Hi everyone. I’ve got some huge news for you.
As you know, we’ve been working hard to fill PlayStation Home with hundreds of games – everything from pool tables and dart boards to full-on space shooters like Novus Prime: Escalation, zombie slashers like Dead Island Zombie Survivor, and massive online racing games like Sodium 2: Project Velocity. Today we are excited to announce a complete redesign of the heart of PlayStation Home to reinforce our evolution into the ultimate social game platform on consoles today. This redesign will connect you with the world of hundreds of games in Home faster and better than ever before.
Coming in Fall 2011, this new core experience for PlayStation Home features a “hub and districts” design that will help you find games, people and places that fit your favorite game genres. The design features a new Hub that integrates games, quests, community events, and user-generated content, while providing you with additional navigation, shopping, socialization and entertainment options.
The new, futuristic Hub (shown below) brings an ever changing roster of games right to the center of Home, including Cogs from Codename: Lazy 8 Studios which will be featured front and center on day one. The Hub will also feature a new Activity Board filled with games to play, rewards to be won, a new UGC events system, and cool stuff to discover.
Powering this Activity Board is a massive new questing system that literally transforms Home itself into a game if you so choose. From frequently updated community activities to huge, branching narrative adventures, this questing system will provide game play options delivered to you in ways never before imagined.
Additionally, surrounding the Hub will be districts based on game genres to suit your mood. Whether you want an intense, in-your-face experience, or a more chill, laid-back environment, these districts will be packed with games and navigation points leading you to content that suits your style.
- With a gritty, urban aesthetic reminiscent of a first-person shooter level, the Action District (shown above) is the perfect destination for gamers looking for action, shooter and horror games.
- Come experience the outside-the-stadium feel of Sportswalk, which features up-to-the-minute major league sports scores, headlines and highlights, and sports-themed games.
- Enter a lush beachfront jungle full of sights to see and adventure-themed games to discover in the Adventure District.
- Pier Park (shown above) is your destination for carnival, puzzle, outdoor and arcade games, featuring a waterfront boardwalk, Ferris wheel and a fun party zone that is linked to dedicated indie and arcade game spaces.
On top of all this great news, I’m excited to announce that we are going to upgrade Home’s core client to provide a streamlined initial user experience, getting you in and playing games faster than ever before. This upgrade will be deployed as a separate release from the redesign, and together they will underscore PlayStation Home’s evolution into a world filled with hundreds of games ready for you to play, making Home the ultimate social game platform on consoles.
We hope you’re as excited about PlayStation Home’s new core experience as we are!
@mcbuttz: as usual you have no real clue whats going on. If sony was half as concerned about sex on home as you think they’d be doing something, anything to deal with the rampant pervert problem that already exists. As it stands they do nothing more than sweep it under the rug, often trying to silence victims who speak out with bans, doubly victimizing them.
I was reading about a redesign in Home and I thought “Huh, maybe they’ll tone down all those embarrassingly desperate billboards and advertisements littering the place like animated eyesores.”
But, no, they appear to be as prolific as ever!
Stay classy, PS Home!
ok good news…but what about allow us to play with other countries?…I have a lot of friends in other countries and I cant play with them…beacause of this…Come on…can you guys fix this?
The only problems I’ve ever had with Home is your limited space in your personal space (Come on! You’re going to charge us for all the best stuff, let us win all sorts of cool stuff, then not let us even be able to show it all off in one space?) and, Items in your personal space doing nothing. I have a drum kit, television, laptop, phone, mp3 player, and many more things that do nothing except look cool… you can’t even lay in your bed. I just think it’d be cool to have the freedom and actions of game like The Sims mixed with all the great social aspects of Home. Everything else in Home is perfect and just keeps getting better. I doubt my opinion matters too much, but just thought I’d add my two cents for whomever cares.
Hey Jack,
I must say this looks to be a vast looking improvement. I remember when Playstation Home was 1st announced and I was so excited about all the possibilities, heck I was one of the earlier supporters of it, unfortunately I wasn’t invited to the Playstation Home Beta :-(. Well while Home has been an ever improving application, most would say it’s not exactly living up to what people thought it would be. Now while it has been improving in certain areas (i.e Loading times, Game Integration, etc…) It has been missing some of the basics people like me thought Home would have in the beginning, such as…
To be continued…
– The ability to set picture frames on any part of a wall, instead of preset areas. (Really why hasn’t this functionality been there since the beginning?)
– The ability to change the time of day in your apartment and perhaps even through out Home itself. (Time Determined by your PS3’s Clock)
– Actual Functional Furniture in Home ( i.e. A bookshelf that you can customize by adding games that you have in your game library. Either manually through a search in a database full of game titles or even better have it linked to the persons Playstation.com account where they can list all the games they have. Also have it where when they buy a game off of the PSN it automatically adds it to their bookshelf. From there people who visit your apartment can walk up to your virtual bookshelf and look up all the games you have and that can lead to a conversation about said game or a request to play the game. The UI would look something like Apples Cover System and you should also be able to view a persons trophies in that game from this bookshelf.
Continued from above
Another simple piece of functional furniture would be phones either cordless or cellphones you could sell, and when a person calls you in Home it rings in your home, the phone is also customizable with different ringtones which can be bought in the mall for $0.49 ea.
Heck those are just some of my ideas for Home hopefully you’ve read some of my older posts explaining this because you guys could see some serious Cha Ching with some of these additions. Ohh and also don’t screw over previous purchasers of things like you did with the Summer Apartment. Selling the Summer Apartment for $4.99 and then selling Jess’s apartment for another $4.99, when we should just have the ability to change the time of day in the apartments in the 1st place. What this means is continue to support and update older items and apartments with these updates. Early Purchasers should be rewarded for their loyalty to Home.
To be continued…
I can only hope that it has some of the improvements I’m looking forward to will be in this core update and you guys were listening.
Wolf26pack
P.S. I’ll also be posting this in the Home Forums so you guys don’t miss it. Hopefully your reading this Jack ;-). I want to see Home succeed as much as you do.
are they gonna have in game money, because that would be nice
What about a district for Rythm genre??
Amazing! This is exactly what I was wanted PlayStation Home to turn into, But through some things I’ve heard in the PlayStation Home community I am starting to worry that this will end up making us pay to play like an mmorpg. Please tell me we won’t have to. If we do will there be subscription cards like the cards in stores for PlayStation Plus? Either way I thank you for making my dreams come true :-) .
I think This is a Smart move By Playstation Network. Playstation Home will have more fun things to do and see
Correction * This is exactly what I always * sorry auto correct on my tablet is a pain :-[
stick a fork in it and reallocate resources to more psn games and i stop making the worthless minis
This sounds like a step in the right direction. Home, while on paper sounded great it just really didn’t have a draw for most gamer’s I think. I will try this out.
What about all the virtua items we obtained over the years? Will we still have them?
This looks really nice and I hope that it has a sort of MMO feel and is a bit more connected to the Playstation experience. I’ve spent a lot of time and money in Home hoping it was going to evolve and recently have been very discouraged with the progress. My last few posts on the Home updates pages have been less than kind. I havent even bothered with Home in the last few weeks. This looks very promising but there needs to be better involvement with the community and a sense of interaction with the over all Playstation Experience. Trophy support and a Trophy room would be a nice start. It makes me very happy that it seems people have been paying attention to these boards and with peoples dissatisfaction with Home as-is. I will be checking this out.
Sorry…. but will this update fix some of the issues with spaces like Waterfall terrace? It’s a great apartment but its been broken more than it has ever worked.
Thank you, these changes are welcome, I would ask for a youtube hd streaming app inside home..
watching youtube with some friends would be nice… ( or sharing a xmb video or music with others..)
The night setting looks awesome! Hey, since the games will be loading better and everything does this include better loading of trailers and stuff in the theater?
THIS IS SOOOOOOOOOO AWESOME! sony was [DELETED] up big time for a while there in my opinion, but theyve been rapidly making up for it. and then some. great idea with home! i cant wait!
This looks sweet! I just want to be able to run faster(the jog is slow) and decrease loading times please. Oh btw anyone notice how everything is blue on the PlayStation site?links and stuff anyway. They were red before…. sorry for being off topic.
@Lytes, my wife has had to disable her text on Home because of the constant harassment by perverts on here. i don’t mean guys just coming up to say Hello, i’m talking being followed, sexual messages sent to her account, guys putting their avatars face in her avatars crotch area saying the rudest things you can say to someone. reporting them is a joke because they will make a another account. she’d like to meet other females to make friends, but things are so bad that she will only stay in her personal space or go to other areas if there is an event. she has also received random PMs from these jerks asking to perform sexual acts… yes they can be disabled as well but you have to do that each time you get on Home…so she just disables her text that way no one is able to communicate with her at all. it sucks because she really likes Home.
does central plaza really have to go away, cuz im gonna miss that place. and also dont work too hard!!
Cannot wait to try it out!
Ps Home For Ever !! I’m. So Excited :D
I was hoping for new functionalities that were promised in previous E3 shows. Adding more junk into a small pile of junk doesn’t make it more interesting. As a social platform, Home needs more social functionalities, not more throwaway games and gamification (pointification) modifications. Home desperately needs fundamental social functionalities (share videos, share games, share pictures, parties, user events, more with clubs, etc). You need to decide what Home is: a collection of free games or a social platform. Right now, it just seems like there’s a huge lack of focus and Sony doesn’t really know what to do with this thing.
I Agree With You Rbrtchng!
um 1, 2, Homes going bye bye…
at least the Home as we knew it is going…
Just wonder what this NEW HUB is gonna be after it hits?
Now we all wait in wonder!
By: DCS
If the ps home team has been doing research then… where is the trophy room they said they were making how many years ago? Doesn’t seem like a priority at all. I’d love to see a room where 3d models of platinum trophies are displayed and the more platinum trophies you get the bigger and cooler looking the room itself gets.
WOW! This is gonna be soooo AWESOME!!
WOW this is going to be EPIC!! I sooooo cant wait to see this for myself! WOOT!!
Looks good , but will the new ps home be a part in the upcoming ps vita . That would be cool !
So I take it Home will finally rid itself of that beta tag that Sony has been using as a crutch for far too long. Staying in beta this long has added a state of complacency in how Home problems have been addressed. Add to that an unfair product dispersal skewed more at the US than at SCEE’s territories, and people have cause to want to give up EU Home for greener pastures. I must say, and I am not trying to be a troll, but for all of EU Home’s disparity of creed and culture, not to mention a lingua franca that has become english within Home for most different language speakers, I have noticed that there seems to be less bickering and verbal abuse(less, but it still happens)than in US Home.I think we need to learn to all get on together. i would like to see this new Home as ONE WORLD Home. i cannot discount the great vibe I feel in various shared spaces. Perhaps if it was to be a ONE HOME, then certain parcs could still cater for certain groups, not neccesarily by race neither. think about it…)
Not entirely sold on this new direction yet. Is Home just gonna be one big gaming centre? Isn’t the PS3 that already? Don’t get me wrong, I like the new ideas but I always saw Home as a 3D version of Facebook or other social sites with gaming and other activities integrated into it.
it looks coll and all. when its said and done good luck trying to get on home for a couple days
typo cool
Is it possible that the new content will also come with some new free default clothing or hair options?
And for the love of God, please, please, please do not get rid of bowling.
I really lost for word. Tbh. I don’t know what to say. It has left me speechless.
Playstation home staff and developers have rather super glued sewed my mouth with stitches. I can say we finally got some more space to move around now than the plaza.
First expression was WOAH, AWESOME! This is great. Thank you PS3. And I rather can’t say I will miss Plaza. Tbh, I will miss standing on benches. And having the special events and whatnot.
looks like a virtual disney theme park.
this is just simply amazing!
I cant wait to try out this new experience on the PSHome!
O_O *faints* nuff said x.x
Hopefully with this new update it will fix some issues and not break more stuff. I am still sitting with a broken UFC personal space and $50 of tokens that can’t be used in the gift machine (sorry friends! no gifts for you). Couple of things that would be nice to have added/changed (get comfy it’s a long one):
*option to hide avatars – yes the mute/ignore button is EXTREMELY nice for the perv’s but they continue to do perverse things to your avi’s body. Is it that hard to hide an avatar like you hide active items?
*add clothes in the gift machine – it would be nice to be able to send friends clothes as a present via the gift machine. There are only a few gift items that are worth sending to friends as it is now (that is, IF the latest release of the gift machine was working). Loved the gift machine at Christmas time!
*option to watch netflix with friends from personal spaces
Sony can’t even get trophies to update in real time for their games. Why would you think they have the ability to add trophy support to Home?
What home needs is better tools for placing objects, and better collision detection with objects and spaces. Its tiresome trying to align objects with each other only to have them move.
– Snap to grid (or similar feature)
– Snap to object
– Lock item in place
– Precision rotation and movement of objects (micro movements instead of relying on analog control)
– Wider camera angles, especially when putting objects near walls or the top of a space. Either that or better camera control all together.
Also I understand why there are item limits for spaces, but maybe you could bump it to 75. Because 50 severely cripples creativity. Especially when using small objects like PixelJunk items.
*censoring – it would be REALLY nice to see when your own chat is censored. I have many times mistyped a word and it censored it for friends, and I of course have no idea that it was censored. We have to stop mid conversation to figure out what was censored (for example, I’m very good at typing tits instead of its). There are several words that censor that once we figure out the word that was censored; we are left scratching our heads as to why Sony would even censor it.
*PS+ benefits – a separate public space for plus members would be really nice (not sure why UK has it and we don’t, since we pay extra for it too. Where is our benefit on home)? It would be nice for plus members to get discounts on everything that is sold on home, just like the discounts in the PSN store.
Cont’d
*wardrobe – the storage feature was a nice addition, but I almost need a storage for my storage. There are several items I would like to delete or throw in an area that I don’t have to ever see them again (just to speed up my “in wardrobe time”). My friends already know if I am going in to wardrobe, don’t plan to see me again for at least 15 minutes (or more if I have to dig in to storage for something – this stuff accumulates over time). The new sorting option is nice (yes I spend way too much on home, but its play money right?! I can do what I want with it). I do not like the option where your wardrobe gets full and throws random items in to the storage (now I have to resort AGAIN).
Cont’d
*personal space – it is very nice to be able to see the personal spaces before they come out, but it is too hard to track down a guide, then play the “add friend” game, then send a request to visit (never know when they are online and showing the space). After you have to take the time to delete the guide so they have room to add others (not to mention my friends list is full, I’d have to delete a friend to add). I have just given up and decided to wait till they come out to see them. Why can’t you just advertise it as a public space and people can go to it when they want?
*Friend Requests/Game Launch/Group Invites – it would be really nice to be able to turn off these features while on home. The endless “drive bys friend requests” on home are ridiculous (fortunately my friends list is full now, but other friends have the same issue). It takes time to delete the “drive bys” while on home. If you don’t delete them right way, they send “send this message to 50 of your friends” spam mail. I am really tired of getting my screen spammed by multiple game launch and group invites (done intentionally by random rude to people to irritate you).
Cont’d
*Trophies for home gaming
*Constant error messages and being kicked off home and re-logging in. The load times are unbelievable; it seems like the more you buy, you are penalized by the initial load time (verifying purchased content). There has been quite a few time in the Plaza that my group of friends have all froze at the exact same time and had to reboot.
*It would be nice to report issues/problems to a board on home, that way when you have an issue you can check the board there (on home) to see if others are having the same issues (like the broken UFC pers. space and gift machine). Possible resolutions posted to it would be nice too (it would save Sony time too because less people would be calling). Right now we rely on more “word of mouth” by friends.
As far as some of the other comments I’ve read on the blog, YES the sexual harassment is bad on PS home, so I’m not sure why some people in the blog say its blown out of context. It includes vulgar comments made in the chat box, PM’s in the chat box, and PM’s sent within the PS button. They usually include sexual comments, pressuring to web cam, and naked pix. The block list only allows you to block so many users (not enough to compensate the predators on home, especially when they have multiple accounts). It did help with the change that made the majority of PMs goes to the chat log now, so that it can be monitored on home. The perv’s have to take the extra effort to type in your user id to send PMs within the PS button. The mute/ignore functions helps a lot, but like mentioned before, it is temporary.