Harrison: Home is "brilliantly realised" News

Harrison + home + hype = EG comments raging

I think he is just brown nosing Sony and MS incase he wants a different job soon. Im not slagging off Home, just how the article came across :)

"can i be the first and not the last to say

CUNT"

Your mother must be so proud of you.

I agree with Kirly_Wombat, he does seem like he's being nice to everyone to ensure no bridges are burned.

Home is quite nice, but it is only the beginning, and I could say the same for NXE. Both will go onwards and upwards, which will mostly be a good thing.

It'll be as successful as that Google online world project, i.e. not at all. It certainly doesn't make me want to buy a PS3 in any way.

"customisation, socialisation and community platforms are going to be just as important as the games themselves"

W-R-O-N-G-!

so much hate on here already for a man who is head and shoulders (literally) above the current Sony Bod and M$ pleb that head up each respective campaign.

He knows what he is on about and Atari might actually get somewhere with him in charge.

Yeah, at least he's not belittling other companies or saying how Atari are superior. He is a bit of a vocal bastard though, isn't he; seems to be a news story every other day relating to something he's said.

I just take this as a sign that he in NO WAY sees his future at Atari as a safe bet and is simply keeping the door back to Sony open.

@designerheadache

I've no feelings either way for Harrison, but the above statement is something to incite pure, unchecked hatred. However, he was most likely handed the statement on a piece of paper to recite, so I won't hold it againt him personally.

For whoever wrote it though... *shakes fist*

You can take the boy out of Sony...

@designerheadache
"so much hate on here already for a man who is head and shoulders (literally) above the current Sony Bod"

Are you mad? The guy who took over from Harrison has talked nothing but sense with due deference to mistakes they have made.

"the whole industry recognises is that customisation, socialisation and community platforms are going to be just as important as the games themselves."

=(

Huh, his job appeared to be hyping the Sony Flop Machine beyond all logical rationality, slagging of Microsoft before slavishly copying them and lying to the press. Now he makes crossword puzzles with tits in. Why exactly are we listening to him?

Home is brilliantly... unimpressive.

Having had it since the closed beta for some months now all I can say is that it seems utterly pointless... pretty but ultimately irrelevant... plus it seems all too limited and, for me, got boring within 30 minutes. All the tedious loading between areas just sucks the life out of the experience too making the online world feel like the collection of "rooms" it so evident is.

A bitter disappointment then in my book and one I doubt I'll ever return to. When you think how long it has been in development and how shallow and threadbare the whole beta seems it is even more depressing... what on earth have they been working on all this time? :?

Good job that it is *free*.... bad that is uses 3 GB of my HDD space...

Crossword puzzles with tits in? Why does nobody tell me about these things?

@ Darren

Out of interest, how long does it take to initially load up? I assume you start off in your 'apartment'?

Estranged parent proud of ofspring...who would have thunk it.

"customisation, socialisation and community platforms are going to be just as important as the games themselves"

Maybe I'm old or just plain unsociable. I've grown weary of MMOs and the dribble you have to put up with in every chat chnnel there, I don't want to particularly have to work with others to complete games or even play with/against them.

In the rush to be sociable and make the whole world's activities easier to track and market to, they have forgotten about grumpy old men like me who just want to come in, boot up the console and play a game, alone with some scotch and get away from everything in a fantasy world of guns, cars, or whatever takes your fancy. I don't want to have a persistant online presence with 15 updates on my status an hour, nor a leaderboard showing that due to the fact I have a job and other responsibilities I'm never able to get into multiplayer games before the job seeker tards have mastered them. In the words of the internet numpty 'GEIF MOARE S1NGL3 PlAyA'.

If community platforms interfere with much more of my gaming life I'll have nowhere to go where I can be alone and I'll have to drop consoles and computers for a truly pointless hobby like fishing or morris dancing!

@ etherfiend

Ah, a man after my own heart ;-)

"I was quite impressed actually with some of the things that [Microsoft has] done," he said. "They're just scratching the surface of what the whole industry recognises is that customisation, socialisation and community platforms are going to be just as important as the games themselves."

Compare that to the "brilliantly realised their ambitions" part of the Sony stuff.

Hilariously biased, still. At least Peter Moore tries to be open-handed over at EA.

@moggsy - "@ Darren

Out of interest, how long does it take to initially load up? I assume you start off in your 'apartment'?"

Actually it doesn't take long to initially start up and it resumes from the place you quit it... or at least it appeared to the few times I've tried it.

No, what is galling is that each new area you go to for the first time requires the data to be downloaded (around 10-50 MB) but even when it has done that you still have up to 10 second loading times between areas which makes the whole experience jarring. Why isn't it a seamless world? Walk through an open doorway of a building you can see into and the game loads. Enter your apartment the game loads. Exit apartment to the square, it loads. The whole thing feels limited by the PS3's hardware to be honest... even the framerate is pretty chuggy at times if there are other people onscreen too.

I just wasn't impressed by it at all but I'm sure many people will be.

P.S. Why the hell does Home use 3 GB of HDD space anyway... the initial file is around 85 MB and then there's five or six rooms in the beta of a max. of 50 MB each... that falls a long way short of 3 GB by my calculation. Sure the whole of Home might eventually consume 3 GB of space with the full version and all the different areas but why not show the space *used* rather the space *needed*? Most be annoying for people with limited HDD space really.

@Darren : I got the beta and think it's promising and works well - but right now there is not enough content and areas to keep me interested.
The success or failure of Home really depends on the amount of content in the "final" version and how often new content is added after that.

"P.S. Why the hell does Home use 3 GB of HDD space anyway"

Home reserve 3GB of HDD space to ensure that users doesn't suddenly get a "not enough disk space" error when entering a new area.

Home is brilliantly boring is what the article should say. Starting up home, then trying to organise a game with friends, then trying to get the game to sync correctly etc. etc. Home is a bloody nightmare. This is one occasion where I truly wish Sony had simply ripped off Microsoft's new avatar system and menus and said "To hell with the pretense, this is what works so we are using it with a few Sony only twists". I would have had far more respect for that than this nonsense about a virtual world, which (and anyone who is on the home beta like me will confirm this) simply makes playing games a much more convoluted process than it ever should be!

Why is Atari opining about everything all of a sudden? Shouldn't they be concentrating on their own problems and, y'know, not going bust, before they try to become the oracles of the industry?

There isn't going to be a final version according to the comment I read earlier in the year. From what I understand, they are going to release it to all... and then continually bolt stuff onto it over time.

I just hope MS doesnt try to copy this lackluster and pointless shit. I like the new dashboard on the 360 and the party system. The avatars i could do without though. I hope MS sticks to their own ideas and stay as the leader in the online service department.

Had a look at Home through the recent Beta. The trouble was, as gaming is mainly a male hobby the whole thing had the feeling of a gloryfied gay bar (the number of blokes in muscle tops didn't help either). That combined with a lack of real content, killed any passing interest I had in this.

@muscleblade : Have you even tried Home?

Personaly I find Home far more interesting than NXE's avatar gimmick... now THAT'S a pointless feature :O

"the whole thing had the feeling of a gloryfied gay bar (the number of blokes in muscle tops didn't help either)."

LOL... I agree completely.. it's actually a bit creepy at times :D

"Furthermore, as more games become available through Home, that aspect will become more and more important to the overall experience"

Yeah.. in the future it will be worth it!!! The potential is there!

Seriously.. don't you guys have other lines?

"I just hope MS doesnt try to copy this lackluster and pointless shit. I like the new dashboard on the 360 and the party system. The avatars i could do without though. I hope MS sticks to their own ideas and stay as the leader in the online service department."

This.

This is how a games console interface should be. Give the user the tools they need to do the job with the minimum of interference.

Home is a waste of time for developers and gamers, and a shameful waste of Sony's money that should have been diverted to producing games, and just more proof that Sony have forgotten EVERYTHING that made the PS2 great.

For the millionth time Sony.... GAMES CONSOLES ARE FOR GAMES. Get this pointless shit away from consoles!

"God forbid anyone try to make a new experience that you can have fun with that is free, eh? "

Or they could have made a game with this money. Naaaaahhh that would be crazy!

"God forbid anyone try to make a new experience that you can have fun with that is free, eh?"

If I took away your allocation of food for the next week and instead gave you a light and a sock so you could make shadow puppets, would you be happy?

Instead of sensibly spending the Home budget on games they have provided something utterly pointless. What, are they expecting women (the target audience for this wishy-washy shite) who are traditionally not even vaguely interested in consoles, to suddenly rush out and spend far too much money for a chance to socialise online, when in reality the only people online will be teen boys running around typing 'COCK COCK BALLS, COCK COCK BALLS!' until they get bored and vacate the stupid place LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.

"How about this one: If you don't care why don't you leave? "

No problemo.. welcome to /ignore.

/waves

Beano, i agree, content will define how good an experience home is, sadly i don't see the breath of content needed to make it good available anytime soon. Home is a supremely ambitious project. one that will need the ps3's life span to achieve it's potential. it's promise to me is alluring, but sony are a long way from delivering on that promise.

widge, they're going to bolt stuff on because they know they can't deliver a grand release with everything as they imagine. Sony, have a long way to go with this one, so i'm not expecting an immediate impact from them in the online space.

Dizzy and farticus, Sony have the most first party games in development. what are you two smoking? (and if it's good can i have some?!)

"customisation, socialisation and community platforms are going to be just as important as the games themselves"

Instead on concentrating on the crap, can you please focus on the games ... and if not that, at least the delivery of them?

Hey Atari -- why do you offer games on Steam to your American customers but do not allow Europeans to buy your back catalogue? Okay it's not the best back-catalogue in the industry, and I wouldn't buy all of it, but I resent being treated like a second class citizen by you.

I like MS's solution - the NXE. It has lots of content which is pretty easy to access.

I fear (and I haven't used it yet so I'm just going off what others have said) that Home is a glorified chat room which just makes it difficult to access content. I don't want to talk to random strangers on my way to checking out a new game trailer for example.

On the 360 I don't even need to use the controller - I can just use my Harmony remote to turn the console on and then navigate the content. Sony are in danger of overcomplicating things. I remain open minded at the moment though.

@Rash'

"Sony have the most first party games in development. what are you two smoking? (and if it's good can i have some?!) "

They dont exactly have a track record of delivering with anything quicker than a glacial pace though do they?

Oh, and to answer the question: Sweet stinky weed, dirty great fistfulls of it. ;)

farticus, i don't get you. explain?

Good comments. Would slit throat again.

I always quite liked Phil Harrison. He always struck me as someone who actually plays games.

@Rash

"farticus, i don't get you. explain?"

Ok, I'll break it down, but it's Friday afternoon and I'm slightly delerious due to excessive coffee consumption and patching visual studio 2008.


"Sony have the most first party games in development."

I can eat 10,000 pies at once! (I can only eat 1 crumb from each pie per day though, and it will take me 5 years to eat them all). If I were a team of two then we could eat those pies in half the time. instead, the other half of my team does something completely pointless like crafting mountaineering gear out of soap shavings.


"what are you two smoking?"

Sweet stinky.... oh never mind, the moment has passed.


"(and if it's good can i have some?!)"

Smoking takes place on Friday evenings during games night with the guys. We play mainly Xbox. You wouldnt like it... ;)

"I always quite liked Phil Harrison. He always struck me as someone who actually plays games. "

Yeah, he's a gamer alright. OTOH he's quite the lying cockhead, some of the lies were no doubt imposed on him but I have real trouble after his E3 2005 claims that everything in those pre-rendered videos "was done on Playstation 3" in not questioning anything that comes out of his bleachy slit-mouth.

Bitching about Home when it free and optional. Dont like it dont use it.

Simple facts are its limited now just like the PS3 userbase...expand the userbase and Home will expand and whether we like it not become integral to the Playstation brands future. Including handhelds, yea it may be a glorified chatroom but if done right could be a great thing to use for games that require clans to work properly.

Sony are not forcing you to use it. Its a option..also it may seem like a waste of money now but Sony will make the money back 20x over if the userbase expands in sales of item and sponsorships. Just look at the devs supporting it.

Home might be more appealing once every gamer has a keyboard (real thing or that clip-on thing). If you're restricted tojust a controller communication is too difficult.