PlayStation Home v1.3 Coming This September

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As announced at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, PlayStation Home’s core client will be getting a serious upgrade this fall. And when we say serious, dear readers, we’re talking excessive and impressive in quality, extent, and degree. This is the for real deal upgrade!

I got three words to start us off: Universal. Game. Launching. That’s right – you can now launch into any PlayStation 3 game directly from Home. Titles that fully support game launching (like Street Fighter IV, Resistance 2, MotorStorm, and Far Cry 2) will be identified by separate icons that appear over an avatar’s head and will have varying degrees of additional multiplayer functionality built in. Simplified game launching will take you from Home to the start menu of your favorite games with ease. Never again will you have to sign out of Home to play with (or against) your friends. Simply insert the disc of your choice while in Home and follow the on screen directions and you’ll be good to go.

Shop-a-holics will be stoked to see that an in-store item previewing option will be rolled out. This feature will allow you to preview items of clothing on your character in 3D (including the ability to check out multiple items simultaneously to see what combinations best suit your taste). You’ll be able to preview all furniture in 3D as well, complete with zoom and rotate options so you can check your potential purchases from all angles, right down to the nitty gritty. We’ll also offer you the ability to rent certain items and purchase “consumables” (limited use items) when available – such as the new Shrink Potion that lets you shrink your avatar to a tiny size. All in all, we think you’ll find that these new features allow for greater control over the use of your personal items. We’ve even added a new section to the Menu Pad under Personal > My Purchases to help you keep it all organized.

Home Shrink Potion

PlayStation Home v1.3 will also see additional portable objects (like the Bubble Machine) made available to the community. To start, we’ll be giving everyone free cameras that you can use to snap pictures from either a 1st or 3rd person view. These photos will automatically be saved to the Photo section of the XMB, from which you can then upload to the picture frames you have hanging in your personal spaces. We’ll be announcing more portable objects very soon, so be sure to check in on this blog often to stay abreast of the latest PlayStation Home item releases. Or just use the Latest Updates tab in your Menu Pad > Community. We here over at the PlayStation Home Community team keep an updated list of all new content releases in this area.

Home Camera

On the subject of portable objects, rest assured that we’ve listened to your suggestions and made some changes to help you better customize your in-world experience. You’ll be able to manually hide any portable object that you encounter, and objects placed by anyone on your Ignore or Block list will also be hidden. We think you all will find that accessing certain mini-games and watching videos will be much easier thanks to these additional options.

There are tons of little updates that you’ll notice when PlayStation Home v1.3 launches. To start, you’ll see that your avatar has additional emotes – including two new action emotes (you can flip a coin with your friends or play the old “pick a number between 1 and 100” game). You will also be able to pose your avatar in a variety of ways (photo op anyone?). We’ve also added some new categories of clothing (composite and outfits) that will allow you to customize your avatar with greater ease. In addition, we’ve optimized the targeting system, added a new queuing system, fixed quite a few pesky bugs, and are giving you the option to determine your cache size (you can choose from 3, 5, 8, and 12 GB) so as to make navigating Home a much smoother experience. As we get closer to launch, we’ll post complete patch notes for the v1.3 client on the PlayStation Home General forum at www.us.playstation.com. So if you haven’t yet signed up for our forums, please take a moment to do so now – and check in often for more details regarding what’s going on in PlayStation Home.

Last but certainly not least, we’ll be launching a SingStar space right around the time that PlayStation Home v1.3 hits your PlayStation 3s. This swanky night club-esque SingStar-themed game space is sure to be the hot new hub for all of you party goers. Whether you want to get down with your friends on the reactive dance floor, vote for your favorite music videos on the Video Jukebox, or test your knowledge at the SingStar Music Quiz, this space promises to have something for every SingStar fanatic.

See you all in Home!

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347 Comments

  • The funny thing is that universal game launching used to exist like this, they just removed it sometime before public beta.

  • Yesterday was posting frenzy!!! I think almost 1000 ppl were online posting comments at once!!! Anyways, back on topic, does anybody know if we’ll be getting to send bought Home gifts?

  • singstar space looks awesome, updates look great but still want trophy cabinet, in my apartment to play vids/music already saved in my xmb and the ability to walk like a normal person and maybe a jog/power walk/run option would be quite good rather than slowly walking to where you want :P

  • Ohmigosh, this looks fantastic. Someone pour this guy a beer.

  • over a period of 3 days i have increasingly been flabogasted (amazed) by what sony have brought to the tables; PSP go, PS3 slim, video store, MAG, PS3 true-motion controler, eye-pet, and a heap of other Uber stuff!!

  • First, thanks for the update, Locust_Star, and thanks to all who are working on making Home better.

    “In addition, we’ve optimized the targeting system, added a new queuing system,”

    Best news ever.

    Okay, I’m exaggerating, but this was at the top of my list of things which needed fixing. I hope you all get it right.

    (The rest of my comment follows)

  • Given that I’m #208 or so, I don’t know if you’ll ever read this, but I thought I’d post something more useful than “Home is teh suxxor”.

    1. Fix the targeting system.
    2. Stop kicking me out of the PDA every time I do something; let me do multiple things at a time.
    3. Make the World Map an actual map, with all the areas connected in “real” space. The tiles are neat, but they just don’t work well.
    4. Indicate (on said map) which areas we have downloaded and allow us to select all the others (via the Triangle menu) to download in the background.
    5. Add first-person view to the distant and over-the-shoulder views (and I’m no fan of FPSs).

  • (and the last of it)

    6. Fix the instancing so that more people can’t enter an area than can play the mini-games therein. We shouldn’t have to wait indefinitely to try the games. Some of the original mini-games I still haven’t tried.
    7. Improve the queuing system (e.g., make waiting for a bowling lane work like it does in real bowling lanes: “Your lane is ready.”).
    8. Allow us to change the color of all generic items of clothing (stuff with logos, etc. can still be color-specific).
    9. A few more (free) options for haircuts, facial hair, and make-up as well as pants/skirts, shoes, and accessories (one pair of glasses?!?).
    10. Utilize streaming technology to make travel more seamless; build buffer zones (hallways, lobbies, etc.) if necessary . We should be able to walk from one end of Home to the other (with minimal loading times). It’s possible in Oblivion, GTAIV, inFAMOUS, etc., so it should be possible in Home. This one is only last because it would probably take the most work.

    It looks like you’re already doing two or three of these, so kudos.

    Oh, and more stuff like Xi; that was (mostly) awesome.

  • Cool

  • Cool! I think the Universal Game Launching isn’t as interesting as the rest -just booting the start menu is an easy way to make people happy but I’d prefer to see more devs support the extended launching.

    Is the Home v1.3 SDK in hands of the developers yet? I want to see some more custom animations.

  • I think the most important thing for Home is to make it more streamlined like an MMORPG.

    Ease of use would GREATLY raise the usage of Home.

  • Let us replace our XMB avatars with our HOME avatars.

    It all sounds great but HOME is a separate entity from standard PS3 gaming, it needs to be integrated into the XMB.

  • about time!!! what has been holding me back from home was the fact that not all PS3 games can be launched from Home.. im glad they will finally be able to do this with ALL!! ps3 games.. thank goodness, this is someting that i have been wanting since day one of home, thus is why i rarely use home.

  • A queuing system? Awesome!

  • two things
    one 1.3 just looks really awesome i mean all the new feats coming with it just looks really amazing indeed.

    2nd thing Sony you guys are really doing fantastic job you guys really are laying your guns on the table with stuff coming pretty much in the fall. I’m hoping to see something like this again this holiday season.

  • Whooo I can NOT wait for this update. It’s only a matter of time before Home completly takes over the XMB and makes it inferior!! Muhahahahaha!!!

  • is it just me, or does it seem like Sony is trying to just knock out the competition? i mean not literally, we all know they are behind on sales, but it’s like they are throwing some good punches and i guess sales will reflect whether or not they made their target. between the ps3 slim and $100 pricedrop, new psp go, firmware update 3.0 (it does have some neat features), home update, and supposedly an additional 246 games are supposed to hit the market for ps3(correct me if i’m wrong)by the end of next year, i mean that’s a lot to take in. i think this is the most sony has done market wise and for the playstation gaming community since the original release of the psp and ps3s. sony has been busy. very busy it appears. i just hope this will be enough to boost sales and finally shut those 360 fanboys up. i mean, haha, what’s microsoft doing for you? besides drying up your wallet…lol

  • Glad to see the return of universal launching. All i want now is inviting friends from other countries back into our own server of home. I made some friends all over the world in the closed beta and i cant even see them without creating another psn account. Please bring that back :)

  • Home framerate and general performance still sucks for me. Even simple spaces like the Redbull Air race one chug along. Its’ barely 30fps anywhere apart from when you’re on your own in the apartment.

    Please fix.

  • Very nice update
    I like the idea of the Universal game launch, and the option to pick the cache size. Going for the 12 gb on that one. Got a 320 gb HDD with lots of free space still in there :)

  • @generalgibson consider it as “payback time” :D

  • THANK YOU! I will now shut up.

  • This should be soooo cooolll !!!!

  • Great – clearly a lot of thought and ideas gone in.

    What stands out for me is the increased cache size – as it is moving from space to space in Home feels painful and disconnected, hopefully this’ll add some asprin.

  • Great news! The universal game launching thing is quite an important thing for Home.
    And so is 3D trophies… ;-)

  • The thing that I wonder is. The Universal game launching will work best with games that feature a build in party system (such as BF1943, Uncharted 2, COD 4 and WAW etc). My guess is that for games like Killzone 2 that don’t have a party system will just boot up the game and bring you the main menu

    Just going to have to wait and see I guess.

  • Good job. HOME keeps evolving regularly just like the PSN. Can’t wait for Firmware 3.1 and the cross game chat that is supposed to accompany it around XMAS/JAN

  • I love the universal game launching, but seriously, please add the trophies. I really want to have a nice case filled with trophies that all of my friends can look at in amazement.

  • The all game launching feature is nice. The overly looooong loading times though are the only reason I don’t use Home very often. I hope this gets resolved in the near future.

  • To anyone:
    Is there a way that I can download all areas of home so that I can move smoothly between them I HATE having to wait for the download to finish so I can move from one area to the next. Is there a solution for this? What is the caching thing mentioned?
    Thanks!

  • yes this is awesome and thank you very much
    but I really want the trophy room and to you my home avatar as my PSN avatar

  • Please add in-game XMB music support. And perhaps allow us to share this music in our personal spaces (via streaming, not for download swaps of course).

  • HOME seems to be improving quite alot.
    My avatar is dressed like Gouki(SF4) and people want to always challenge me so adding this will definitely make it much quicker

  • i just started home and i got a message saying that there is a new update so i updated and nothing new .BTW the update wa 27MB

  • I haven’t been impressed with any of these updates you’ve been announcing, they are nothing but bells and whistles

  • Sweet that sounds awesome. We need some Tattoos and I would like to have something to do when I am in home hanging out with friends like more mini games. Also Please give us the gift of gift giving I would love to buy my friends things and then be able to give them gifts. Its a good thing to show true friendship Birthday gifts, Christmas gifts, everybody loves presents.

  • I would love to have a personal flat screen tv in my personal home space that would link to the playstation stores video section for downloads and that I could get movies and videos from my PS3 hard drive.

  • Here is a suggestion, I doubt it will get a response or viewed due to the mass of comments but it’s a very good idea I think.

    First I will say that the support for Home is awesome, however due to the very entitled group of gamers out there who tried home initially and branded it boring with nothing to do haven’t come back to see the mass amount of content there is now.

    To combat this fact I suggest that you do this. Put PSN trophies into home.

    In doing so ALL trophy hunters will log in to aquire some of these challenging task’s thus seeing the new things in Home.

    And it doesn’t have to be much, it could be score “X” at this game and such, one Trophy per game/event/what have you.

    Anyways I have allot of great idea’s and I am a hardcore gamer since the I was 5 playing on the NES.

    I would love to assist the Playstion brand in anyway possible for since the PS1 you guys have been giving me the best quality in gaming I could ask for.

    – nickert0n

  • I also would love to bring my PSP in Home, I never leave home without it. It would be cool when my Home friends were talking about how nice the weather is in home I could pull out my psp and play some mini games.

  • Ok, that’s an awesome update. Thanks Sony!

  • OK all I want to know is how much real money this is gonna cost us. It all sounds fantastic … but the catch is always hidden in the small print.

  • WOW locust did you even take a breath writing all that..Sounds good, BUT WHEN IS OUR USELESS PERSONAL HOME SPACES GOING TO BE USEFUL….I.E. ((TV’S, STEREO’S)), DYNAMIC LIGHTING OPTIONS WE CAN ADJUST. MABEY LIKE STRING LIGHTS OR SOMETHING FLASHING.

  • nickert0n had a few good idea’s, I’ve bben playing on computers console’s since 1981 with the Sinclair ZX81. As for Sony reading our comments well… I sent them 3 emails over a month ago about my missing apartment and not got anything back off them. We pay a lot of money fo our console’s at least £150 more than Xbox owner’s, but Sony seem to fall very short of delivering customer support ( have you ever tried to contact Sony) or even a promt reply. Dont get me wrong I LOVE my PS3, it’s just the conpany falling short of promising stuff or delay’s.

  • Thanks for the great update!

  • Huge update with promised content and a little extra. Well done Loc.

  • PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE separate the kiddies from the older people! It gets so annoying having little kids trying to be cool with me and you gotta watch what you say around them. I think it will be great for everyone, including the parents. They’ll have peace of mind knowing their kids aren’t with perverts or bad mouthed users.

  • I do not feel safe in HOME. It is clunky, unwelcoming and hostile :(

  • Finally a worthy Home update! I’m really looking forward to it.

  • cant wait!

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