Sony confirms November for Home open beta

VG247: Ron Festejo, Home's creative director, has confirmed that Home will enter its open beta phase in November this year.

"Home is currently in a closed beta phase," he said, speaking at last week's SCEE PlayStation Day in London. "We have between 8,000 and 10,000 users in this closed beta phase. Around July we're going to be expanding on the closed beta phase and allowing more people to gradually come in, and then in November this year we'll be going to the open beta."

[crematory]

but for me i wanna xmb more than home ..plz

[gw4k]

Who cares! I don't care when Home comes out. Sony has really pulled us around with this and November of this year or next, it doesn't matter.

Sony lied to their followers with this. We have been promised Home for so long, and all we have is delays. They knew they couldn't deliver what it promised.

I like my PS3 but Sony almost makes me hate it. :-(

Errrrr

[princejb134]

really i couldn't really care about home
just give me my trophies or achievements or whatever they wanna call it before home comes out that way most of us ps3 users will be happy
in game xmb is more important

[Havocxx]

Think on the bright side, XMB access for music, chatting, videos etc on the fly could be implimented by home in some way or another and we all saw by mgo beta that it could be ready as of late december for xmas OR for the new year, kind of a long wait, but hey we got games to keep us busy like resistance2 and LBP.

[J@D]

true, but the XMB IT IS supposed to be launch this summer isn't with the next incoming firmware. I want my in-game music so bad.

[Burekman]

thats in game communications thats coming this summer, not necessarily the whole XMB

[Shaka2K6]

.

[juuken]

In game XMB also needs to come out Sony, don't forget that now.

[Sir Ken Kutaragi]

Their going to be...

'HOMELESS'!!!(On-line&Off -line!!!) (i.e Off-line...FIRE!FIRE!) ;-D

+

'GAMELESS'!!!(By the end of this year to!!!) ;-D

+Was going to say 'BRAINLESS' but they are now anyway!!! ;-D

Ooooooooops!!! Watch my Bubbles go down again!!! ;-D

[Kaz Hirai]

Very well put, my Emperor! That sums up the PIGS perfectly!

31 days until Judgment Day, Nazisoft!

MWAH-HA-HA-HA!!!

[Sir Ken Kutaragi]

With your and PS3's SUPERIOR brain they haven't got a chance!!!;)
+Why do xBot Lemmings MOAN about 'HOME' for??? Your NEVER going to get it!!! and WE don't want you to!!! ;-D

[Sir Ken Kutaragi]

I meant King Kaz not Klng Kaz!!! ;-D I cannnn't speeeeeell!!! ;-D

[BeaArthur]

Hopefully it will stay November and not get delayed...again.

[shine1396]

beta november than some unknown time in future...

[fox02]

it's just a beta; wtf are they delaying it over and over again??

[pp]

home = gay = sony fan boys

[wass007]

Live = king of all gays, expensive, broken = Xbots

[Phil Harrison Mklll]

yeah he wants pink colours in killzone 2 :D

[Ali_The_Brit]

pp's mum-goat-stupid pills-pp

[leeger]

I just hope it doesn't get delayed again.

[pornflakes]

Sony confirms HOME since 2 years... lol

[gnothe1]

i guess that means if the open beta is in November we may not get the full service until AFTER KZ2, an thats in 2009. so it would have taken them more than 2 years to make good on another promise. I know alot of you sony only guys wont have a problem with this an will say its ready when its ready but come on.

[Bathyj]

I dont see why it affects you at all.

[criticalzero]

I agree though..Only a beta??? I think the full version will come out on PS4!!!!LOL

[flappo]

bit much tbh , november ?

jesus

and it's STILL a beta ??

WTF !?

[ECM0NEY]

Vaporware

[Phil Harrison Mklll]

JEALOUSY

[Shaka2K6]

.

[mesh1]

ahahah kz2 and this are dlayed beyond no games this year for poos3

[sumfood4u]

Can't Wait!

[Forbidden_Darkness]

it takes a long time to make a great service, so stop your whinning!

@: J@D: im pretty sure we wont get ingame music, unless sony struck a deal with Microsoft allowing sony to use ingame music, otherwise microsofts patent is the reason why we wont get ingame music...

[znu]

No, this is not right

Sony can't just do this and pass it off as an oops. Personally i lost interest and i forgot all about home until now. If they hold it off any longer im seriously going to boycott it.

It may take a long time to make a service but if Microsoft or Nintendo did this i would flame them.

It's happening to us so im gonna say it right now that sony is just being damn lazy. Seriously wtf are they doing in SCE. IF they wanted they could get it to us in a month if they put more effort and workers on it.

Delaying a beta has no excuse, you can argue it wasn't working but it's a beta, not the full release, we're suppose to play and find glitches and not wait till they're ironed out and then play.

Come on sony, you can do better. Despite your laziness, you come out with quality products. Sony has always been that brand you can depend on, it was that brand that was more expensive but you knew that once you bought, only good things would happen.

[Zeevious]

Don't complain too much...

This extra time can only improve Home.
As it is right now, there's really no compelling reasons to use it . . . Why?

GAMING
While graphically impressive there's absolutely no reason to delay getting into your game for several minutes, just to see your virtual character call up a virtual PSP and start a game from a virtual environment, instead of having Autoplay on in your system menu, and loading your disc.

2-seconds to game starting without Home VS. 2-5 minutes, or more to boot Home...then your game.
Your PS3 would optionally have to start IN home or there is little reason to use it.

When the comment was recently made that Sony forgot gamers developing it, that's unfortunately true but being fixed. The staging area's for some games, for instance are impressive and useful, but we'll have to see if people really want to interrupt or postpone that game to chat, and wander around.

In my opinion, there are a couple of fundamental flaws with the basic design:
As a Gaming environment it's too much of a kludge! There's a reason the XMB & Live are simple Left-Right/Up-Down - Select, interfaces . . .

When you want to play your game you want it to start as soon as you insert the disc or within a couple clicks at the most.

I'd rather just type or say: Aaron, take the left, Betty, stay right, Chris, your with me.
5 seconds, instead of several minutes in Home, then in the games planning room.
Seconds Vs. minutes to game play seems to outweigh the benefits unless Home had an always on option, or used execute-in-place code to be instantly available.

Less WOW . . . More NOW!
I am sure some people will love the 'Wow!' factor of a unique strategy or operations room for each game.

To me, I think that's all it is at this point, a few extra minutes of 'Wow!' instead of playing right NOW! This is because Sony hasn't started really developing sections of Home just for the gamer.
Since they are focusing on that now, we may find innovations and functions that really add to the game play experience and make Home a 24/7 universal app. (Can't wait till November to try the public-beta out!)

SOCIAL
Home has been compared to a 3D version of MySpace/just another MySpace clone.

Here's where Sony has the opportunity to create a very unique experience, but wandering around randomly and happening to bump into someone you know in a room with a 64 person limit seems to severely limit this potential.
With the right community/friends matching this could work very well. (Demographically it looks like a sausage-fest to me. Just kidding! lol)

Right now, the social aspects still fall under the category of 'Nothing to do' and I don't know what kind of virtual activities would be interesting and engaging enough to make you load Home daily.
(They only update PSN once a week, after all.)

MAKE OR BREAK
The delay is the smartest thing Sony can do. If the beta was released in June or July, with just the few issues I mentioned, Home would get a 'BORING...NeXt!'

Home would become another 'Lair'
An otherwise ambitious achievement, that even after finally releasing the often requested analog control option, few bothered to replay or even review it again.

Beta or not, if it gets a 'Lair Comes Home' Kotaku label, people would login a couple times, play with some furniture and a couple area's and that's it.

In three weeks Home would look less populated than a Scientology Recruitment center after that South Park - Come out, Come out, Wherever you are Tom Cruise episode.
While you may be able to jump your OWN couch in Home, what do you do NEXT?

Right now, Nothing.

SHOPPING
Ok, not really nothing, but again we're stuck with 'Wow' vs 'NOW!'
Virtual shopping malls are not new, but rarely seen when you actually want to buy something. I just can't see sustained marketing and an entire stores inventory all created and rendered in 3D.

The wow of wading through selections is great...for a few trys & buys, I'd get tired of the extra 3D-Wow time, when it's not wowing me anymore cause I saw it 11teen times already.

Innovative Yes, Practical...maybe. It depends on how Sony does it. So far, graphics are not their challenge.

OK, WHAT NOW?
I think if you add in a Movie and Music store (3rd times a charm!) it seems unlikely these can ALL be a success.

Now's the time to re-assess what it really is, will be, and how to realistically sustain interest in what so-far looks like Sims 2 1/2, just with alot less content, activities and just one character.

If I was Sony, I'd go with exclusive content updated DAILY, with bonuses, previews, community activities, game contest that are smart enough to only invite you if you own and actively play the game, live'ish social matching and achievements that tie into similar gamers with similar skill levels and interests. Sony, add a standard method for each developer to use, please.

I'd also add a kind of remote-play, where demo's could be sampled without downloading or installing, right off their servers...instantly in the arcade. Seems like the kind of innovation that would be fun for everyone, and also result in sales to support Home.

HOME IS WHERE THE BYTES ARE
Home is very ambitious...Too ambitious to succeed everywhere. The extra time Sony takes should assess the strongest most compelling features plus add strong gaming elements.

This is where Sony needs to drop the rest till after launch so the good features aren't diluted, boring Home users that free or not, won't bother to come back.

I just wonder if they'll have a dragon garage, in case Lair comes Home.

;)

[Shadow Flare]

....swear he said september before. Anyway...just sometime this year sony. I really wanna try this out. The amount of times they've delayed it makes me think they're including an awful lot of stuff in Home. Looks like they're aiming to impress, im sure it will. Im glad they realise the potential they have in their hands with Home

[MaximusPrime]

i have a feeling that sony will surprise us by releasing it earlier than the proposed date.

[fllysurfer]

IMO, and being a PS3 owner Home is way overated. I don´t want the console for "overblow SecondLifeish" experience. Just good games and I´m a happy camper...

[Mikelarry]

this is goodnews. but im still keeping my fingers crossed

[callahan09]

Cool. I'll try it out.

[Meresin]

I'm fine with waiting on Home. It'll be great when it comes, but I can live without it for now. Like every other PS3 owner, however, I'd really like to see in-game XMB sooner rather than later. :)

[codeazrael]

I mean online you do everything on GTA that you're supposed to do on Home and GTA is out RIGHT NOW! You can go bowling, play darts, call your friends on your cell phone, I mean ANYTHING! And there will undoubtedly be massive amounts of content downloads...besides the exclusive content to the 360. But hell, you can even buy ringtones for your cellphone!

SO SOMEBODY TELL ME RIGHT NOW SO I WILL NOT BE CONFUSED............WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GTAIV AND SONY HOME!

[Meus Renaissance]

Well you can invite your friends to play with you and watch video with you. Plus Home gets delayed a few times.

[codeazrael]

I dont know about the ps3 version, but on the 360 you can use the phone to actually TALK to your friends like it's a real freakin cell phone! And how many people are actually gonna go through the trouble of going on Home to watch a movie with their online friends???? I could give a crap what my friends are watching, not to mention with more people watching, the more times a movie would have to be paused for potty breaks, snacks and what not, so that feature would be a bust. I frankly dont understand why people can even think about Home anymore now that GTAIV is out.

[ben806]

im just glad a date has been set, the lack of 'official' news latley did have me worryied.

[bootsielon]

I was expecting that by "fall", they meant september and the final product. I mean seriously, there is already content for Resistance, PS3's launch title, inside Home and the final product will not launch until after more than two years.

[Delive]

be released in Nevermber. These push backs across the board for Sony are starting to be the norm. They could release Home and build it as we go. It's a free service and I think we would all be acceptant of the issues and patient with the progress, as long as we have something.

[codeazrael]

If Sony actually gave realistic dates as to when some of this software were going to be released from the get go, this would sour in alot of ps3 and potential ps3 fans mouths. But to make it seem like a game or service is closer to coming out than it is, would hold wouldbe defectors from perhaps going with the competition and buying their hardware, and it works alot of times. Take E3 05, the ps3 would not release until almost 2007, yet since the 360 was releasing at year's end of this particular E3, Sony AND Nintendo had to show their next gen cards to try to curb alot of people's appetite for something next gen that year. Realistically, Sony and Nintendo should have waited until E3 06 to show off their systems, as they had no reason to show them in 05, other than trying to sway people away from thoughts of getting the 360 when it released that year. Sony did the same thing by showing games pre rendered, while MS showed real time games, playing on fans ignorance to get them to think, "hey, ps3 graphics look better, alot better than the 360", even though they were prerendered. I can go on all day, but I guess you get the point.

[thor]

I don't think Home is what any gamer really wants. Yes it's _novel_ to be able to actually meet up with people via their avatar, but I think it would be better to just have a list of friends with options to "voice chat", "join friend's game", no matter where they are, in a game or not. To have to log into home and wait for it to load, and then find out that not all your friends can be in the same server for home at the same time, and then to see that you can't contact your friends unless they're actually in home itself (if they're playing a game you can't chat to them). Home will just be a pain to find people in, connect and load, and then actually phisically meet up, before _finally_ launching a game together.

Can someone please explain the appeal of home to me? If it had released a year ago I might have cared, but it's almost DEFINATELY not going to release until 2009 proper now. By that time, most devs won't have bothered adding home game launching/trophies etc into their games and so it'll be useless for 99% of games released. Of course, then if you want to play, say, COD4 still (which still doesn't have rumble let alone home support, they'll never add it get real) then you won't have logged into home and so none of your friends can contact you.

[JadeTyrant]

this is the difference between Sony and Microsoft, Sony wants to offer quality while Microsoft doesn't care and just rushes everything out so they can say "we were first, we win"!!!!!!!!!!! Ya know, something a little child would do. We have all seen what patience can bring us. I will gladly WAIT B3YOND if it means newer entertainment experiences.

[eddierivera]

I was completley sold on Home. Now that I have been playing more ps3 games and realizing how the community works I dont even care for Home anymore. I would rather have in game xmb and soundtracks anyday. Home will be cool, but I just dont care about it like I used to. I have games to play on my ps3 now, and probably too busy playing good games in Nov to even try Home.

[40cal]

Just in time for the holidays.

[Variable]

This is gonna take too long IMO. If they really wanted something to compete with the achievements they should have started it a year ago...

But is remains fun to look forward too though :p

[travelguy2k]

when released, it has to be virtually perfect. Because every 360 fan or Live subscriber will blow any little problem into a huge deal. Although free, Sony is trying to make this the Live Killer or at least equal. I'm not saying it will be and in reality i very much doubt it will be a Live killer, but it will be allot better than what we have now and it will also be FREE.

For me i see HOME as a new OS for the PS3, just a new way to navigate and enter games as well as use some of the feature in the PS3 "in game". Anyone that expects anymore from this i think will be disappointed.

[LiquifiedArt]

I agree pushing it back is more important, then releasing something that isnt Gamer-Centric enough. People need to see use for it RIGHT OFF THE BAT. Not optional. Its important to make a HUGE impact right away.

[DJ]

I seriously wonder how much better it can get.

[etownone]

why are there still some "glad" that a date has been set?

its only a BETA!!

in other words, no HOME for 2008 and Sony was full of horsesh!t when they announced it back in april 07 saying it will be available for Fall 07. How in the hell can you be off by TWO years unless you were deliberately lying to the public..... but i doubt Sony's PR would do that :)

[heyheyhey]

uh-oh, someone doesn't know what an Open Beta is

it means that anyone can participate, which means that ANYONE with a PS3 has a chance of getting a Home this year... lol

[whoelse]

I wouldn't rule it out being delayed again!

[Marceles]

I'm not keeping my hopes up...it'll be out when it's out. I'm at least gonna wait until Playstation.Blog posts something about it since it seems like the PR forgets stuff they say. At least in-game communication is supposed to come out this summer (said by David Reeves) so that'll be more than enough for me.

[xboxftw]

There goes their highlight of the year (2007). KZ2 2009, home (actual non beta 2010). Yes every year ps3 owners can look for one must have.

[Lionsguard]

This sounds familiar..

[Ri0tSquad]

I don't care anymore. November is so far away. These guys are nuts.

[Figboy]

but it's release isn't making, or breaking, my enjoyment of the PS3 so far.

there are so many cool games hitting (both exclusive and multi-platform) this year, that it doesn't upset me nearly as much as some other folks, when Home gets delayed.

glad to hear there's a bit more of a solid date for the open beta.

i'll keep my ears open, but there's a lot of stuff to keep me busy in the meantime.

[Hellzdoms]

i cant wait for it ... when is it gone come out