i am seeing people on twitter continually miss the point or not at all get the point of playstation home… now, maybe what i take from it isn’t what sony intends, but, here is what i think is the obvious answer…
i used to play Phantasy Star Online a lot on the Dreamcast… and, in that game, you had a virtual lobby… where your character would hang out with other characters, in a virtual environment… it was like a chat room… and that was the meeting point for the game… you would maybe bump into an old friend, and perhaps go into the game environment itself to play… you would also stand around, maybe asking if anyone had a particular piece of equipment and would like to trade… there were lots of days i did nothing at all but stand there and watch people run around, watch their conversations – sega even had a rep drop in one day and hold a trivia contest for prizes… it was just a social hang out that could hold a lot more people than a game room itself could…
eventually, there were even mini-games and such in the lobbies…
well, none of the other games i played online had a virtual lobby… some had a more traditional-style chat room kind of lobby, just lines of test on a screen and people would meet up and organize games, but that wasn’t nearly as cool… some had no lobby at all… as i have poked around in the online games for the ps3, none have a virtual lobby… a couple don’t even have any kind of in-game chat…
so, that is the answer to me… playstation home is a virtual lobby for ALL their games… rather than have a lobby for each game, this one covers all of them… you can hang out and find people who play the games you do and then, from there, go into the game itself… no, it’s probably not as quick as pop-in-pop-out like a true lobby is, but, from what i have seen of playstation home (which, admittedly, is little) it is not an entirely inconvenient way to do things…
i think people are trying to see a whole lot more in there – more to do, even… and, from what i see, this is sony’s fault and to some extent, their intention… but, whether it is misconception on my part or everyone else’s, i think the majority of people are missing the usefulness of a virtual lobby for online games and how cool it is that, rather than a great lobby for a game and a not-so-great lobby for another game, there is one lobby to rule them all, so to speak…
anyway, that’s a thought…
(btw, i tried to come up with some quick pics of the pso lobbies to show what i meant and didn’t come up with any and didn’t feel like spending a lot of time looking – i assume most people who would be taking the time to read this have some game experience and probably more than mine, so, what i am describing is more than likely not an unknown idea to them…)