Sometimes, it helps to get your information correct. For those who wish to blame Sony for the lack of games that support in-Home launching, bear in mind that it's up to the developers .
Ever since PlayStation Home launched in December of last year, one of its most appealing attributes was the ability to launch multiplayer games from directly within the application. Full capability didn't actually arrive until a few months ago, but since then, everyone has been asking when more games will start supporting this nifty feature. Well, according to the North American Home Manager, known as Locust_Star to the PlayStation Community, this is entirely in a developer's hands. As he said on the PlayStation Blog :
"We’ve built the game launching feature in on our end. It is up to the developers of these titles to implement on their end. If you want to encourage a developer to patch their title to support game launching in Home, we fully encourage you to email them, leave a message on their forums/blogs, etc."
In other words, the responsibility kinda falls to the gamer and the game designer; Sony has provided us with the opportunity, and we need to take advantage. Sony certainly can't force developers to allow in-Home launching for every game they make, so if we want it, we gotta ask for it. The more popular it becomes, the more developers will opt to utilize the feature and then this won't be an issue any longer. But like we said at the start, just be sure who you're accusing…
Can someone explain to me why exactly someone would want to launch a game from home? Why is it any different from just going into the lobby of the game or whatever?
My thoughts exactly…….
I think you are sposeda make new friends in home and be all "Yo lets hit up a game together," thus avoiding the pitfalls of random adolescents screaming into your earpiece.
@worlds
You are correct.
@Migabyte
Home was supposed to be viable as a primary interface for PS3 users. Not to replace the XMB, but provide an immersive alternative. Game launching from within Home is part of that.
With Game launching you and your friends can get together and kick off a multi-player game session right there.
But you can't voice chat in home….If that is fixed then maybe I could see it.
Ya you can, but you need to hold down a certain button which i forget what it is. I was walking around home dressed as a hot chick with my sister on mic, they didn't belive i was a girl cuz my name was kevinater lol. But then my sis talked and they were suprised 😛 good times
u voice chat by phoning someone in home. if the person accepts ur call, u press R2 and start talking. bear in mind u can only phone people who are on ur friends list.
if u are in a personal space, than u can talk to everyone freely without phoning anyone. and everyone near u can hear u when u speak. even the ones who are not on ur friends list.
game launching is not necessarily important. but it becomes important cuz there are people who wants to launch their games in ps home. and it is a feature sony promised so we should get it. but this article explains whats been going on with the game launching feature.
Ask a home user. I'm not really into it either, but you gotta understand that some people actually like to hang out in home and I'm sure to those people it's an interesting and even useful feature.
The only real problem it has, it's so slow. If they could make the transition faster It would appeal more to me.
The only thing about saying it's the developers that need to do it, is that Sony told Home users via their forum months and months ago that game launching was already in a number of games and implied that changes to Home were needed and coming soon, to make it work.
That said, I don't understand why it would be up to the developer for basic game launching where you simply launch the game as you would from the XMB. I can see it being up to the developer to implement the multi-player launching. But for a single player local start of the game, Home has to be able to do that.
In home game launching is great and all but i want more mini games! i wish sony made a engine that let amture game devs (like myselft) work and make cool games for home. Then send them to sony and they cna publish them in home. Kind of like apple apps.
there are tons of mini games in ps home. especially with the new content update. have u tried the buzz quiz?
its always a common complaint about ps home lacking content by people. but what more does people want sony to do?
they've been giving us free mini games every month. even M rated games. we should appreciate sony more for giving us so many mini games in home as well as providing such a service for free.
but… it seems like no matter what sony does, people always want more.
Last edited by kreate on 7/23/2009 12:38:16 AM
I wasn't saying that sony doesn't add mini games, i am saying that it would be a great start from any amature game designer willing to give something like this a go and get feedback from the community.
btw i lost my virginity today!
in Home or at home?
lol. Wow file this under the too much information category…
Congratulations!!
lol
Was your sister there for that too?
WAY off-topic but…if it's true, a man tends to want to shout it from the rooftops, so it can stay. 😉
@ world, neither
@ Hezzron…thats just messed up.
@ ben, you have no idea how right you are 😛
"For those who wish to blame Sony for the lack of games that support in-Home launching" I say they shove their head up their ass. imo developers have enough on their plate as it is. Sony laid down the law with mandatory trophy support, adding another "function" developers have to submit to. Developers shouldn't have to worry about supporting HOME GAME LAUNCHING for god's sake, they need to worry about physics,control scheme,graphics,voice acting,voice chat,in game text, you get the point. My rant is over, I think I made a point for my first point on here.
Your rant makes no sense.
Putting game launching support into a game is more of a question of API calls than anything else, it's not a huge effort on the part of the developer as long as it's done up front, retrofitting game launching from Home into a existing game is a more involved process because you have to do a lot of re-testing. Compared to the complexity of programming AI, a render engine, Physics model, or any of the other things you listed, adding game launching support for Home is a walk in the park.
Frankly, the current mania for shoe horning an online multi-player component into games is responsible for infinitely more headaches for developers than adding standardized support for game launching in Home.
It falls on the developer because home is a form of advertising for them. If the developer wants people to be thinking about their game while in home, have a direct link to it, that way people will play it and not the other games. It's not Sony's responsibility to do that. They've provided the platform for companies to do the advertising, it's up to the game companies to do with it what they will.
and this is why sony will always be second best.
M$ force updates on the developers.
sonys like meh its up to you, if you dont want to support it thats fine.
devs are lazy, there only going to do the work they have to.
there not going to use these features until you force it onto them.
Kinda agree with that. Sony have given devs the option for alot of things, like Home launching, custom tracks, screen capture etc. But most dont implement these features. I think its about time that Sony started making some of these features manadatory, like they did with trophies. The devs dont seem to complain about what MS make them do. But then agan, Sony aren't as forceful as MS.
Alright,let me see if I can understand this. You're saying that because Sony doesn't FORCE this (and other things) on game developers that ey're somehow inferior to MS because MS does force things on game developers? For years now people have battered Sony specifically charging Sony with forcing various things down the throats of developers and consumers. Whether the inclusion of BluRay, or the use of the Cell architecture, or even the timely system updates. All of these things have prompted charges that Sony was forcing things on consumers or developers.
But now, forcing something on developers is considered a good thing when it's Microsoft that does it, and making something optional is a bad thing because Sony does it?
Say what now?
@TheStig
Again, it's incredibly ironic that people say that Sony should be more forceful. Sony has spent the better part of four years defending the use of BluRay technology against the charge that they forced the format on consumers.
@ TheHighlander, I agree with what your saying in regards to ______'s post but they are very laid back when it comes to developers using the features.
I remember way back Sony saying we will have this feature and that feature, which they have delivered on, but are optional and the developers dont seem to want to use them.
My point being, If they want Home to be the great success they were predicting it to be then I think game launching for all games would be a step in the right direction.
I know what you're saying. I think Sony may ultimately force the issue with developers – as they did with Trophies. With Trophies, Sony really needed universal support. So I appreciated that after they made it very public that Trophy support was coming, they then told devs it was mandatory.
I agree 100% about game launching being important to Home's success and wider adoption. I think that Sony may ultimately make it mandatory, but will probably just push it publicly with Home users and PS3 users for now in the hope that developers take the hint. I bet that it'll be like trophies though, and Sony will announce in late '09 that game launching support will be mandatory in '10. At least as far as being able to start a game directly from within Home.
thats the problem as i said if you give them the option, they aint going to add it in.
plus if it was such a big problem/ so difficult and time consuming well i dont hear devs complaining that M$ does it.