Sony hit a homerun (Home-run? Argh!!) with its keynote at GDC, demonstrating a clear online strategy for PlayStation 3. While not getting anywhere close to repairing the massive damage (argh!! again) Sony has inflicted upon itself through poor planning and arrogance, Phil Harrison’s presentation created some genuine goodwill amongst the development community and put PlayStation 3 back on the offensive.
LittleBigPlanet is simply mindblowingly awesome — I think it will dominate our thinking of sandbox games the same way Spore did last year.
PlayStation Home (which is Sony piggybacking on Web 2.0 and Second Life) is a bit harder to assess. I really want to like it, but I’m also very skeptical.
On the one hand, it looks exactly like the sort of centralized environment the PlayStation Network needs. It looks cool. You can walk around and start games, look at your achievements trophies or customize your Mii realistic 3D avatar. Mini-games like pool blend in seamlessly, kind of how the UI screens in Doom 3 were neatly integrated. It’s an environment I wouldn’t mind checking out.
But while Home could make for an interesting meeting place, I’m not sure if it will work as a system hub. Firstly, you have to boot up Home from the MediaBar — it doesn’t immediately stare you in the face after powering up the console the way Xbox Live’s tabs do. Secondly, 3D interfaces are really awkward for accessing common features. Why should you walk through a metaphorical cinema into a metaphorical screening room and watch a movie on a movie screen inside your TV screen (still with me?) when you could just have a 2D list of movies and select the one you want to see full screen?
It’s like everyone has forgotten VRML…
Sony also seems too focused on monetizing Home through product placement and special promotional areas that can only be created by third parties. They’re good ideas, but they really depend on unified third party support, which Sony may have trouble establishing at this time. It might also rub players the wrong way, as they don’t appear to have much tools to build areas or content of their own (beyond just customizing a wallpaper or buying new furniture, that is). For Home to become a true destination, it needs to be a sort of open playground, which it doesn’t seem designed to be. Not to mention, something as basic as chat is made more difficult by players having to use pre-selected words/phrases, or hook up a keyboard, or sync up a BlueTooth microphone, which are all additional barriers that don’t exist in PC-based virtual worlds.
Let’s say Sony has some challenges to overcome. All of this might sound overly negative, but I do believe Home could succeed if Sony designs its way around these problems. We’ll find out soon.
Hey, my name is Marek Bronstring and I'm Head of Content at Sega. You're looking at my rarely-updated game design blog. I think this sidebar needs some more text so let me tell you what my top favorite animals are: 1) meerkats 2) 
Here’s an interview at Wired.com that includes more info on Home (and LBP) that might address some questions of yours:
http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/03/interview_sonys.html
Some pertinent parts:
WN: So, moving on to Home. Obviously you can view all this information in the context of the game itself, but — it looks like you’re running high-definition video, it’s processor-intensive, so you need to devote the PS3 to doing this exclusively. Is there a way to get this information within the context of a game — press the PlayStation button and there’s a list of my friends who are online, achievements — er, trophies that I’m working on… is that going to go along with this?
PH: So, there are certain elements which are going to be unique to the Home experience, they’ll stay inside the Home experience because that’s the way they’re being crafted. But Home sits on top of the PlayStation Network platform. So as new features are added to PlayStation Network, they will not only be available inside Home, they can also be exposed inside other games as well.
—
PH: Let me show you something so you can get a sense of this, because we didn’t have time to go into details. [boots up Home on PS3 in room] When you come back to the Cross Media Bar, you can see that we have this Home icon. But also, underneath it you can see we have Favorites and Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame icon lets you jump straight into Hall of Fame, you don’t have to go into Home to get there. And this is where what you just described will be exposed.
Inside Favorites, you’ll create bookmarks, shortcuts to the spaces you want to visit most often with your buddies. So it could be that you like hanging out in the SOCOM barracks room, something like that. You just bookmark it, and that will appear as a long list of thumbnails in that area. Next time you log into PS3 you can dive straight in there. Your personal apartment will appear there as well.
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WN: That’s interesting because as we’ve seen with other platforms, there’s a really fine line that needs to be walked between giving people extra content and making them feel like they’re being ripped off forwards and backwards. How do you balance out, what’s the value proposition to somebody, why do I want to buy a bigger house? What’s that really going to do for me?
PH: We believe that users want to express themselves by physical objects that they own within the universe. Home allows people to expand and customize their space so they can invite their friends round, they can hang out with their friends in their space, they can have premium items in their space like pool tables or arcade machines, and that allows people to say, you know what, I’m going to hang out at Chris’ place because he’s got some cool art on the walls, or a cool patio, or he’s just got the new Mount Fuji view. I think there are really compelling reasons to invest your money in fully tricking out your space.
Now, it’s hard for me to answer your question fully without telling you how much. Because it’s difficult for you to get a sense. We think pricing should be from this much [makes a tiny hand gesture] to this much [opens hands wide] and everything in between.
numble
March 17th, 2007
I forgot one thing: Home will more easily allow you to meet new people. On Xbox Live you can manage your existing buddies very well, but you’re less likely to connect with strangers. Not that I have a personal desire to, but it’s definitely part of the success of MySpace et al.
Marek
March 17th, 2007