PlayStation Home has always been an odd feature on PS3. Partially an answer to Second-Life, the virtual world offered gamers a place to hangout, socialize, experience events, and new types of games. From avatars, to custom and decked out homes, PlayStation Home was the party to attend if it was your thing. While not a selling feature of the PS3, many gamers enjoyed the extended worlds from Uncharted, LittleBigPlanet, and Resistance which offered new places to explore and mini games to play for free. As the PS3 approaches year nine, the service will also bow out on March 31, 2015 and according to PlayStation’s former Home Architect Oscar Clark, it was a ‘massive success.‘
PlayStation Home started its closure tour in Asia and come early 2015, the service will bow out in Europe and North America as well. According to Sony, “due to a shifting landscape,” PlayStation Home will officially End of Line on March 31st, 2015. Come Nov. 12th, 2014, Sony will cease content publication and by December 3rd, 2014, all sales of virtual goods will be halted. Despite those deadlines, Sony still has some things planned for PlayStation Home members and spoke about the prospects of it coming to the PS4.
Sweet Tooth/Chimera Dude is ready for E3 on PS Home. Are you?
Ah, it’s that time of the year again. The time when every PlayStation fan; nigh, gamers all over the world crowd in front of their computers to see the latest and greatest games, as well as historic video game industry moments at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).
Remember that time when Gabe ‘freakin Newell showed up on-stage at a Sony conference and revealed Portal 2 for PS3? How about the time Kevin Butler literally OWNED every single game journalist/competition/gamer with his epic “I Love Gaming” speech? (Pew! Pew!) Or how about that Metal Gear Solid 2 E3 reveal trailer almost 10 years ago that whipped fans into a frenzy?
Got those goosebumps yet?
Granted, not all of us can go to the Mecca of electronic entertainment conventions, and Sony is doing its part to help bring gamers closer to the event by again opening the PlayStation Home E3 Space. Like they’ve done last year and the year before, the PS Home E3 Space will give PlayStation fans access to the many games that will be shown on the actual E3 show floor in LA.
As well, players who’ve unlocked all the exclusive content hidden in the Home E3 booth will gain access to the VIP area where they’ll get their (virtual) hands on an unreleased game in addition to game content and other free goodies.
But before visiting the PlayStation Home E3 Space, be sure to watch the PlayStation E3 Press Conference Live in PlayStation’s special E3 Theater (found on PS Home) on Monday, June 4th at 6:00pm Pacific/9:00 PM Eastern (that’s 7:00pm MDT and 8:00pm).
The PlayStation Home E3 Space will open to all PlayStation 3 users starting June 5th at 12:00 PM.
Prior to this week, there were some doubts on whether PlayStation fans could get in on the E3 action and see Sony’s E3 press conference live. Sony has traditionally in the past released their E3 press conference video on PSN later in the day as a special store update, while recently, the company has begun live streaming the video on their website and on PlayStation Home. With Microsoft partnering with SpikeTV to televise their E3 press conference, does this leave PlayStation fans out of luck and instead, reliant on PS Home or the internet? According to G4, no. Not at all.
Aw shucks, gamers won’t be able to access the PlayStation Network for most of today, Sony will be performing routine scheduled maintenance on the network on Monday, April 16th. It will start 6:00 am PDT / 9:00 am EDT and is supposed to last for 13 hours. Expect the service to return to working order around 7:00 pm PDT / 10:00 pm EDT.
During the PSN’s routine maintenance, PlayStation Network websites will be unavailable for access. As well, PS3 and PS Vita users will not be able to access the PlayStation Store, PlayStation Home, Account Management or play online-enabled games.
Matthew Harper, part of the recently-formed PlayStation Digital Platforms Community Management team has said that they will keep gamers updated throughout the entire process.
“We will continue to provide as much information as we can regarding any future maintenance we need to schedule.”
Once the maintenance begins, players will have to check the PlayStation Twitter feed for a notice when PSN is fully back online.
In case you didn’t know, Crackle is a digital media network that streams full movies and shows (ad-supported) in flash format on the web. PlayStation 3 owners who have used the PS3 web browser in the past may have had experiences watching full movies on the browser through Crackle.
Now it seems, PlayStation Home users can now add FREE full film viewings to their “to-do lists” as Sony announced that Crackle is indeed coming to PlayStation Home. Players and their friends on PS Home can watch literally hundreds of full shows and movies in the LOOT EOD screens found in the LOOT EOD Ttheatres which include the Sunset Yacht and Hollywood Hills House home spaces.
Some of the better films found in Crackle (Canadian Version) are:
88 Minutes
Arlington Road
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Drunken Master
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
High School High
Quarantine
Resident Evil: Degeneration
Revolver
Given that the Canadian version is severely lacking in titles, American PS Home viewers will find a better and bigger selection of movies on their version of Crackle. Lucky!
PlayStation Home was released as a public beta back in 2008. It was/is Sony’s way of integrating a social community around the PS3 and its games. And while a virtual world where players can chat with people, make friends, and customize their avatars sounded like a great idea just two short years ago, social gaming has taken a different turn lately.
So in order to meet the demand, Sony is releasing a new and improved PlayStation Home where players can stills socialize, but also be a place where they play more expansive game experiences inside the PS Home world. More information on the revamped PlayStation Home after the break.
Today at GDC, Sony lifted the vail off of the upcoming PlayStation Home 1.5 update, showing a slew of improvements that the company has in mind for the free PlayStation 3 service. For those who are not familiar, PlayStaiton Home gives users a play to hang out, chat, talk games and actually play tons of games, many which are free. Home is a destination to meet players who enjoy the same games, and gives users options like shopping for virtual items, decorating their Home space and avatar. With all that, the core existence of Home is gaming. Here, users can create groups and launch into multiplayer games together like Uncharted 2 or LittleBigPlanet, making it a great pre-gaming environment. Since the service launched, Sony has had many updates which have added to gaming spaces, and user features. PlayStation Home Community Manager had this to say:
While versions 1.3 and 1.4 brought user-facing features like Voice Chat, Cross Game Invites, Navigation Improvements, In-Store Previews, New Item Types (such as Active Items and Companions), Optimized Load Times and Universal Game Launching, PlayStation Home v1.5 is packed with tools and features that will enable developers to expand the types of games possible on the platform – from first-person shooters with real-time, peer-to-peer multiplayer to kart racers and more.
Home currently offers a ton of free mini games, based around popular franchises like Killzone, LittleBigPlanet and Resistance while the company has also created many unique games like Sodium. Now with PlayStation Home 1.5, Sony is looking to up the ante by giving developers more control and power to create deeper, richer and more fulfilling games that will be exclusively on PlayStation Home.
Hey, here is some more Home news. It seems like Sony has sent out a new survey to the current Home Beta testers. Among the usuals in how they feel about it, what they like and dislike, comes an image thats been stirring around the web. It seems that the survey also asks witch look the users more prefer. The current or any of the ones listed above.
So a few hours ago, a little rumor has hit the web about a crack/hack whatever you want to call it that enables users who are not in the private Home Beta to install it. Some sites are even posting step by step instructions on how to achieve this (although I have yet to verify how legit this is so if you got it up and running, email us). Now im not going to be posting any links to them to them so if your interested, hit up a few other sites and let me tell you why.
First, Home is a closed Beta, do you really think they (Sony) dosent know who is in it and who is not? Suddenly random new accounts being created when invites arent being sent out. wow. that wont be obvious. There goes your account, aka your banned. But of course, people are having in the ingenious idea of “Im not dumb enough to use my account, ill create a sub account”. Wow you sure did out smart Sony. Jeee, if there was only a way they could still track your account by I dunno…your IP address or even something better, your PS3’s unique serial number. What if they just ban that one. That means, time for a new PS3!
So will Sony go to such extent? I dont know but its not out of the question as your doing something your not suppose to do. So ill ask you to think and see if its worth having a banned account or worse, a banned PS3 (when it comes to PSN), just to get a taste of home, when it seems like a public Home Beta is around the corner anyways.
Home Beta? Awesome. I know this because i’ve been part of it from day one but cannot report on it, due to User Agreements. However, i’m excited to share with you that according to PSN’s senior director, Susan Panico, has told the Official PlayStation mag that Sony will be “opening up the Home beta to the public very soon”. This really first and foremost benefits Home itself as the more users on it, the more chances of its bugs and kinks being worked out and with more feedback from users, the better the experience can be. And in the long run, this really effects the PlayStation community as once Home launches, it will be a much more refined and enjoyable experience for them, instead of a glitchfest.
Usually we write something witty here. And then give out details on whats going on. In this case, we all know about Home and we all know about Japan. So here to explain it all are some Japanese Home Screens. High Res too!
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