting for is here! And this is just the beginning…
Today we announced that PlayStation Home will enter into open beta, and will be available to everyone tomorrow. This milestone represents the very beginning of a long journey together, as PlayStation Home is an ever evolving, always changing, organic experience — full of new friends to meet, new events to enjoy, and new content to explore.
HomePlaza
If this will be your first time in PlayStation Home, be sure to talk to folks that have been around for a while, as they can show you the ropes. We also have a tutorial built in that will get you started with the controls, as well as help menus for you to reference in the Menu Pad. If you don’t have a USB keyboard or Bluetooth headset paired with your PlayStation 3, now is the time to do so – either option will allow you to easily talk and meet everyone.
One of the first things that you’ll notice that there are always things going on – parties, tournaments, events – some of which will be announced, and some of which that will just happen. You’ve got to be there to be a part of the party, so make sure to log in often to see what is going on.
If you want to know what’s coming up, check out the PlayStation Home forums, as we will be announcing events, tournaments, content updates, and feature revisions there, and by actively participating, you will be the first to know. You’ll also find that the PlayStation Home forums are alive with conversation from the PlayStation Home community discussing everything from feature requests to new clubs to join.
Diesel_Front
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Home Uncharted
Many of you will have already seen the news regarding participation in PlayStation Home from your favorite game publishers and brands, including Activision, Disney, Eidos, Electronic Arts, Lucas Arts, THQ and UBISOFT as well as Sony Pictures, Paramount, Red Bull, Ligne Roset, and Diesel. As you can imagine, with this many partners already on board, PlayStation Home will grow rapidly, so you’ll need to check back often to see what is new. We’ll do our best to keep you informed on what is going on, but with so much happening in PlayStation Home, there will always be new surprises and secrets to discover. If we simply told you about everything, then it just wouldn’t be as fun for you to discover…
For those of you that have been in PlayStation Home for a while, I wanted to take a moment to discuss something very cool that you will notice right away. Once you get in, you’ll see that a redesigned Central Plaza is there to greet you - we’ve made major upgrades as a result of your community feedback. Thank you!
First of all, the Central Plaza now features a new 4 player mini-game called “Saucer Pop,” where each player launches a flying saucer from a take-off pad and flies around popping bubbles. These bubbles contain stars that have points attached, but watch out for the bubbles with bombs which will take you out if you’re not careful. You also must keep an eye on your saucer’s fuel gauge and collect bubbles with fuel cells or else you will quickly meet a watery fate. Success is all about the high scores, so good luck out there! I’ve been playing for a while now while we’ve been developing the game, so I’m getting pretty good…for those of you that know me, prepare to pop!
Secondly, you will also see some changes to Listen@Home. Now, you’ll be able to select from a number of songs and vote on your favorites. Which ever song gets the most votes plays for everyone, so be sure to get your voice heard and get down on the dance floor.
I could go on and on about all the cool new things you are going see and find in PlayStation Home, both on day one of open beta and beyond. The important thing to remember is that PlayStation Home will continue to evolve and change overtime, so be sure to get in often so you don’t miss out…
See you in PlayStation Home.
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2008/12/10/playstation-home-open-beta-launches-tomorrow/
This will be a good day indeed for those that have been patiently (even anxiously) waiting for either an invitation to the closed beta or for the beta to open up to all. My impressions so far is that Home is a great place to meet up to other gamers. Although the options to customize your avatar in terms of clothing is a bit limited as of the closed beta, I can see this changing rather drastically once the beta opens up and even more so once they put in the final release.
I can see companies wanting to open shops Home to "preview" their real-life clothing lines by having an equivalent virtual clothing line them made available to people's avatars in Home. There is already a preview picture of a Diesel Jeans Store on the PlayStation Blog:
Hopefully companies will be putting out free things too, but you never know, because Home has a "shopping cart" model that is able to charge to your PSN network wallet, allowing Home enthusiasts to buy everything from houses, to virtual meeting places called clubhouses where you can start a "club" and invite people over PSN into you virtual club and you can purchase furniture to decorate the houses and clubhouses within.
I guess time will tell what will be the prevalent commerce model in Home, but since it's free for PSN users download Home, go in and browse, chat and play the online games that are in there, I'm assuming that there will be an enormous potential for advertising within this virtual space. I'm also guessing that there will be lots and lots of free stuff, combined with purchasable "premiums" for those home users that really want to stand out of the crowd.
In my personal opinion this will probably work very well, Case and point is the unlockable content that is available with the beta version of the game Namco Museum, a compilation of classic 80's arcade games such as Pac Man, Dig-Dug, Galaga, Tempest and possibly more. If you unlock certain things in the standalone game, there is a corresponding unlock, such as Namco arcade game themed clothing for your Home avatar, furniture and "trophies" to decorate your personal Home space and even a playable Arcade game cabinet. Unfortunately, the beta for Namco Museum was only available to closed beta testers on the Japan PSN, network.
That of course didn't stop dozens of resourceful players from either getting somone to "share" the Namco beta code with them, or getting an account on the Japan PSN Network and somehow also getting the Japan Home Beta and Japan Namco Museum Beta combo. Once you have the code for the beta, you can download it onto your PS3 and the unlockables will actually carry over to the US beta, so you have people on the US home server with all the cool Namco T-Shirts, trophies and even the Arcade Cabinet (although the playable games have been disabled in the US version it still makes a cool decoration).
When I saw all that Namco stuff, all I knew is that I wanted to have the Namco Museum game to I could unlock all the cool stuff and show it off indiscriminately on PSN Home and I didn't care if I had to pay for this old school arcade compilation, I just want it. I suspect many others that feel the same way. It's very possible Home is just what Sony needs to get the PS3 out of the constant shadow of the mega popular Wii and X-Box 360. Imagine the possibilities for tie-in content with upcoming titles, like sure-to-be-popular PS3 exclusives such as Final Fantasy XIII.
As for those who missed out on the last leg of the closed Home Beta Test, aside from the social aspect of course, you didn't really miss much at least from my standpoint. Only a handful of locations such as the Central Plaza, the Theatre, the Mall and the Bowling Alley were available, and until only a week ago, only the default furniture and clothing options were available. Game unlockables from Echochrome, Ice-breakers and Namco Museum (for those who has access to the Japan PSN Beta) are excluded of course. There are also 3 T-shirts available to the original, early phase Home Beta testers, the ones (I'm assuming) who did the real bug-hunting and gave extensive feedback in the initial closed beta. Guys like me who came in later on the secondary phases of the beta were mostly there for "load testing", to make sure the servers could handle a bunch of people on there at the same time.
They opened up a few of the mall shops last Wednesday, which was a nice treat for us beta testers, since all the content we downloaded from there was free and is supposed to carry over into open beta. Now whether or not the available mall items will have a price attached to them or how much, will of course remain to be seen. I imagine the "Summer House" having a price tag attached to it, but I'm not so sure about the generic, non-branded clothing or the furniture items. All will be answered tomorrow I suppose. For those who absolutely cannot wait until tomorrow, I'm throwing in a couple more screenshots:
Makeshift bed/futon (made from a couch and footstools) in my Harbor Studio apartment
Makeshift Bedroom in my "Summer House"
A glitch with clipping that some beta testers liked to do to make their avatar appear to be levitating.
(The glitch involved running up the stairs in central plaza and making a quick turn at the end so that you were now walking on an edge that could not normally be accessed part of which had no actual floor graphic. Yes it's silly I know, but we were bored and had nothing better to do. ;)
Anyway, that's all to blog for now, so until next time. =)
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