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.
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.
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!
Playstation 3 rocks! I will be on your console throughout 2009 and 2010. Thank you for listening to your customers. I’m so excited I can cry.
can we have more free items please? it just seems a bit excessive to charge for everything that makes your home experience awesome :(
OMFG This so awesome im like wow sony is so frequently getting updated and all these upgrades that give people what they want and more please i recommend it to people that have a * cough *lame 360 check out the PlaystionBlog then it will even get you down on your knees before you get the Playstion3 itself and the SCEA is turning into santa claus you know why? because every thing i asked 4 comes 2 me its like sony wrapps it up in a cute package and seems it up to filled with things u want and cannot get enough of sony its awesome its flowing with updates it has its own blogging site PS3 site every thing places to share your opinions with sony while they carry it out you 360 just automatically give you things that they think you would like but dont actually look at your ideas just asume what you want and ull have 2 deal with those updates to bummer 360 users
PS Home. LOL!
OMG THIS IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO EPIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANKS YOU HOME TEAM FOR A WONDERFUL UPDATE! WE LOVE HOME!!!!!!!!!!
OMG, universal game launching!!! You guys finally did it. I take my first comment back.
brb, let me finish reading the post.
When will we be able to buy virtual Televisions to display our own trailers and videos from our XMB, sorta like we can display pics in our frames?
STILL NEED A JUMP OPTION LET A BROTHER JUMP WHILE HE’S IN HOME MAYBE A PUNCH BUTTON TOO.
I still don’t understand the target audience for the direction that Home is heading. I already own a copy of The Sims..
This is going to be a very good update. I do have a question though.
What’s the point of these game specific spaces once the game gets old?
All boring and should have been added long ago. Who actually game launches from home?
What about the trophy room discussed long ago? Does Sony even read their own forums?
How about you cut funding for home and use it to make psn and the xmb better?
Also, let us download everything once. The loading screens kill home.
What about the ability to have a roomate and more customization as far as your avi’s shape and hair? Some more dances as well.
ok so far so good..its getting better and better but i think WE ALL would want to be able to CHAT WITH MORE THAN 1FRIEND..seriously..and whats going on with the STUFF STORE..and IN -HOME MUSIC…ALSO can we have our TVs!!! Come on Ps HoMe DeVs..YOU GUYS CAN DO IT! SO LET US HAVE IT ..PLEEEEASE..:p but yeah COOL UPDATE..keep up the good work!!
ooh yeah and the TROPHY ROOM..wats going on with that? im stackin up on trophies so i cant wait to show’em off when this space is out! im sure its the #1 space EVERY ONE is waiting for..:p
Can I just say, AWESOME!?
I’ll trade all of this just to have voice chat back.
First time poster, long time reader.
This is what Home needed and it’s Great!! It’s really cool to see how much the Home team listens to it’s residents. They obviously care and it’s appreciated greatly.
~Jers
I’m looking forward to these new updates.. now I can actually have something to do on PlayStation home..
There’s still nothing that makes me want to go into Home. Universal Game Launching is the biggest upgrade? I think the XMB has been able to do that for quite some time. Stop wasting resources on this piece of junk.
Will Game Launching have support for PS Store game
like marvel vs capcom 2 and other games the you d/l of the PS Store,
the run RUN off the Hard Drive
or
will it ONLY be for disc based games
Well, Plz keep it up and Try to Give us more like media sharing of videos and Plz make the picture frames free.
THXs.
(^_^) MAGDOZI (^_^)
the preview option might get me to buy some stuff. i just stick to the free stuff for now.
Can you go into more specifics about the caching? You said we can choose 3, 5, 8, 12, so can you tell us approximately how long it would take, in all those conditions for:
1) Boot up the system
2) Go from one space to another
3) Amount of time it would take the whole room to properly load (i.e. no ghost people, framerate hiccup, etc)
nice update for Home Sony! @30 Dailus sorry to tell you this, your PS3 has the “yellow light of death,” which means it’s dead, sorry. My 60 gb did the same think, contact Sony customer service. If your PS3 is less than a year old they will send you a free refurbished model, if it’s older than a year old it will cost you $150. I feel your pain man.
One thing I would like to see added is the ability to have home start up as soon as the ps3 is booted up!
cool tools!
Should have made it a shrink gun. This way there would be no time limit on it’s effectiveness. Would be logical as well to have “Return to normal size” option had it been the case. All in all, this is a great update!
That or a shrink watch, wristband, or a shrink pad.
The shrinking potion reminds me of Tobal 2… which really needs to be in the PSOne Classics section!
Can’t wait for this…
So will this Universal Game Launching have any effect on metal gear solid online, since the server is run by Konami?
AND WHAT ABOUT TROPHIES FOR METAL GEAR SOLID 4!
whats the point of universal game launching when you do not even go into home anyway?
This is not a “serious” upgrade to me.
as always, a step forward, but im still waiting for that one leap
so many of my friends who aren’t hardcore gamers want a playstation 3 just because what they see me doing in Playstation Home
Awesome Playstation Home is growing
When is public voice chat coming back? It’s been more than 7 months!!!
An improvement I would recommend is to exclude loading screens when walking into the Mall, Theater and Arcade.
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!*sigh* I can breathe
Awesome update. The addition of new animations and emotes for your avatar is a welcome plus. Now all we need to get now is the Trophy Room/Hall of Fame that was advertised 2 years ago, and Home will be PERFECT.
Good work so far. Thanks for this cool addition to the PS3.
no tv? and cloths should not be the same as real cloths the price atm is way to much
@ 113
Yeszzzzzir! That loading totally kills it for me too. I hate traveling to different spaces just because of that.
Game launching maybe universal now but it’s doesn’t sound like any of our old games will support it. Unless they all get patched.
Why must we wait until they launch the new PS3 for us to get all these goodies?
Wow !!!
Thanks Locust_Star.
Home is a great addition and this is just going to make it so much better.
Still can’t believe how much Home has grown and changed since last September, but I love
every new thing that you people are bringing into it.
Sony is really stepping up the pace lately in my opinion.
Keep up the great work !
OMFG!! They let us choose the amount of memory to cache? Wow, they actually listened. Thank you soo much. Yah, yet again are doin a great job. Keep up the good work.
Please bring back Voice chatting in all rooms!!
Just give an option to turn it off for people eho don’t want to hear others talk!
@2
(very yes).. okay i agree should be very good too.
See, communication does work. Looking forward to win Sony is in a position to make the Home avatar creator the PS3 avatar creator…great way to get 100% participation in home if it’s the avatar creator…picture logging into your own personal space, looking at your PS3 and screen hanging on the wall with the XMB (in the screen) and you’re able to launch any game, any app in full screen or on your virtual PS3 Home screen….
this is all very cool an thank you so much BUT…..WHAT ABOUT THE LAG ITS annoying when i come into home an everyone is BLINK. please please do something about this an going to the XMB to check a message when in home or something has never been more painful its so dam laggy IF YOU PEOPLE HERE ON THE BLOG AGREE WITH ME SEND ME A MESSAGE ON PSN (PERFECT-SHOOTER)
Sounds great. What we really need though to make the universal game launching useful, is to have some kind of indicator above our heads for when we are looking for someone to play something. Like a little RE5 icon when you are looking for someone to co-op in resident evil 5 with. Assuming you haven’t added that already.
Looking forward to the singstar space too. *looks embarrassed*