Sony Computer Entertainment will conduct system maintenance for PlayStation Home on Thursday, December 18, 2008. At this time PlayStation Home will be updated from ver. 1.03 to 1.04. The system maintenance is scheduled to start at 12 midnight (PST), and the service is expected to resume in approximately 6 hours but may change depending on the circumstances. PlayStation Home will be unavailable during the maintenance window.
The reason for this maintenance is to ease the difficulty some people are having accessing PlayStation Home due to the high demand for the service.
Additionally, as part of version 1.04, the voice chat feature within PlayStation Home will be temporarily suspended. As soon as we are ready to resume the voice chat feature, we will inform you via PlayStation.com and PlayStation.Blog. In the meantime, we encourage users to make use of the Wireless Keypad for PLAYSTATION 3 or any USB or Bluetooth-enabled keyboard for text chat and also the “phone friend” features to communicate within PlayStation Home.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and kindly ask for your understanding.
Everyone they are not getting rid of voice chat completely, you can still phone a friend. They are just eliminating it from public use for now until something gets sorted out, you can still use voice chat with friends.
I’m sure killing the voice chat feature is more geared towards bandwidth issues rather than troll issues it will be back when the traffic dies down I’m sure.
What happen to all my Ice Breaker gear??? I had gear for all 3 of my PS3 accounts, I even completed the game on one account and got the pants in the other two. What the ****!!! Do you know how hard it was to beat stage 12 and 20??? If this is what’s going to happen when I play for items on here I might as well don’t do anything at all!
There really is not much to do or customize in home yet. No big deal that they took the voice chat offline for now. I’m just wondering if they will leave the content stale. Features and everything are on thing but basic content is another…
So I downloaded the home beta the other day… to be honest. I don’t really see the purpose. Sony has been pushing the release of this for quite some time, and it’s not about the functionality of Home, I just don’t see how it’s supposed to enhance the experience of the user.
The community experience is great, and sure meeting other people online is interesting. But how is Sony planning on making Home a valid experience for users? Is this going to be how PSN users navigate for all of their content in the future? Is this just an add-on or a stand-alone product? I’m just having a difficult time understanding the benefit to me as a user. Why am I logging into Home?
Voice Chat should be an option that people can turn on and off. Off being the default. Options to only hear friends is another good one to have. I just don’t want to hear people abuse the voice chat feature to grieve other people. Also I would like the option to download EVERYTHING. I hate when I discover a new place and I have to wait several minutes for it to download (I can just as easily download everything over night).
I’d also like to see more integration with the trophy system. I did not see a wall of trophies in my apartment which would be nice to see. I could have sworn they were going to do something like this… Maybe it’s just wishful thinking.
wow, thank god this is an “OPEN BETA”, mostly meant to TEST possible problems and functions!
because if this was the real/final release code well……i’d be pissed off!!!!
keep working on making HOME the best it can be.
i lost my echo stuff!
My gear where is all my gear????? I look like everyone else again??? What’s the point?? Are you only allowing people who buy clothes to keep it? Because I would be really furious if I paid money for my clothes and it was lost in the new updates. But Still I want my Ice Breaker Boots and Pants back!!! I lost it on 3 accounts!!! I don’t care about no stupid Xmas cloths, no voice chat, and that Red Bullsh** island. I want my Ice Breaker gear back!!!!!!!!!
we Europeans are still waiting for the update with the Trophies and the online mode
SONY SUCKS, THX for Nothing, i hate your marketing strategies …
My royalty free suggestion for the chat abuse problem using self policing policies:
1) you can only hear people on chat in public areas if you enable them somehow (perhaps a temporary “friend” option, that expires when you log-off Home, so you’re not having to clutter up your real friend’s list to be social). Also, you can always hear all your regular Friends. Make it easy to add someone to your regular Friend list after you get to know them.
2) Since you know the name of the person you just added, if they are verbally abusive, then you know who to report.
3) If someone gets X number of abuse reports (say 30 complaints from 30 different master accounts), a popup shows up when they login to Home that states something like “Warning: Sony has received several reports of verbal abuse. Your voice/chat communications may be monitored and recorded to verify the validity of these reports. Should this abuse be confirmed, your PS3 serial number will be banned from Home for 3 months). By continuing the login process, you agree to [insert appropriate legalese here].”
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4) Change the TOS agreement and Enforce #3 bans.
5) No complex voice recognition craziness, and if you and your friends really want to cuss up a storm, more power to you – I don’t have to hear it!
Can also be applied to people playing copyright music (if other people report them).
Simple, may cost Sony a little money (but hey Customer Service needs something productive to do), and should be effective – no one would want to be banned for 3 months from Home by being verbally abusive. And it limits false reporting of abuse, since Sony should be able to verify the claims by monitoring or recording.
My gear…………….all gone…….
***
Sony: please put in an option to disable voice chat – not everyone wants to hear the rubbish being piped into Home from various users.
I’m guessing that the temporary disabling of voice chat is to reduce a bit of the network traffic in Home and improve logging on while they work on a real solution.
For the sake of Pete; just scrap home altogether. It’s a bad idea. The whole home concept is like democracy and communism, they only work in theory and not in practice!
you guys ruined home for me! I want my shirts back!!!!!!!!!!
I feel like I was robbed in sully’s bar for all my gear from Sony. Damn you Sony do you want me to spend my money to buy clothes in the mall that bad?? 3 accounts all gone. Two US, and one Hong Kong all F***ing gone!!! Why………………!! I hate Ice Breaker but I played it for the pants and boots. I unlocked it for my sister and I was about to unlock the boots for myself and it is now all gonnnnnnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Hong Kong I lost all the Namco shirts!! All Gonnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!
Hey Sony, this time when you bring Home back online:
*Make it where more than 1 or 1 set of users can play arcades, pool and bowling.
* And for God’s sake, please put more in there to do. Put some achievements for scoring a certain amount of points for a given game. Like an award for people who wins 3 pool games in a row. Just make it worth while for me to be there. And then, hell, I might even buy something.
I hear our PSLS clubhouse had to be re-downloaded and all of the content from the closed beta is gone. Also, NAMCO museum beta content from JPN is no longer available.
Are we still in the maintenance window or is this the final version 1.04?
Im freakin outraged. Every update takes away from our collected items. When we first opened the Uncharted Space, unlocking the 2 doors upstairs gave us 2 pieces of cool furniture…but then came update 1.0 and POOF they are gone and now unlocking the doors doesnt give squat. Then I unlock echochrome and ice blaster or whatever its called clothes and you take that away too. Home is starting to piss me off
Let me know when the 1.05 patch comes out that actually gives me something to do in Home and makes it fun.
R u still going to have to be 18 to access it???
@164: There ALREADY IS an option to disable voice chat. There always was.
What you have done by taking my namco museum prizes is lost yourself a costomer. O, and just so you know everone I can convince to leave this “Product” behind I will. I feel completely ROBBED of my individuality in home to be givin a santa suit (wow all look the same again) and more [DELETED] windbrakers. ARE YOU SERIOUSE! your like the guys from 911 driving this plane into the ground!!!! VIVA PAC-MAN VIVA NAMCO MUSEUM
PS: Your giving loyal, PATIENT, ps3 fans a bad name with this junk….and STOP taking my [DELETED] clothes!!!!!!!!!!
anyone any clue if we are getting resident evil 5 demo today on nay of the stores ? i read somewhere it was the 18th for psn.
What is ****o? I am so sick of seeing it and having no idea what it is. Is it hello with hell being filtered?
Oh, and Home needs serious help!
Well, make another announcement when the voice chat returns, because I am certainly not going to start typing. So, see you later, home, in a hopefully more complete state…
And btw. instead of taking away stuff, you could go ahead and include Skype in the PS3 firmware!
Hi to everyone. I think that Sony HAS TO low the price of all the things in HOME. I think that the prices right now are too high. $0.99 for a virtual t-shirt? $0.99 for a jeans? $0.49 for a plant or accesory? around $3 or $5 for one chair for your apartment? I don’t think that many people will not pay that amount of money. I hope so. Maybe I can pay $0.20 for a t-shirt or $0.75 for a chair or tv or $2.00 for a apartment. Maybe you can do a scale. Maybe $0.01 in Home is equivalent to $1 in real live. For example if a t-shirt in real live is $20 in HOME it could be $0.20.
keep the voice chat. we dont need it. i like the idea of no voice chat but enabling phone calls. give us a conference call type of setup to enable multiple people to communicate together, but no general voice chat. also i want all of my items back, that i worked for…
I don’t understand, you can kindly ask all you want. This was a service promised to us for so long and you have now removed one of the major selling points? System seller Home is not, in fact, its one of the biggest failures in this console generation.
I believe you need to aggressively replace those at the current head of Home and seek members of the development industry that actually know what they’re doing when it comes to huge online communities like this. Its obvious you do not. Microsoft was right, all of these issues that are cropping up were common things 3 to 4 years ago. 2005 tech in 2009, congratulations.
Fix Home, because if you don’t even loyal consumers will find themselves wondering why they have your system when the competitor’s is far more capable.
I currently have no way of using Home for communicating. You’ve removed my only way of doing so. Now I’m expected to purchase a keyboard to replace the Bluetooth headset I already purchased? Get real, you ask WAY too much of your consumer.
This is a major disappointment for me, my girlfriend (who spent hours in Home chillin with folks but is no longer even drawn to the PS3), and countless others. You’ve really let us down.
I don’t care about the mic, I’ll just use my $10 USB keyboard just give me and my sister’s ice breaker suits back!!!
if taking away voice chat is to relieve server strain, then i’m ok. If it was to cut back on the asshats, then this is a big ass joke. Female gamers (and now, anyone sitting down)
will STILL be harassed. Taking away voice chat does nothing for that situation.
As such, i am appalled at the crudeness of psn users. Then again, if you shove hundreds of fanboys in a room with little to do, [essentially what home is doing] then things are BOUND to get crazy. When people get bored, they do stupid things. Period.
ALSO, the ****o thing is STUPID. get your censors right, sony. :|
What’s the use without voice chat?
Just shut the whole damn stupid waste of resources thing down.
Playstation , X Box 360’s online is better than yours if you want to compete please add or change the following: ps gamers need arcade (downloadable) games like Texas hold ’em and Uno where we can meet and chat with strangers and make friends . Why can’t I play music or look at pictures off my MP3 player? We need to be able to look at players met and send them invites through their gamertag. Friends also need this and Join game in progress (if there’s an opening) because all games are different and being an ex-xbox owner and newish to PS3 my friends and I find it waaayyy too comlicated. So no more communty in game go through gamertag. Gamertag also very drab give us more pictures to choose from and downloaded pics too. We should be able to chat with friends IN different games and private chat in game. Also where is all the Oblivion content ? Xbox has a desk of downloadable content for that game (more overall) . These things combine for a clumsy clunky experience with friends on PSN .
Very nice. I hope there is more game launching!
Why did you take away my echochrome (2nd time) and Ice Breaker awards? I’m not spending one more minute in Home until yous top taking my awards away.
So glad I just bought a new Wireless Headset
I’m fed up with these stupid updates Sony comes up with, sure enough they’ll add something that we all really want but in the end they screw it up. It’s always going to be like this because this isn’t their first mistake, knowing that ahead of time I would have saved my money and took a chance at getting a Red Ring of Death.
Every time I log out and then back in everything I have ever won in the past or present gets erased from my wardrobe. It’s really starting to piss me off because after knowing I lost all my things the first time I went ahead and did Echochrome again just to notice it goes away again. I refuse to play this stupid game if you’re going to take away the entertainment in it, now I have wasted my time sitting there for hours beating Echochrome and Ice Breaker.
Thanks for nothing once again Sony, Terrster.
All I know, so far, is that the update took my hard earned Ice Breaker outfit out of my wardrobe. I haven’t checked for anything else that happened, yet.
Oh, it took my echochrome outfit away, too.
thanks for removing the special clothing and extra content for my apartment and summer home. now i look like every other non-discript home user. seriously, why is it everyt time you update/change something, i lose my things. at least i didn’t lose my summer home and have to pay $5 to reobtain it like the club i started for my R clan. which btw i refused to pay for. fix this and that and make home the reason i bought my ps3 (btw, it was)
Sony, your latest Home patch today fully wiped out our entire clubhouse customisations.
This is a big strike to clubs, which are at the heart of Home’s social community.
Personally I don’t know how many times I will be willing to put the hours in again, to setup our clubhouse from scratch, and I doubt I’m alone in that feeling.
Please remember when making decisions like this, that you are already requiring us to pay you to use clubhouses, so it is your responsibility not to allow this sort of thing to happen to a paid service.
Please recall the lessons Sony Online Entertainment learned from erasing people’s accomplishments in some of their MMOs early on.
If the Home system is so unstable at this point in the Beta, that you simply have no choice but to keep erasing paid clubhouses, then you should not be asking real money for them yet as it gives the impression that they will actually be usable.
Thanks for listening.
The update was pointless they took away my Ice breaker for one new movie trailer?!@#$. Damn Hong Kong server had 3 new video added in the last 3 days without using the update an the got a host of new posters with their new update, they even got snow and a Xmas F—ing tree. What the f— is up with that? Today they also add 2 new game trailers in their theater too (yeah their theater has 2 room) !!! And another thing how come their TV shows are free to watch in their PSN store what the f—!!! Why do you guys have to rip us Americans off like that????
thats funny, if its fixed then how come i still cant play the damn thing…it says im not old enough…im 20!
I hope that SCEA will be able to fix the problem soon. I miss my chat. I enjoy being able to talk with people while playing pool or bowling. That way, I can concentrate on the game instead of the keyboard.
I support SCEA in it’s efforts to make Home a better experience for us all. Even if it means that voice chat will be down for a bit. Hopefully, it will be back soon.
When is the final version of home coming out?
can we buy our own pool table and our music players in the final version?
EVERYONE JUST CHILL DER WORKIN VERY HARD TO MAKE DIS THINS PERFECT SO JUST RELAX SIT DOWN AND ENJOY WHAT YOU GOT!>>>”DONT WORRY,BE HAPPY!”
yo ok I read from Tedthedog that our stuff we got from ice breaker and echochrome will be given back to us possibly tomorrow but if u got them back already u might lose them and also I think its ridiculous of how we have to re-download almost every place again. its really annoying and that could be a huge flaw if we have to keep doing that [heads up Sony]
Really we going to get our sh– Back?? My gear my treads my trophies???