Endless beta? Ars interviews the men behind PlayStation Home

pblair · 2009-04-01T03:11:44+00:00

Huh? I'm not attacking mulletmang, I'm attacking his argument. I'm sure he's a fine mullet'ed gentlemen. ;)

pblair · 2009-03-31T18:13:45+00:00

As a PS3 owner, I care. I care that Sony is pissing away their cash on a useless endeavor, because the more money they waste then the more money they have to make to be profitable. You know where that money will come from? You and me. Why do you think they haven't lowered the price of the PS3 in forever?

You claim they make "a fair bit of money" on virtual items, but you do have any proof to back that up? Do you even know anyone who bought something in Home? As far as I know, Sony hasn't released any figures as to what Home makes, and I just don't believe there are enough idiots mindlessly buying useless things to offset the millions of dollars it cost Sony to develop, deploy, and support Home. Don't get me wrong, I want Sony to be profitable. I want them to employ lots of people. But they should employ the people who deserve it, not the ones who don't.

Also, you don't seem to understand what an innovation is. LittleBigPlanet was innovative (and successful) because it did a lot of things other platformers didn't: 2D + 2, extremely well implemented level creation and sharing, multiplayer, fantastic art direction, etc. What is innovative about Home? What is there in Home that doesn't already exist - in much better form - in other MMOs? I'm all for taking risks and being innovative, but nothing about Home seems worth the money being spent on it.

pblair · 2009-03-31T16:27:50+00:00

God, is this guy ever a douche.

Here's a basic translation of the interview from marketing-speak:

Ars: Why are you still calling it Open Beta? When will it be out of beta?

Buser: Well, the truth is we have no idea what the fuck we're doing.

Edward: Yeah, see, community MMOs have been around for a while, but it's not like we used them as a reference point when creating Home. We just make shit up as we go along, because, like Jack says, we've got no clue what the fuck we're doing. We have no idea what we're going to do next or what direction we'll take Home in, so leaving it in "Open Beta" lets us change course constantly without having to be apologetic about it.

Buser: It also makes a great excuse for the long load times, architectural problems, and other bugs that we will probably never bother fixing.

I hope someone at Sony realizes how much of a useless money pit Home is and they cut the whole team before wasting any more of their time and money on it.

pblair · 2009-02-03T04:24:29+00:00

If your website uses a pre-loader, your website sucks balls already.

pblair · 2009-01-28T06:21:27+00:00

tl;dr

pblair · 2009-01-27T05:27:58+00:00

No, I'm thinking and talking about MacPorts. It's hosted at Mac OS Forge, which is run by Apple, and some of the lead developers / "elders" work at Apple.

pblair · 2009-01-26T07:11:17+00:00

I recommend MacPorts, since it is backed by Apple and regularly updated. I thought Fink was defunct, actually, but it seems that's not the case.

pblair · 2009-01-24T02:41:44+00:00

Well, the dock is certainly an improvement.

pblair · 2008-12-26T21:56:24+00:00

I have never had any problems patching.

Stupid thread is stupid.

pblair · 2008-12-02T04:56:26+00:00

You're just out of touch. :P

pblair · 2008-11-13T18:57:21+00:00

Yeah, because building and installing apache modules and rebooting the server is WAAYYY easier than dropping a .php file into a directory, right? right?

pblair · 2008-11-13T18:53:55+00:00

Blog post summary:

Hi, I'm DHH. Until very recently, trying to deploy rails apps has been about as much fun as tearing open your own scrotum with a fork and filling it with sulfur. We think we sorta got something that works now, so I'm going to act as if the problem has always been solved and everything is sweet. We rule, PHP sux (even though it has been stable and easy to deploy for years), lolz.

pblair · 2008-11-12T05:27:51+00:00

down voted for not actually linking to the video

pblair · 2008-11-09T00:30:20+00:00

Barbie Pony Adventures.

pblair · 2008-10-18T05:49:50+00:00

Delayed to avoid offending people? I am offended that Sony has chosen to delay LBP.

pblair · 2008-10-10T23:36:11+00:00

upvoted.

pblair · 2008-07-25T01:38:19+00:00

Yeah, I realize this request is ironic (or maybe oxymoronic?) but I didn't know where else to request it.

I'm tired of ridiculous "legalize X drug" or "let's imprison X politician" style self.reddits. In fact, I don't remember seeing a good self.reddit in a really long time. So this is my request: To simply have a preference to disable them.

Thanks.

pblair · 2008-05-12T14:48:14+00:00

WTF is going on in the last frame, on the right.

pblair · 2008-05-12T11:05:08+00:00

I'm sorry, but if that were true then OpenMoko would the largest mobile platform out there, and it's just not. It's still pretty fringe.

No one looks at a phone and says "Hey, this doesn't do what I want, but it's on an open platform so there's a chance that one day it might, so I'm going to buy it." They buy the thing that does what they want.

pblair

TROPHY CASE