PlayStation®Home General Discussion

[FULLMETAL56]

Hi TedTheDog, i just want to know why Europe Home is so different (small spaces...) ?

Making same spaces, same events and same add-on will give less work at SCE (huh?) and players will not be so jalous.

[TedTheDog]

Very interesting read Patsu and I completely agree with you on community. We have a company community policy in SCEE and whilst it goes into some detail it has a single line to that explains its goal. "We facilitate community." ie what we do in the community space should be aimed at allowing the community to grow and evolve with the tools and experience provided.

With regards to Benchy's comments on who does what, the structure, broadly speaking, is:

The Home Dev team. Based within SCEE they write the core engine and some of the content.

The Regions. This includes SCEE, SCEA, SCEJ and SCEAsia. Each region has a team that is responsible for the service at a regional level and also creates region specific content (PSP3000 Treasure Hunt, Ninja costume etc.)

In effect, the Home Dev team is different to many game dev teams in that their customers are the regions rather than you guys out there.

That departure from the norm is also one of the reasons why we havent had a Developer Diary type blog so far; the core dev team works on the client, not necessarily the content, and that divide can be hard to understand. Essentially they're one of many dev teams working on stuff for Home albeit the core of the service.

Message Edited by TedTheDog on 14-02-2009 11:18 AM

[BenchyUK]

Thanks for the reply Ted.

I hope team takes on the point about the price of items.

Would you agree that selling items half the price but selling twice as much is a better sales practice  as your likely to make even more money overall rather than replying on the same 20% of people buying content.

Message Edited by BenchyUK on 14-02-2009 12:15 PM

[Mixelmagic]

I'd guess their market research shows that they wouldn't sell 2x the amount if it was half the price.. you're only speculating that would happen, and i personally seriously doubt it would.

[Sinister1JP]

The 80/20 model seems to be working in EU, so I don't forsee them changing the pricetags.

Works a little different in JP and US though, and I have to say esp. in JP that is looking more successful. For the most part what appears to be their regular users all have pay-for content.

[Fritches]

ohh jp pays for their content

[patsu]

TedTheDog wrote:

Very interesting read Patsu and I completely agree with you on community. We have a company community policy in SCEE and whilst it goes into some detail it has a single line to that explains its goal. "We facilitate community." ie what we do in the community space should be aimed at allowing the community to grow and evolve with the tools and experience provided.

> Yes. I guess what I am implying in my post is also:

To help others grow, you may have to be strong yourself first. Don't be afraid to start an anchoring service (clubhouse, game launching) to stablize the eco-system -- *if* the partners are preventing you from performing.

The overall experience needs to be meaty and focused. Having the ability and content to structure that experience is vert important. The Home spaces are like desktop wallpapers, they are too thin to structure any experience. e.g., Changing a desktop wallpaper does not change your Windows/Mac desktop experience.

 

In my project, we had issues in translating some of the airy-fairy goals into concrete actions. Words are simple to repeat but it was very difficult to deliver the end user experience on-time because (i) The partners were slow, (ii) We had too many things to work on. In the end, it boils down to getting all of our hands dirty, focus on only one or two things but finish them quickly. Most importantly, we made sure every addition is impactful. We didn't deliver half way and work on something else.

I was wondering if Sony will add a 2D UI to Home to speed things up for the users at large. It can be combined with the community stats I spoke about. Basically, when/before a Home space is loaded, we can see a 2D panel with pre-calculated summaries. Impatient people can navigate the 2D "community pulses" panel while waiting for the full 3D world to download. The "pulse" panel can also highlight where my friends are for further action.

I posted a more detailed suggestion to the US Home team.

With regards to Benchy's comments on who does what, the structure, broadly speaking, is:

The Home Dev team. Based within SCEE they write the core engine and some of the content.

The Regions. This includes SCEE, SCEA, SCEJ and SCEAsia. Each region has a team that is responsible for the service at a regional level and also creates region specific content (PSP3000 Treasure Hunt, Ninja costume etc.)

In effect, the Home Dev team is different to many game dev teams in that their customers are the regions rather than you guys out there.

That departure from the norm is also one of the reasons why we havent had a Developer Diary type blog so far; the core dev team works on the client, not necessarily the content, and that divide can be hard to understand. Essentially they're one of many dev teams working on stuff for Home albeit the core of the service.

> Would be great if Home is more integrated with the web.... so that we can interact with the Home team directly from within Home. Even some of the organized activities can use Internet's existing services -- as opposed to instance jumping. 

EDIT: Just want to add that Game Launching and Clubhouse are probably the 2 signature service in Home. Really look forward to them !!! 

Message Edited by patsu on 14-02-2009 07:37 PM