Home is outdated, says Microsoft exec Comments by Robert Purchese

Live is way to cheap imo.

Who is keeping you from paying MS more?

"mcbi4kh2 " - community gaming features integrated fully into he gaming experience. It's the most connected by a mile. So easy to jump into games, join parties, have private chats whilst in game (or party ones), see what friends are up to, look at what they've done in comparison to you,join them as they come online etc. It really is far more fully featurd that the PSN.

I still think the price needs to drop now that PSN is improving.

cheers trebell! question answered!

I respected Microsfts online service untill they added the Avitars, they just seam to have copyed Sony and Nintendo ideas now out of desperation.

But i think Sony's Home has the greatest potencial out of the three.

Aaron Greenberg " I'm a Xbox 360 "

Microsoft are just not cool and never will be.

I think the new Microsoft look is much better than the old one. I also really like Home. We're a bunch of cynical old fuckers us gamers!

We all know that if it kicks off within the next Xbox console will have something similar. Oh well only a few hours left and we can all judge the potential for ourselves.

I personnally dont mind paying for a pimped out apartment as it will be my personl choice to do so. Sony do a pretty good job maintaing the PSN and charging nothing. Hopefully extra funds will improve the service more.

Always good to at least be open to change.

microsoft is jealous

Greenberg is a paid troll. It's damaging to the Xbox brand having him bad mouth the competition like this.

I can just imagine him pumping his fist after another Sony put down. Ooh rah.

I got Socom today for the headset in order to try out Home properly. Can't wait to get home and try it out.

It's the most connected by a mile. So easy to jump into games, join parties, have private chats whilst in game (or party ones), see what friends are up to, look at what they've done in comparison to you,join them as they come online etc. It really is far more fully featurd that the PSN.

Thanks for the answet trebell, from that list I would say that PSN does everything except the private (in-game) chats and the stuff Widge said before though.

"It's the most connected by a mile. So easy to jump into games, join parties, have private chats whilst in game (or party ones), see what friends are up to, look at what they've done in comparison to you,join them as they come online etc. It really is far more fully featurd that the PSN.

Thanks for the answet trebell, from that list I would say that PSN does everything except the private (in-game) chats and the stuff Widge said before though."

It's also worth noting that you can do almost everything in that list with a FREE XBox Live Silver account. You can chat, text, participate in the ubiquitous online league tables in Geometry Wars 2 & Rock Band 2. The only thing you can't do unless you pay is play against people directly. That might seem bad, until you realise that a lot of more casual gamers are happy with the chat, party & high score tables.

Personally I've had a Gold account for the last year but I've hardly used it. I don't play online shooters very much, I'm happy most of the time to just play local single player, local co-op, have league tables to measure myself against friends, and chat / presence features. My wife has a Silver account for free and does all of that too without paying a bean.

Personally, I like that Live has everything consistent and integrated. Messaging, chat, high scores, jumping between games with the same group, web presence of your game & friends, achievements etc have all been mandatory from day one so everything works the same way. PSN is definitely getting better but it still can feel a bit lashed together from lots of different sources and in different ways per game - a lot like the PC is. There's nothing wrong with that, but Live is just that little bit slicker. Whether you want to pay for that or not is your choice.

Personally don't care for any of the chat functionality in either Live or PSN. Never ever feel the need to chat while playing a game. TBH never ever feel the need to chat in any way. Voice comms in-game can be useful if the typical online gamer wasn't 12 years old and stupid (I don't rule out the existence of smart 12-year-olds even if I've never met one personally). But open-minded as I am, I can understand that for certain people features like these are very important.

"But i think Sony's Home has the greatest potencial out of the three.
"
promising, but i need to be convinced why i'd want to load an app to meet my friends to then load a game.. when i couldjust load the game and join my friends without these hoops.

Having had access to the Home closed beta for several months now, if not exactly been using it for all that time, I have to agree that Home is rather dull and does feel dated. It looks pretty though but it's clunky and the constant loading between areas is a pain IMO. I certainly wasn't impressed with it but considering it is going to be free and is completely optional it's hard to complain about it really.

I can't see myself ever using it personally though but then I've never been that keen on online gaming so an online community was never really going to my "scene" either. I'm sure it'll have plenty of fans but I cannot see it being in any way, shape or form revolutionary.

"Thanks for the answet trebell, from that list I would say that PSN does everything except the private (in-game) chats and the stuff Widge said before though.
"

it really doesn't not to anything like the same extent or ease of use. It's much more a "game by game" thing as to what it will offer and the overall integration just isn't there (yes i use it regularly, currently LBP and rfom 2 mostly). Nothing wrong with i, you get what youpay for after all but it isn't on the same level.

I'm downloading Home as soon as I can. Look forward to making my own mind upv about it.

" see what friends are up to, look at what they've done in comparison to you,"

You can do that on PSN and have been able to for some time.

A full history compare withall their games and achivements? I've missed that then

"However, at the end of the day, most of this can be achieved by loading the same game and sending messages using PSNs own text-messaging message system, which is acessible cross game. "

exactly my point, not as integrated or as smooth.

fair enough, it is free.

A full history compare withall their games and achivements? I've missed that then

You certainly have. It's been there since the trophy firmware.

Oh Darren, I meant to say to you, from what I see is that between each areas, its not loading as such but connecting to servers. I reckon the system loads you into an appropriate "server" for that room out of one of many... meaning that you don't get massive clusters of people around all the time.

Trebell, I think that is the misconception of Home being an app purely for meeting friends and going into a game. I would say thats one element to it but not sole focus.

Having a 360, PS3 and Hih end game PC, I can honestly say Avatars are a waste of time (to me), home is utter bollocks and whether its free or not, people will be paying fopr it somewhere. None of these gimmicks work or add anything to the experience. All it did to the 360 was kiddie'fy it from an adults gaming machine to a wii wannabe. I love all my gaming platforms, but both ideas to me are a load of tosh. All you need is decent games (PC) with no farting about with things like this. Nuff said.

"A full history compare withall their games and achivements? I've missed that then

You certainly have. It's been there since the trophy firmware. "

I'll take a looklater. So i can see a full list of all games that we've both played and compare trophies , at the touch of a button? (is that the thing that pops up when you select their name from the friends list that always just seems to hang loading when I do it?)

[edit] you're right. I'd forgotten that compare trophies feature. The time taken to load, rather than just pop up had put me off using it but it is there.

@layleeloo
I kinda agree with you, but I work as a programmer and the last thing I want to do when I get home is sat at a desk with a k&m (although it is far better than any controller). Ergonomically, using a k&m on a couch is awful.

Could change jobs I suppose.

@trebell
Yes, might be two buttons though :/
Press triangle on a firend and click "compare trophies". Not the same as the square box thing, that hangs up on me sometimes as well.

PC is the lead in farting about like this, does it not have Second Life on it?

@layleeloo


You are absolutely right, since Avatars appeared on my 360 I can no longer play any of my adult-oriented games like Gears of War, Fallout, or my personal GOTY, Deadly Ninja 36 Styles Kitten Rape.

Avatars have NOT affected your game playing 1 Iota, however much you feel slighted by them, which incidentally is both baffling and pathetic.

"I think Microsoft operate in a reverse way. They launched a console in 2005 with horrendous, truly staggering poor reliability and build quality. Yet only now are 360s appearing with the jasper chipset that have a chance of operating within normal reliability tolerances. Assuming the jasper 360s are reliable that is. Theres something to be said for producing something that is stable and usable and not having to write off huge sums of money in repair costs. I just find it hard to read comments from Microsoft critical of anything while they manufacture products to a unbelievable low standard. I've overclocked my pcs in the past to extremely fast speeds compared to the original specs of the components and those tweaked pcs have been a darn site more reliable than my 360s. "

Er, wrong thread??

I actually think this baiting between companies is good, and having to comparable services can only mean they'll be trying to out do each other, 360 is built around its live service, Sony have caught up with a lot of features so its all good.

What i think home will be, is a helluva revenue stream for sony - its micro-transaction heaven. One thing it has going against it is the amount of time its taken, they probably should of held back on the announcement all those years ago.

Looks good tho, be interstng to see how popular it is, i'd imagine alot of teh hardcore will bypass it with group chat on the dash (if thats possible?) then just launch the game together. So it'll be mainly for the casual perhaps.

Avatars and other such pointlessness are a guilty pleasure for me. But even I couldn't force myself to have fun in Home. It really is dire; I have no idea why I'd want to waste time in it.

"Avatars and other such pointlessness are a guilty pleasure for me. But even I couldn't force myself to have fun in Home. It really is dire; I have no idea why I'd want to waste time in it."

Not even for the content that Eurogamer is providing for Sony in the PlayStation Home Theatre?

@ Les, so is what you’re saying there that you have no one on your friends list that you would like to talk to? For example, one of my friends from University was playing Fifa last night wheelie I was playing Fable, and we had a nice old chinwag. Though it does get a little confusing when you both go off on tangents about the games you’re playing…

@Petulant_Radish
That would be cool on PSN. One day hopefully...

I sense fear in his words.

And desperation.

He should STFU.

Do you know what I was going to comment about whether anyone else asked a question by a journo like he obviously was(its not like he phoned them up and said "hey you seen that Home?... I think it's shit!!!") would:

a) Give an honest opinion of how you see it.
b) Say "no comment", which would then be seen as "omg they fear teh Home's awesome powar!!" from the usual idiots in the Sony fanboy ranks.
c) Give a little white lie and say "its rather nice and I hope they have some success in bringing more people online".

I would have said a) originally but after reading this thread and thinking it though its easier for everyone to go with c), theres people already thinking it too sort of anyway, so they dont need it pointing out to them and those that dont agree are the loyal Sony fanboys who will see any criticism as a scathing attack and really it gets boring having to interact with these idiotic crybabies.

Homelol

vorlon:

Where on earth have you been living? Both "Skype" and "Telephone" are very VERY old inventions.

If they are "new inventions" in your neck of the woods, I wouldn't go outside.

Maybe it'd be a better use of Microsoft's time to not slag off Sony and instead work on making their console quieter, cooler and more reliable. A bit like the PS3, really.

Since I got my PS3, I've barely touched the 360.

vorlon:

Yes. That's why I used some to counter yours.

Your telephone costs less than nothing? You sure about that?

JohnnyFireBlade hit the nail on the head. The 360 is a remarkbly powerful bit of kit for the money, although not once you add cost of a wireless network adapter, rechargble battery packs and Live subscriptions for 5 years.

But the big problem is, technical performance aside, it's the noisiest, most unreliable piece of crap I own. So it sits there gathering dust whilst the PS3 gets used every day. I'd rather suffer a slight performance drop on multi platform games than use something that is basically badly built, badly designed and makes a noise like a vacuum cleaner.

does anyone know when this will be ready to download?

I see neither of them have the balls to copy friend codes.

"It feels like 2005 tech in 2008." - says MS Exec via his Mii.

Since I got my PS3, I've barely touched the 360.


Since I got my PS3, I've barely touched my PS3

@DAN:SOLO

You don't wipe the dust off it regularly?

Shameful housekeeping, simply shameful. ;)

Now, I don't know about this "2005 in 2008" stuff, but if he had said "Home serves no purpose" then I may have agreed.

well it's better than there avatars microsofts way of jealousy

me too Dan:Solo.... bought one on monday and it really isn't very good. i am sure the ps3 will be but at the moment i don't think it'll get much use.

was fooled by the resistance 2 review. it really is dire

will download HOME later to have a butchers

LMAO!

360 guys are fools!! 2005 tech would be the crap 360 avatars that do NOTHING but force grown men to have creepy looking child
avatars.

Have tried the Home Open Beta and to be honest, there nothing great about it. I want to play games, not run round a virtual world that isnt at all exciting or enthralling.

Sorry but 360 is still the king console!

Home is about as gayye as the PS3 has been this gen! Even the nintendo 64 is less gayye then the PS triple. What can you do with a PS triple apart from talk about how gayye it is.

The XBox triple-120 is THE TRUE WINNER this gen. Balliinn!

Usually, I'd throw a hissing cat the exec's (Sony, MS or Nintendo) way. This poor excuse of an exec's comment, however, requires a new species: the SassyCat(r).

Mraaaooowwwrrrrlllooooorrrr Mine are fFSO more 2005 than Yourffs, Sony!