The big Phil Harrison GDC keynote

[Shin-Ra]

First of all the official press release:

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SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT AMERICA TO SHOWCASE GROUND-BREAKING, NEXT-GENERATION TECHNOLOGY AND NEW INNOVATIVE ONLINE SERVICES AT 2007 GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE

Phil Harrison to Open Conference with Keynote Speech, “Game 3.0: Developing and Creating for the 3rd Age of Videogames”

FOSTER CITY, Calif., March 5, 2007 – Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) today announced details of its presence at the 2007 Game Developers Conference (GDC), with Phil Harrison, president of Worldwide Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment, delivering the opening keynote speech. GDC is the world’s largest conference dedicated to the support and promotion of game development, running March 5-9, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif.
Phil Harrison’s keynote presentation, “Game 3.0: Developing and Creating for the 3rd Age of Videogames,” will kick off the conference on March 7th, from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. PST. The speech will focus on the key components of Game 3.0— community, user-generated content, collaboration and commerce—all highlighted through live demonstrations of previously un-announced services and games for PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system.
“This is a very exciting time to be part of the game development community. Advancements in technology combined with new consumer trends mean the industry has a great opportunity to create engaging new entertainment experiences for the world,” said Phil Harrison, president of Worldwide Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment. “I believe we're at the threshold of a new era in creative game development that’s destined to drive our industry growth through the next decade or more.”

Following the keynote presentation, the SCEA booth will be a central focus at GDC as the company introduces new development tools and technologies designed specifically for PS3 and the PLAYSTATION®Network, as well as PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) handheld entertainment system. The SCEA booth – Booth #410, West Hall – will offer visitors a sneak-peek at:

• Tuner for PS3 – Developed by SN Systems, a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., the Tuner is a profiling tool that enables developers to quickly highlight bottlenecks and conflicts in source code, helping them improve code performance. The Tuner is a software application, so there is no special hardware required, which enables developers to create high performance games with less guesswork.
• Unreal® Engine 3 – Epic’s next-generation game engine technology targets a diverse set of genres from fighting games to shooters to Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games
• High-Level Graphics Package – PSSG (a PS3 optimized cross-platform graphics engine and tool-chain) production-ready extensible scene-graph framework that is written to take advantage of PS3 strengths
• Pioneering profiling and analysis tools and physics technologies
• Developing with Linux on PS3
• Demonstration of downloadable titles from the PLAYSTATION Network, such as flOw, Blast Factor™ and Calling all Cars™

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Next, a tease for part of what's going to be unveiled:


GameDaily GDC Preview

[Ascended_Saiyan]

This is great news! I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

[phranctoast]

Im phyched for some more footage of unreal tournament 3 on the ps3. Maybe they will confirm or deny mouse and keyboard support as well as mod support.

[Damon Payne]

Supposedly the BIG firmware update details should be announced today along with some more game/demo announcements. 12:30 central time, there should be someone real time blogging it, I'll be hitting the refresh button.

[u_nick]

Rumor has it that US and Japan will get that firmware update tomorrow (3/8) too, which would be nice. Along with it, a bunch of new videos and demos for download as well. The firmware update itself will supposedly introduce a lot of new things too.

[Amon37]

The PSN has been down here and there probably to get ready for the Demo's and movies. I'm sure those will hit on tomorrow but I'm not sure on firmware. It would probably be a good idea to give the US and Japan the firmware first as to not bog down the server.

If anyone remembers the Gran Turismo HD demo so many people were loggin in trying to downlad it at once it was constantly crashing the PSN.

[Shin-Ra]

SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT INC. ANNOUNCES

GROUND-BREAKING, NEXT-GENERATION 3D ONLINE-USER COMMUNITY

FOR PLAYSTATION®3 – “Home”

Free Download to Allow Broad User Interaction in Highly Detailed Community Environment; Opens Door to User-Created Content, Collaboration and Commerce


TOKYO and SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 7, 2007 –Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today announced the unveiling of a first-of-its-kind 3D online user community service for the PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system. The service, known as “Home,” will enable users to create their own avatar and explore a real-time virtual community, as if they are playing a detailed 3D game for PS3. The service will become available globally beginning in fall 2007.
Home will be demonstrated at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, California on March 7 as a key element of SCEI Worldwide Studios’ President Phil Harrison’s keynote presentation titled “Game 3.0: Developing and Creating for the 3rd Age of Videogames.”
Home is a real-time online 3D, networked community available on the PLAYSTATION®Network. It allows PS3 users to interact, communicate, join online games, shop, share private content and even build and show off their own personal spaces to others in real time. Home will be available as a free download from the PLAYSTATION®Store and will launch directly from XMB™ (XrossMediaBar) on PS3.

With an avatar uniquely customized according to each user’s preference, users can explore the 3D community that is Home – a sleek, modern environment featuring spacious common areas; custom spaces dedicated to specific games; and personal apartments. Each user is assigned an apartment in Home where they can invite others to join them as they show off their own style in an area they can personalize themselves with furniture, art and other items – even a different view from their windows. They can also show their personal video, pictures and other digital media content found on their PS3 hard drives in their apartments. Very rich interactive communication with others is achieved through built in text, audio and video chat, along with sophisticated emotional animations for each character.
Sharing continues in the “Hall of Fame,” where users can display new 3D trophies that will be unlocked through in-game milestones for the games they own as well viewing the trophies of other users across the PLAYSTATION Network and for other games they’ve yet to purchase.
“This is a significant step forward in the area of user community services and emergent entertainment experiences,” said Izumi Kawanishi, Corporate Executive and CTO Software, SCEI. “While the 3D graphics demonstrate the power of PS3 and the PLAYSTATION Network, the most impressive feature in Home is the variety of ways in which multiple consumers, as well as our third-party partners, can experience the next generation of communication by interacting and sharing among each other. I feel strongly that this unique blend of community, user-generated content, collaboration and commerce will expand the future of computer entertainment.”
Home will go into a closed beta test this spring with a full launch targeted for later this year. By having a broad range of business partners participate in Home – from 3rd party publishers and developers to brands outside traditional gaming categories - along with a powerful selection of upcoming game software titles for PS3, SCEI will continue to expand the horizons of networked entertainment and vigorously promote PS3 as the next generation computer entertainment platform.

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I'll just post the three most relevant shots.

Home Theater 1 | Home Theater 2 | Home Theater 3

[guidosarduche]

Nice little write up for the new Home feature, and some video footage.

[Amon37]

Take that Xbox live and Xbox Acheivements.


I wish I could view videogame sites at work.

Can someone attach some screens directly?

[WeApOn]

That is incredible. Amazing. and FREE. Suck on that 360 & Wii.

[Shin-Ra]

This work any better for you Amon?

-- images removed --

[WeApOn]

How about those demos? Are we gonna get a demo of Lair and Rainbow Six? Or was that keynote leak false?

[Shin-Ra]

There's nothing about that in SCEA's GDC press materials but they could be saving it for later. Why blow everything at once?

[Captain Wiggles]

The preview of Home has me really excited about the possibilities. I wonder if it will be limited to 1 account per PS3 or if you can create many accounts.

Take that Xbox live and Xbox Acheivements.

Agreed

[Amon37]

They come up red X's because of my works proxy server.

What you have to do is save them to your PC and upload them directly to the site.

Otherwise I'll have to wait until I get home in 3 hours.

[Shin-Ra]

As far as I can tell there's no image attachments on this forum, or they're turned off. I'll kill the direct image posts so the threads not disrupted by them (if you could do the same as well, cheers).

I just watched the GDC keynote tape-delayed on Gamespot and oh my GOD!

LittleBigPlanet is the most NEXT-GEN game I've seen. I've not been this impressed with physics based gameplay since Half-Life 2 was first show in video form. Dropping in items, changing their attributes and pasting on personal stickers from your harddisk stored images looks super-easy, stickers look crisp and if pasted on cloth for example, deform with the material.

WOW.

I just caught the end of the Home demonstration, Phil dropped a Sony Bravia tv down his apartment's stairs and the Casino Royale trailer continued playing because of course, Sony's are so reliable.

Bring. It. ON.

[JToddler]

Sony brings it 'Home' for the PS3

SAN FRANCISCO--Sony is finally getting its own virtual reality.
As online virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com and others continue to gain in popularity, Sony on Wednesday unveiled its own version of an immersive 3D social space, known as Home and created exclusively for the PlayStation 3.

At a press briefing in advance of his keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference here Wednesday, Phil Harrison, Sony Computer Entertainment's president of worldwide studios, publicly showed off Home for the first time, explaining how it fits into the PS3 ecosystem and what Sony is calling the "Game 3.0" era.

The service appears to be aimed at giving consumers a new reason to choose the PS3--an especially important move for Sony given that recent market numbers from analyst firm The NPD Group showed the PS3 in fourth place among consoles in January, trailing Nintendo's Wii, its own PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Part of the problem for Sony has been PS3 shortages, as well as a price tag--$599 for a top-of-the-line PS3--deemed too steep by many consumers, particularly because of what some see as a lackluster roster of available games.

Essentially, Home is a 3D, avatar-based social environment available for free to users of the PlayStation 3 network. The idea is to give users a way to connect in a multimedia space and interact with the various forms of media available on the PS3.

Home will be a free download. It will go into a large-scale beta in April and will launch publicly this fall.

While Home has some innovative features--most notably the ability to watch high-definition quality video available through the PS3 network--it's strongly reminiscent of virtual worlds like Second Life, only deeply scaled back.

Home participants will be able to meet other members, most likely in a main public area known as the "Central Lobby," and communicate through text, audio or video chatting. They will also be able to pipe in--either in public or private theaters--the latest movies or TV shows available through the PS3 network, as well as their own user-created videos.


Further, users will be able to infinitely customize their avatars. And each member will be given a small (and free) private space, somewhat like an apartment, that he or she can customize per his or her own tastes.

A main selling point of Second Life is that users create nearly all the content, with almost no limits, making for an environment that's almost infinitely extensible. By contrast, Home appears to be a much more controlled space.

Harrison told CNET News.com that while users will be able to design their own clothing and avatars, as well as other content--be it furniture, vehicles or the like--Sony will moderate anything meant for public spaces, most likely to ensure that Home remains a family friendly space. Content meant for private spaces will not be moderated, he added.

But maintaining such control over content creation means devoting large amounts of time and manpower to the vetting process, and that can translate to a significant delay in the approval of content, as well as minimized user creativity.

Still, Sony may not want Home users to have that much control over what they create.

"In Second Life, it's all about user-created content," Harrison said. "We're providing (a lot of content ourselves). You can only do that with a defined platform...We will deliver what users want in an entertaining way."

In addition, Harrison said that despite some obvious similarities, Home is not a Second Life knockoff.

"We've been working on Home for about two-and-a-half years," he said. "So we're absolutely aware of other avatar-based (environments), but we're taking a different approach."

He said users would be able to create some forms of their own content, though he did not specify what kinds. He indicated that, like in Second Life, There.com and other virtual worlds, users would be able to conduct transactions in exchange for some form of payment.

That ability has led, in Second Life and There.com, at least, to robust virtual economies that yield real-world profits.

It's not clear what kind of businesses Home users will be allowed to run, but Harrison did say he could imagine, for example, a user running an interior design business catering to other Home members.

And while it's evident Sony doesn't expect Home to be a major cash cow, there are some potential revenue sources.

Those, Harrison said, would include sales of in-world goods; in-world advertising (Home allows for high-quality, realistic advertising); and business-to-business services like sponsorship opportunities.

For its part, Second Life publisher Linden Lab seemed pleased with Sony's news.

"I think this completely legitimizes our space," said Catherine Smith, Linden Lab's director of marketing. "It's great to see competitors coming in. A couple years ago we were considered crazy" for building a user-created environment. "I think this shows that we're doing the right thing."

At its pre-briefing, Sony also unveiled an upcoming PS3 game, LittleBigPlanet, from game studio Media Molecule. The game lets players enjoy a great deal of control over creating game levels, and then playing them.

LittleBigPlanet has some elements of Electronic Arts' much-anticipated game, Spore, in that players can essentially create the universe in which they play and then watch it evolve.

Copyright ©1995-2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

http://news.com.com/Sony+brings+it+H...3-6165180.html

[JToddler]

This is going to be huge for the PS3 and for PS3 users! It is by far the best development yet to date and I am looking forward to it!

[Amon37]

I can't wait to get home an watch this. Only 1 hour to go.

[kikkomaniac]

Originally Posted by SumYonGuy

This is going to be huge for the PS3 and for PS3 users! It is by far the best news yet to date and I am looking forward to it!

have you seen the video of it?