Goodnight, sweet prince. You were… you, um… well at least you tried.
PlayStation Home, Sony’s long-running (though never exactly beloved) attempt at creating a PlayStation 3 social hub one part Xbox Live and one part Second Life, is finally being put out to pasture. There, on March 31st, 2015, it will presumably be shot, with maggots and vultures ultimately avoiding the body because they’d rather play Call of Duty.
The platform will cease publishing new content on November 12 of this year, and you’ll only be able to download new things until December 3.
PlayStation Home’s evolution over the years can best be characterised as increasingly bizarre but well-intentioned, mostly. What began as a sort of violence-free hangout/place to display game-themed goodies soon began airing press conferences, taking on an almost theme-park-like vibe, and eventually becoming downright weird — essentially going senile in its later years.
Last we heard, PS Home added the ability for players to give each other creepy massages. Not enough games let people give each other creepy massages.
If you’re holding out hope for a PlayStation 4 version of your favourite ’90s Europop IKEA treehouse, you should probably stop doing that. Sony says it’s definitely not happening.
So enjoy (?) PlayStation Home’s final days. Me, I haven’t logged into it in years, but I’ll always remember my first experience with it, where I wandered around for a bit, danced at somebody, and then got bored and decided to go do something else. For real, though, it was at least an interesting experiment. Gaming can never have enough of those.
Comments
9 responses to “PlayStation Home Finally Closing Down”
Too much downloading and load times killed that thing for me super quick.
Yeah I was going to post this, it was just far too inconvenient to use.
Yeah, bingo. A couple of times I went in and found little games going on that were heaps of fun but actually finding worthwhile stuff was a pain.
I actually had a lot of fun in this wacky service over the years. Sitting out on the deck of the MotorStorm carrier and chatting with a couple of randoms whilst watching the virtual festival out in the distance was surreal and an experience I neither thought I’d enjoy nor meet new friends through AMD yet it was really cool. I really will miss the service, albeit not having logged on probably this year, I made memories and friends that’ll be with me for a while now 🙂 thanks PS Home.
I had some fun with the arcade and the casino…….I would have liked if it stuck around. I’ll have to remember to log in for the last few minutes.
Prior to reading this article I hadn’t read or even heard of Second Life in YEARS. Is that thing still going on?
I really liked Home, the Buzz game was really really fun, I spent a lot of time playing that. Once I hacked my PS3 though and couldn’t get online anymore I stopped, but I am sad there isn’t a Home on PS4
What a shame, I had a lot of fun with the mini games, videos and shopping. The load times did suck, and you couldn’t go 5 minutes without some female character dancing in your lap then asking for PS Store credit ROFL!…
Had a lot of fun with PS Home, and really enjoyed the evolution from Beta to what it became.
Sure, it was certainly weird, but was totally benign. Quite frankly, I’d prefer to have someone in a virtual costume dance say weird things to me, than listen to 14 year olds blurt out obscenities over voice chat in CoD.
My favourite thing, though, was the Xi ARG which occurred over several weeks on the service. Wow, that was super fun. Such a great community event and really had everyone thinking and having a lot of fun trying to solve the puzzles and over arching mystery.
Sure, it was weird and ultimately I wouldn’t say their most successful of products. But I think everyone needs to give Sony some more credit, even if you didn’t like the service. I think we would all like to see some big companies invest money in taking risks in new ideas, rather than just continue to pump out ‘safe’ products year after year.
PS Home was a BIG idea, and had a lot of time and money invested in it. I’d like to see some more big ideas like this for the PS4, because it’s this *massive* range of different activities which kept me invested in my PS3. The PS4 is just another ‘safe’ gaming console as it currently stands. Give me some more of that PS Home craziness, please :p
Its ironic now that with VR headset is releasing for the PS4 would actually make this PS Home a much more interesting experience.