Wednesday, March 7, 2007

GDC: PlayStation 3 Home & LittleBigPlanet



Didn't think I would say this but I think SCE has a great idea with their PS3 Home concept. Even for someone like me who despise MySpace, I thought that the Second Life MMO style of PS3 Home has plenty of potential. This is the kind of thing Nintendo should have done with their Mii and/or Animal Crossing, but are too afraid of the Internet to actually do so (friend code anyone?). The only problem is like MySpace (and any online community or MMO game for that matter) PS3 Home when launched would soon be overrun by pre-pubescent kids.

If Sony engineers could find a way to filter through the content (basically an ignore function) and do not let the whole micro-transaction business model run wild, this could very well turn out to something similar to that AOL Web concept shown in Futurama's A Bicyclops Built for Two episode. There are of course stuff that I do not care much (particularly the marketing in disguise concept called 'achievements'), but even then showing off in-game trophies in the form of 3D avatars sounds nice.

I have to admit although I hate the concept of achievements (which Microsoft is planning to rip off PC gamers by launching a similar Xbox Live subscription model), where gamers play games they do not want to play in the first place just to inflate their 'gamerscore', I think the having a trophy room (even if it is virtual) filled with Final Fantasy summoned creatures like Bahamut or Leviathan (or even better those giants from Shadow of the Colossus), plays well in winning me over. That was something I wish I was able to install in my trophy room when I played The Sims years ago. Now if only they would quickly reduce the price of the hardware, make PS3 Home a reality and release more exclusive games and I am sold.



Update: Download the trailer here. And marvel at what could be one of the greatest 2D gameplay platforming games ever designed, LittleBigPlanet (especially with its beautiful The Go! Team soundtrack). BGB has a second video showing off the level design concept.

3 comments:

RichardAM said...

It sounds nice, but the fact remains that yet again Sony has just taken ideas from others and introduced them as brand new.

Joysticks, Vibration, Motion-sensing control etc etc.

Besides, if the PS3 stays as high-priced as it is there's not exactly going to be a lot of people in that space to begin with, but definitely a point should be raised this early about American fanboys and trash talking being one of main problems.

Jon Choo said...

It does look as if they rip-off a couple of features from Second Life, but golly I still came away impressed. £425 is still a load of money to spent on the PS3 that I agree.

Anonymous said...

Little Big PLanet looks fucking amazing!