News Microsoft: Home is outdated

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/12/11/microsoft-home-is-outdated/1

Microsoft has lashed out at Sony's Home program which was released yesterday, saying the entire premise is out of date.

 

been apart of the beta program for a while and its no Wii Mii's, or NXE.

it works, but not as a gaming hub as there saying, maybe for the more elitest gamer out there that has to have everything, but this latest beta has nothing new for me.

rather use the XMB to be honest, as it seems to be in everything sony now, including there mobile phone range, which is good

 

<ramble+rant>
I think the big thing that stops Home being anything other that a pointless time sink (Kinda like MMO's, in my opinon) is that it isn't a core system - It's an optional extra. Second life holds the market on the whole.. Online Sims-a-like non-games, as evidenced by Google trying Lively and dropping it almost as soon as it started.

Sony would have been better off producing a Second Life client for the PS3, rather than wasting time trying to make their own system, that is inevitably going to fail. How often do people turn their consoles on with the intention of only sending messages to their friends?

People turn their consoles on, or the vast majority anyway, to play games. Home is not a game, it's a chatroom. I don't care what Sony are planning to 'add' in terms of customising your 'loft', it's still a chatroom. A more advanced, graphically anyway, version of Habbo Hotel. Except that it's limited to people with a PS3.

I expect that most people with a PS3 will play Home for a few weeks, until the glamour of something 'new' wears off, and then it'll be cast aside.

Home is out dated. It's out dated because the time for real competition to Second Life, which is all this is, has come and gone. There are many other, arguably better, options out there.

NXE, in my opinion, is slightly better (Even though entirely ****ing pointless) in that it is a core part of the consoles now (Believe me, I wish it wasn't). There will be a time when everyone who has an Xbox has an avatar. Your avatar represents you WHILE you play other games - Your avatar is you. It's the same with the Wii. The PS3 Home avatars don't have any bearing on how you appear to other people while you're playing games.

In Home, your avatar is you, while you're logged into it. Unless they introduce the ability to launch games with people in your 'loft' or whatever, and phase out the XMB (I doubt they will do that, to be frank) to make Home the basis of everything done within the PS3 environment, it simply is not going to catch on - Regardless of what they add to its customisable options.

</ramble+rant>

 

Are we going to see a statement from Sony that basically says:

"No, yours is crap, ours is better".

 

While it's a bit of dangerous ground by the MS guy, I do agree with him, I haven't seen the point in Home since it was announced. Miis (and now avatars) I get, they're like your profile and they appear in a lot of games (well the Miis, avatars not so much yet), they don't add the whole lot to your experience, but they're quite cool, and they're there all the time. I think that's the problem Sony had had with PSN since it's release, they've not been integrating everything, when it began, it was all separate experiences instead of being one linked experience, main reason for this was the lack of in game XMB for a very long time.

 

I don't get the fuss about Home. I can't imagine anything more tedious than logging on to a virtual world to interact with people. If I want that, I'll go out and meet people, go to the pub, go to a mate's place or whatever. When I'm at home chilling out with my PS3, I just want to play games. I for one don't plan to install Home unless for some reason it becomes mandatory. Eugh.

 

For what Home is I think it works pretty well. This sounds just like marketing/spin from Microsoft, I bet behind closed doors they wish that the XBOX had this technology.

 

Well if you ever noticed NXE is nothing more than a horizontal XMB with pictures.

 

The 360 COULD have this, but it's just pointless. Most of the people here agree that it's just a waste of time and i think that most PS3 owners will think the same way in a very short time. For now people are trying it out (I would try it out myself if I had a PS3 just out of curiosity) but in a little while the whole novelty appeal will wear out.

 

NXE added the option to install games to the HDD and it added Netflix streaming, but they did delay a lot of stuff that they said was going to be there in the first place. Honestly, 360 is mainly for gamers who just want to game and that's it, which is fine, but Sony thinks that their audience wants/needs Home. Time will tell as to whether they can make the two meet joyfully, but until then I will sit back and watch and give it some time before I make any rash generalizations that a lot of you (who have never experienced Home, especially the new public release) have made/been making....MS is going to say exactly what they need to say and that is "our competition sucks, we do it better even if you have to pay $50/yr for it"....that's what they're known for, right? I will laugh if Home becomes a breakthrough and MS comes out with another clone application that mirrors it....

Just like the Wii, right?

 

my mistake

 

Gamers want to play games, not spend time socializing. Home is a waste, people want to play games with each other, not sit around some virtual world doing nothing. the party system in NXE was a great step forward. You can socialize with your friends and still play any game you want. Easy.

 

I've been playing with Home for a while, I even enjoyed the idea way back when it was first announced - I thought it sounded great. However, times have changed significantly, and it really isn't worth it anymore, for reasons I've already posted.

If it genuinely does take off, beyond a few hundred thousand users, I will be impressed, and I will eat my posts. However, I just do not see that happening the way things are, with the other options and so on.

 

To you, yes. You want to play games with other people and socialize by talking while playing games, but other people can get tired of playing games, but they still may want to socialize. Home might just become the place they want to go to socialize (on a higher level than just chatting on a microphone) when they don't want to play games anymore.

Don't get me wrong, the 'socializing with others outside of games, but rather a virtual world' doesn't apply to me either and I will not be using Home except for the rare instances that I have stated in previous posts (attending virtual E3's a couple times a year, checking my virtual 3D trophy rooms that I will be showing friends when they are over (physically), exclusive Home movie/game trailers that I can't get on the net, checking out game rooms, customizing my apartment(s) (my g/f does most of it since she's an interior designer) with whatever new stuff they make available and worth having, playing mini-games a couple times (most I've played are pretty addictive), and maybe a couple of other things like making fun of others), but that doesn't mean I should call it a waste.

In regards to the "great step forward" NXE party system, I guess my question to you TreeDude is, why do games have to be included in order to make socializing with others online not a "waste" of time? Why can't people socialize in Home w/o playing games and it still be considered "forward thinking"? Don't forget Home is a free application that everyone can use, unlike NXE where only Gold members can use it. Both are forward thinking IMO and not wastes in their own rights even if they may not apply to you.

 

I agree completely. And I'll add, if you want to socialize, get outside and socialize! It's boring to sit there and just talk to people for long periods of time doing nothing. I don't mind sitting for like 10 minutes, but I don't turn on 360 to just talk. I turn it on to put a virtual bullet through a virtual head.

 

Honestly, the same thing could be said about Live's Netflix service and PSN's Movie service (why offer it? if I, the hardcore gamer, only want to play games and that's it)....time will tell if Home is worth it and considering it's still a beta there is plenty more they can do with it to possibly make it worthwhile for gamers to jump in and use it (even if it's just for a short while).....

Again, the app is free and it doesn't affect the way you play your games currently, but hypothetically speaking, if Home does bomb, I will be very annoyed b/c all the time/money/etc. that went into it should have been used for a better cause...hopefully Sony doesn't make this happen...

 

How can that be said about watching movies? That makes no sense.

Movies are entertaining for a couple hours. Talking to someone over a mic for that long, not so much.

 

Oh! I know! I'll start paying Microsoft to use live search and maybe it'll finally be better than Google!!!!!

 

Depends what they're saying

 

MS are the most immature BS company, sounds like a kid saying that. Home is fine, nothing wrong with it.