Playstation Home

I recently received an invitation to participate in Sony's Playstation Home Beta. Following a short download and install, I was introduced to my online self. After a somewhat deep character customization, I built myself and chose from a rather small selection of clothing and accessories(heck, it's the beta). After saving my data I'm thrust into the world of PSN Home. Here, I've got my own little villa with a view overlooking a pier. A quick tutorial tells me how to interact with my environment, including rearranging my furniture and sitting in it. Enough with that though, as I jump into the next area of Home, Central Plaza. Being a hub for all that Home has to offer, I walk around and see the entrance to the Mall, the Bowling Alley, and the movie Theatre.First, I checked out the Movie Theatre. I walked in and found a seat, and after downloading (which wasn't as bad considering I had a dude in front of all of us just dancing for no apparent reason but somewhat amusing). After the download, a trailer for the new Socom game came on and after watching a lot of us got up and exited the theatre, except for the guy dancing. He stayed.Next, I checked out the Mall.

The Mall was pretty big, multiple stories high and featuring many different stores. None of them had anything to sell yet, but one can imagine that when the full version comes you'll maybe be able to purchase DLC, themes, more clothing, and more here. What was functional was the chess tables, where you can sit and wait for a friend or random person to sit across from you and join you in a game. An interesting distraction.

After the Mall I went into the Bowling Alley, where most of the residents of Home seemed to be hanging out. Here, you can join in games of Bowling (duh) with multiple players. You can also check out the arcade and play some free games. Don't forget to pay some pool while you're there, too.

All in all, there wasn't a whole lot to do yet in Home. Actually, that's just my opinion, because most of these things just seem geared towards social interactions, not really video games. I'm really more interested in playing some Resistance 2, not tossing some fictional bowling balls around with random people who look a lot like me. I do like the little things about Home though, the details. Everywhere you go there are advertisements for the latest games. There are even big screens everywhere constantly streaming trailers. There's even a sort of club you can hang around at and just dance to music with people. It just seems though that you're doing a lot more work to get around to doing what you can do almost instantly on XBL. Loading this program up and running around, gathering your friends to hang out. On XBL, this can be achieved with a few button presses. I'm not sure if Home is the XBL killer that so many fanboys pine about, but it's shaping up to be a neat distraction nonetheless and holds a lot of potential for more useful implementations.

NXE: The New XBOX Experience

NXE, or the New Xbox Experience, is a firmware update to the xbox 360 that brings a lot of new features to the xbox along with making it more appealing to the casual crowd. After downloading and installing the new GUI(and watching a new intro video for the xbox 360), you'll find that gone are the blades you used to navigate your xbox, replaced with an almost iTunes-ish interface, divided into multiple categories (e.g. Friends, What's Hot, etc). The first thing you're prompted to do is create your Avatar, a cute-sy online representation of yourself. It's a lot like the Wii's Mii and there are a few games available on XBLA that you can play using your Avatar. I've gotta say, other than that, they're almost totally pointless, but a cute distraction from what you're really after: playing video games. And here we've come to the next new addition: Installing your video games to your HDD. Taking another cue from an already existing platform, you can now install your game and by doing so reduce that irritating dvd-drive noise constantly emanating from your xbox 360, reduce load times, and in some cases (Last Remnant, looking at you) actually improve framerate and pop-in. This is by far my most favorite new feature, having just recently picked up Lost Odyssey again and noticing how much faster the load times are. Not sure if you've tried it, but just zoning from one area to another took a long time to load. You'll still need the original disc to play the game though, this is only to verify that you own the game so no, you can't just rent games and pirate them. Another great feature is the partnership with Netflix to bring you streaming movies from their selection of Watch Instantly movies (about 10,000 or so already available, some of which are in HD). I love this one, too, because I have Netflix and although the selection isn't exactly the best, it's still a nice feature to have in those days you might not have a new movie on you and you wanna check something out in the meantime. With the NXE, you're also able to create parties with your friends and chat/share photos. This is a pretty good feature and it's fun to jump to different games with all your friends. Sometimes though, online matches can seem like a ghost town when you've got so many different people in their own chatrooms with friends. This isn't always a bad thing, though, if you're like me and get tired of hearing the arguing/crying on XBL. This is a huge update, unlike any other before it and totally free so I think everyone on XBL is gonna dig it. There's really something new for everyone to enjoy.