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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."

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videogaming247.com

[via eurogamer.net]

Alternative Sources:

Home open beta in November - ps3attitude.com | By: DolphGB

patlike - contributor
Published: 73 days 1 hour ago | News | PlayStation 3

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Showing: 1 - 43 of 43 Comments

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crematory - 73 days 1 hour ago

1 - i hope so

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

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gw4k - 72 days 18 hours ago

1.1 - You Know....

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

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princejb134 - 72 days 16 hours ago

1.2 -

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

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Havocxx - 73 days 1 hour ago

2 - well

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.

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J@D - 72 days 23 hours ago

2.1 -

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.

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Burekman - 72 days 18 hours ago

2.2 -

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

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BeaArthur - 72 days 23 hours ago

3 -

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

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shine1396 - 72 days 23 hours ago

3.1 - too right!!!!

beta november than some unknown time in future...

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fox02 - 72 days 23 hours ago

3.2 - true

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

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leeger - 72 days 23 hours ago

4 -

I just hope it doesn't get delayed again.

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gnothe1 - 72 days 23 hours ago

5 -

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.

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Bathyj - 72 days 22 hours ago

5.1 -

I dont see why it affects you at all.

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5.2 gnothe1 | 72 days 22 hours ago - deleted by mod -

5.3 Bathyj | 72 days 22 hours ago - deleted by mod -

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criticalzero - 72 days 21 hours ago

5.4 -

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

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sumfood4u - 72 days 22 hours ago

6 - HOME LOOKS SO EXCITING!

Can't Wait!

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Forbidden_Darkness - 72 days 22 hours ago

7 -

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...

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znu - 72 days 19 hours ago

7.1 -

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.

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Zeevious - 72 days 22 hours ago

8 - Homeland Insecurity . . .

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.

;)

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Shadow Flare - 72 days 22 hours ago

9 -

....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

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MaximusPrime - 72 days 22 hours ago

10 -

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

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fllysurfer - 72 days 22 hours ago

11 -

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...

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Mikelarry - 72 days 22 hours ago

12 - well

this is goodnews. but im still keeping my fingers crossed

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Meresin - 72 days 21 hours ago

13 -

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. :)

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codeazrael - 72 days 21 hours ago

14 - WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOME AND GTAIV????

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!

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Meus Renaissance - 72 days 21 hours ago