After delaying its launch, Sony Home has announced changes to its virtual world platform, Home, but the changes sound cosmetic.
There was anticipation that a virtual world running on a gaming platform might provide a level of immersion and detail that other platforms couldn’t offer, and part of the model for Home was integration of “real world” branded objects into a virtual environment. As well, it was positioned as a hub for users to access other games on the platform:
Comparable to Second Life, PlayStation Home is a virtual community of PS3 owners living together in both public and private environments. Users will be able to login, chat with both text and speech and play casual games together such as pool, bowling and even embedded arcade machines. And when the old stand-bys grow stale, users can invite one another into other PlayStation Network titles outside of PlayStation Home.
While the graphics were beautiful, the problem in early reviews was, well, there was nothing to do. As a hub for gaming, perhaps, but without the ability to do much other than stand around and chat, it was hardly a world-builder and more of a show room.
Now, Sony has unveiled improvements to Home…and one of the top items is giving users balconies! How thrilling.
“Venables and Festejo also revealed that it was now possible to take your avatar out onto a balcony from your own apartment, and that there would be “around eight or nine” different apartments available at launch, although no new details on potential pricing options for the premium apartments were available.”
Last time I checked, most of the major builders in Second Life had upwards of a dozen prefabs on offering EACH, and that excludes individuals who just make their own.However, Sony promises more to come (emphasis added):
One of the premium rooms displayed was called Norwegian Lodge, a large wood cabin, much bigger than the basic apartment, and while all of the existing apartment designs were based on real-world locations, Festejo commented that he could see more fantastic options, such as a room in the clouds, becoming available should there be user demand for it.
Sign me up! The fantastic option of a home in the clouds “should there be user demand for it”!!!!!
Maybe the Home-bodies need to visit SL and see what sells.
Very odd sign from Sony as to whether they’ve figured out a way to make Home work, and will be interesting to see if the cosmetic tweaks are what it takes to launch what I suspect is a world that’s way too little, and way too late.
