I did not say it was designed to solve problems. I did not use the word problem at all. That is your interpretation of my post alone.
Pray tell, did you not say:
Meh! I predict Home to be a small wave in a shallow puddle. I really can't see why people are getting hyped about it.
It's an overdesigned solution to a problem which now has a simple solution, therefore it's importance in the scheme of things is negligable.
You said it, bro.
When Home was first announced it was received very much as a 'LIVE' killer. A reaction to criticism PSN had received from both users/gamers and the media in regards to its missing features over the Live service, including as I already posted friends lists, in game messaging & game invites, lack of achievement points, no in-game XMB access and such.
This has subsequently evolved as all products and ideas do to become a MMO meeting place and what seemingly is given more and more emphasis 'a marketplace'. This is my interpretation of home.
However I still don't quite get the concept.
Evidently
Sure you can walk to the cinema, see a trailer, download or hire a movie - great but why not just do that from PSN store.
Sure you can walk up to strangers, engage in a bit of chat and go bowling - but why not just give me the ability to invite friend to come play COD4 or any other proper PS3 multiplayer game whilst i'm in that game, rather than boot in and out of a game to do so.
Granted I have not tried the BETA of HOME and I may be missing the point entirely, but let me ask you instead of asking me to repeatedly justify my reasons for 'not seeing the point', could you maybe instead enlighten us with your own opinion other than just stating mine is wrong.
You have made NO attempt at putting your opinion of HOME across, instead you have merely just gone on the attack.
No. I asked you for yours before I would give you mine. I think you're closer with the MMO suggestion.
HOME is designed to fix certain problems that services like XBox Live don't fix. Xbox Live in respect of its social aspects is really not much more than a version of MSN Instant Messenger/Hotmail. It gives you a friends list and tells you who's on and what they are doing, and allows you to communicate with them and invite them to games. There are peripheral services like the web forum, which not many people use.
That's not really much of a community, and it ignores the two most important online developments of the last few years: MMOs and social networking. Xbox Live doesn't do a very good job of creating an enveloping community around all the games. Where do you go in Xbox Live to meet other gamers who have similar interests to you that you don't already know? The answer is: in particular games. That's all well and good, but it makes it difficult to connect with people for other reasons. One is that people own different games, and apart from chat, there isn't much of a way to interact with them inside XBL. Another is that enabling people to advertise their other preferences (music, film, culture, etc.) within the service will make it much easier to find better friends. HOME is designed to increase the interaction between players to improve the online experience and make friendships "stickier".
There's a great truth here. People do go online to look for friends to play the games they have. But there is also a great deal of value in going online to find friends who you will then want to co-ordinate game purchases with.
The average WoW player has hordes of friends and acquaintances, because it is really easy to meet the avatars of other people. I haven't played WoW for over a year now, but I still keep in regular contact with old friends from the game. I know I am not alone in this. The MMO model leads to "stickier" friendships because it provides a common meeting space for avatars in the form of a virtual world. XBL has no enclosing virtual world like this. Where do you go in WoW if you want to find something to do? You go to Ironforge and you start asking people in the chat channel. You never know what you might end up doing. Could be an instance, or a PvP battle or a raid on the horde territories. IIRC HOME is designed so you can do this for PS3 games.
Home provides a common non-competitive interactive space. XBL does not have that. That's why HOME is much more ambitious than Xbox Live. It is trying to build a community of people who game, not merely hook people up piecemeal for games.
So why a virtual world? Well imagine that you tried to get a sports club running in your city. However, you weren't allowed to actually meet other players face to face unless you were actually playing a game. If you wanted to organize a game, you'd have to organize it on the field (and there are many fields scattered throughout the city, so this is hard) or you'd have to organize it by phone, IM and email without seeing the other players in person in between games.
That's essentially what XBL is like. There is very little in the way of common space or sense of overarching community. There is just a network of private associations, and no general common space where you can simply find other players.
It's obvious that such an arrangement IRL would be really really weird. The obvious solution is to build a big hall where the entire club can meet and people can get to know each other and then decide what games they want to play. That's why pretty much every sports club has a clubhouse, a building where no games are actually played, but where people can gather, socialize and plan games. HOME is really just a virtual clubhouse. Moreover, every community is like this. That's why we have town halls and town squares and other public spaces. HOME is just an attempt to bring a public space into the middle of the private spaces of individual gaming sessions.
That is why they are trying to build a version of Second Life.
Who knows if it will actually work. I'd expect to see the next version of XBL take a similar approach based on social networking.
In short, that's why I think you are wrong about HOME. It isn't intended to do just the same as XBL, but to provide a common non-competitive space to meet people and find games and friends. Sony chose the MMO model rather than the Myspace model probably because it is easier to deal with people as an avatar than as a page. Both, however, would be an improvement over XBL.
Again, people are free to disagree with my view. I won't take it personally. I just think you are missing the point of HOME.
You say in a previous post of yours
There's a big difference between LeeKohler attributing an odd interpretation of standard English sentences used by myself and another poster and me trying to work out what you mean with nonstandard English (Jesus.. Kohler was calling out the other guy as a homophobe, and the dude was gay).
It's not the same at all. In one case someone is deliberately misinterpreting a correct use of English, and in the other, someone is trying to interpret your non-idiomatic sentence.
I think its about time you start practicing what you preach rather than jumping down the throats of others and writing snippy comments and personal attacks.
Are you really Irish? Man up, dude. Stop being so paranoid. Disagreeing with you and thinking what you write is rubbish is not a personal attack. For all I know, you're the bee's knees in person.
Here's the rub. If you are going to pontificate in this forum, don't be surprised if people who disagree call on you to defend your pontifications. If you aren't prepared to take that, then don't pontificate in the first place. And you pontificate more than anyone else in this subforum.
