Leaks/Screens from PS3's Home Beta Service

All of the following leaks I've taken from the following thread:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=153783

Screens for some of the games you can play in Home can be found here:
http://www.psu.com/media/game/10577?query=media/game/10577&pagenumber=1
There are 3-4 arcade-style games, as well as bowling and pool.

Some other screens (a few with some interesting info):

Spoiler

There are a few impressions from those selected to take part in the beta (which you can find in the NeoGAF thread), although not too much info since all this is supposed to be under NDA. Seems like everything that was shown at GDC is working, except for the ability to upload media from the hard drive to use in your apartment.

The visuals are pretty nice considering the type of service this is. It even looks better than some next-gen games actually. In fact, Suda51 (the guy behind Killer7, No More Heroes, etc.) expressed interest in the graphics engine for HOME, wondering if Sony would provide it as a cheap and easy solution for smaller, independent developers. That would be an interesting idea, although I'm not sure how likely that would be.

 

I'm pretty confident that Sony will release a new controller with rumble, although the timing of such a move is up in the air. I'd hope that they would do it pretty soon to avoid segmenting the userbase though. Wait too long, and developers won't know whether to support it and to what degree.

I doubt they'll change the controller layout though. They tried a new design back at E3 2005, but everyone blasted them for trying something different (even though it may have been better, especially with the motion sensing), so they decided to keep the design that helped them sell over 200M PlayStation systems.

There might be a 3rd party controller that may tweak the design. There is a PS2 controller that allows you to change the layout of the d-pad, the two analog sticks, and the 4 other buttons. I'm not sure how that worked, but I suppose a similar thing could be done with the PS3. I don't know if that would fix the problem you have with the PS3 controller or not though.

It is basically just adding some community and networking features to the PSN, similar to what XBL provides for its users. Only this is in the form of a 3D world (although you should be able to access the same features with menus if you'd like to avoid all of that I suppose). And it is free...for now anyway.

There are a number of benefits to this service, particularly on the developer side of things. For example, rather than a developer creating their own lobby system for their online game(s), they could just have people use Home as a lobby instead. You can go to a friend's apartment (or a developer's "space"....forget what their called), and start up a game from there. It would especially be good for clans and groups like that, trying to setup a night of online gaming.

There has also been talk of using avatars in games like the use of Miis in Wii Sports, although I don't think Sony originally had this in mind since it seems like there might be some difficulties in using the avatars in an actual game. Eventually, it might be a good idea to add an arcade with "real" arcade games, like MKII, Street Fighter, etc., which might be pretty cool. I'm guessing this would require a charge of some sort though (maybe something that mirrors the real-life use of arcades).

Of course, it is also a good way to connect gamers directly with the developers themselves. The Trophy system (basically the same as achievements for XBL) as well as any items for Home unlocked by buying a game (like the Heavenly Sword shirt) certainly gives gamers an incentive to check out games, assuming their interested in Home. There will also be trailers and possibly news about upcoming games available via Home. Microsoft has done a great job of uploading trailers and demos to XBL whenever a big event is going on (like E3), so that would a nice thing to incorporate into Home as well.

I'm guessing there will be some people that would rather spend the majority of their time just socializing on Home rather than using it to improve the gameplay experience. But in the end, it adds some great community and network features that Sony really needed, and that does help to improve the gameplay experience.

 

I believe they stated that a lot of the features in Home would be accessible via the XMB (the PS3 UI). There was a trophy icon under the Home icon that Sony demoed at GDC. I'd guess that maybe you could view your trophies through that, as well as possibly the trophies of your friends.

Of course, some features might be difficult to implement without the 3D world provided by Home. Streaming media from friend's hard drive might be difficult to do with menus...or maybe not, I don't know. Now that I think about it, there are rumors that Sony is getting ready to launch P2P application for the PSN, so maybe this would be related.

On the other hand, this is being implemented by the same company that just barely put up support for downloadable PS1 games on the PS3, despite the fact that the PS3 could play PS1 games since launch and that the PSP already had a working emulator since around that time as well (is the PSP more powerful than the PS3?).

 

Now some videos have leaked, such as this one:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=R5PSO8FP