“Home” vs XBox Live vs Mii community
Sony’s “Home” (a just-revealed free online social community for PS3) is like Second Life, with better graphics, no user-generated-content (that I see), and no economy.
If I were getting a PS3, I’d definitely be curious, with definite reasons to explore like a “hall of achievements” and arcade meeting places. I haven’t ever used a 360, but I think about the halo online model – how much more interesting would be it be if you could meet up with people anywhere in the system, as opposed to just in one designated meeting room?
Nintendo had better get their ass in gear. In fact, they’d better make an announcement this week about their online community to come – this is their weak spot. It’s ALWAYS been their weak spot (one of a few).
C’mon, guys, don’t yield the field.
On a related note, “Games 3.0” (the concept Sony is slapping onto this community idea) is an asinine marketing term. Sorry, Web 2.0 has a kernel of conceptual validity behind the marketing*, but this smacks too much of “My amp goes to eleven!!1!one!”
*The idea of web sites that don’t require page refreshing is novel at the scale it is happening today, even if it’s occasionally as cumbersome as going “back” in a flash app. It’s not new programming, just a new perspective.
360 Live is really, really robust in terms of what you can do to interact with people. You can send messages readable and listenable from any 360 game(since the live menu is now a standard one for all games). I believe you can do the chat thing in it as well, though I haven’t tried it, and most people seem to use uno or poker for social gathering games anyway.
That said sony’s home may very well take the pluses of both online services and jumble them together. God knows the ps3 needs anything it can get.