Entrevista a Eric Lempel, director operaciones red de sony
Publicado: 18 Sep 2009, 22:31
el pasado 7 de julio la revista pc world publico esta entrevista a Eric Lempel director de operaciones de red de sony, pienso que podria se interesante asi que hay os la dejo.
Is Sony's austere PlayStation 3's dashboard due for an extreme makeover, per recent rumormongering? What about universal voice chat? Searchable memory cards? Discrete feature updates? The battery display fluke de-glitched? And what's up with Hulu video service blocking? I tracked down Sony Director of Network Operations Eric Lempel to get answers to those question and others in the following two part interview.
Game On: There's a rumor circulating that Sony has something big planned for the PlayStation 3 this year, a firmware update on the order of Microsoft's New Xbox Experience. True or false?
Eric Lempel: We've released a bunch of firmware updates to date, and we'll continue to do that. We're aiming to release them quarterly, and sometimes there are a lot of great consumer features in them, and other times they're just updates to help things behind the scenes. I should say that a lot of times when we do these updates, there's a ton of stuff in them for our developers, and consumers don't see the benefits of those until they play some of those games that come out later on.
I think it's important to know, a lot of people wonder why we do these updates when it just says something about security enhancements or that playability of software will be better. Actually, behind the scenes, there are reams of documents sometimes with improvements for developers, where they can take advantage of a bunch of new tools, or new ways to allocate memory, or other ways to improve performance. So I'd start off by saying that.
You'll definitely see another firmware update this year, but it won't be like what the rumors say. We're working on some consumer features that consumers will definitely like, but it's nothing like what you're reading about, and at this time I don't want to confirm any of those features because they're not completely locked down yet. We're looking pretty good, and timing is a little rough, but just in terms of that rumor, it's not the case.
GO: Have you guys talked about something down the line, be it six months or two years, of doing something radical with the interface along the lines of Microsoft's NXE?
EL: We always look at different things. Behind the scenes we do a ton of research and I think sometimes you see some of that research out there through questionnaires. But we're always looking into what consumer want and gauging the appetite for change.
What we find is that people really like our current interface. We did redesign the PlayStation Store last April to make some improvements, make it faster, make it better, and we're always listening to consumers. But right now the XMB [XrossMediaBar] is an Emmy Award-winning interface and people like it. They're very comfortable with it. So we're not looking to do anything radical. We'll still do some research behind the scenes and see what can we do to make things better, or how can we make it so consumers find content faster, but right now we're pretty happy with it. No plans right now to do anything like what the competitor has done.
GO: When Microsoft debuted its NXE, it was shift from an interface that moved left and right to an axial thing, where you moved more visually left-right and up-down, kind of like the XMB, just with the vertex sitting down in the lower left corner and everything slightly stylized. What was your reaction to that?
EL: You know, I didn't really think about it that way. I mean, I saw some comparisons when it came out, but that's very interesting that you say that. You know, hey, it's great, if they like our interface and want to copy it, as long as that's legal, sure. I don't really know how they go about making their plans or the strategy behind them, but if they've found that we're doing something right and they want to copy that, more power to them.
GO: I've been reading through the reactions to your last PlayStation Blog post, the one about the 2.8 update, and noticed that a lot of the folks who reacted less positively to that particular update were doing so because they wanted more detail about what was in the update. Why the lack of disclosure there?
EL: Well basically in the updates that we do on the blog, it's really to tell consumers this is what you can do today with your PS3, or in the next few days when we release a firmware update. It isn't about diving into the tech and letting them know six months from now you're going to see a game that may have better effects in a certain area because we've put this in such and such update. That's not as digestible for the majority of consumers. It just won't work.
I mean, there are consumers interested in the tech, and they can probably deep dive in developer forums on that, but we usually don't release a lot of our developer info except to our licensed developers. It's kind of separating the consumer experience from the developer experience.
So, you know, that's why I'd love for them to understand that when we do these things, there's a lot of reason behind it, there's a lot of work that goes into it, a lot of testing, but they don't always get to see the benefits immediately. The blog is really to talk about here's what you can do with it, not here's what a developer you know and like might be able to pull off in the next six months.
GO: Have you ever considered separating out the updates into nondependent components? To allow some features to come out or get patched faster than others?
EL: You know, we very much thought about that, and actually with 2.8 we implemented something that we didn't talk a lot about. We actually gave consumers the option to update. What I mean by that is, prior to 2.8 you had to update. So you'd turn on your PS3 and it would say, you know, if you want to go in the store, if you want to play an online game, or go into PlayStation Home, it would say there's an update available, please update before moving any further.
With 2.8 it was an option. Users didn't have to update when we released it, and actually weren't prompted to do so, because there wasn't any consumer-specific functionality. I'd say a majority of consumers out there who just wait to get hit by these updates didn't even know about it. They might still not know about it.
GO: What about universal chat, by which I mean voice chat outside games. You can currently chat with other gamers from within an online game, but not when you drop out.
EL: Yeah, definitely, we realize that a lot of people want that. It's one of the most requested features, and it is something we're looking into. It's a very complex feature, but we are looking into it.
GO: Search functions for memory cards to find save files faster?
EL: That's actually something we're not working on right now, but it's something we can look at. I have seen that requested a couple times, but I think when we look at the priority list, it's not very high up there.
GO: How about the battery-life-of-controller glitch, where it cuts off the system time when you tap the PS button? I keep seeing that pop up, but it's like this weird fifty-fifty thing, where fifty percent are angry about it, and other fifty percent are angry at the people who're angry about it.
EL: You know, I'll tell you, I personally don't like that either, and it's something that's definitely being corrected. You can put me in the angry camp.
GO: Your reaction to Hulu [the online video service] apparently blocking PS3 users from watching videos in the browser?
EL: Last week we stared hearing that, and we've tested it out here, and it does seem you can't access Hulu. You can access the site, but when you go to play a video, you get an error message. We're not quite sure why that is. If I speculate I might guess it's because they refined their list of supported browsers and we were a victim, or maybe they're intentionally blocking the PS3, but right now it doesn't work, and you'd really have to talk to Hulu about why that is. We have an open browser, there's a ton of sites that do work, and it's compatible with other video streaming sites like YouTube and music streaming sites, so. But it's true, Hulu's not working right now and I'm not really sure why.
GO: Do any of your guys ever pick up the phone and just say hey, what are you guys [Hulu] doing?
EL: Yeah, sometimes we do. It depends. That is something we'll probably look into, but at the same time, our browser's there to let our users do what they want and browse wherever they want, and we can't always chase down all these sites and say hey, how come it's not working today? The browser's built on unique code, so it's not like any of the other browsers out there, and there are some things that are just incompatible.
GO: Let's hit the PSP Go. Today I can plug any model PlayStation Portable into the PS3 and download games or trigger PS3-related game features. Does that change at all with the PSP Go?
EL: No, it works pretty much the same way the other models interact with the PS3. The nice thing is, the Go really revolves around the network. It's all about getting content to it from the network. So it's kind of that PlayStation Network centric device that we've been hoping for and waiting for and consumers have been asking for.
GO: What can PSP owners expect to be pulling down yet this year via that network?
EL: Tthe first thing you can look forward to is a lot more content. You might have noticed in recent weeks that we've started bringing out a lot more of the UMDs in digital format so you can buy them from the PlayStation Store and download them. And then you've got the PS One classics, the emulated titles. These are titles some fans haven't played in years, sometimes 13 or 14 years, and we're bringing out as many of those as we can get the rights to. We recently released Final Fantasy VII, as I'm sure you're aware, and it's just unreal how well a 12-year-old game is doing.
I think a lot of people are just coming to gaming and may have never played some of these games. Others might have played them and wish they still could, but don't have the discs anymore. I mean, you can't buy those discs new anywhere, so it's great to get some of those titles back on the network.
The other thing you'll see aside from classics is new original games for the PSP through the network. Aside from all the great UMD content, and there's a lot of that still to come, there are tons of new, entirely original PlayStation Network titles made exclusively for the PSP coming out this year.
So first and foremost I'd say it's content, a massive amount of content through the network on the PSP. And then the next thing is just us improving existing services and adding new features and services. We made a couple of small announcements at E3 about some things we're adding for the PSP and there'll be a lot more to come.
GO: If you take a low-resolution PS One game that by my measure looks pretty awful due to blurry interpolation on a high-definition LCD TV, and you run the same game on the lower-resolution PSP, it actually looks decent. Is that a driving factor in rolling out the back catalogue?
EL: Yeah, definitely.
GO: Okay, let's cover the other digital distribution prong, the PS3. You don't offer any PS3 games directly download at the moment, right?
EL: We've offered a few, actually. We did three different games to kind of test the waters and try it out. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, SOCOM Confrontation, Burnout by EA is also available over the network, and Warhawk. So actually four of them. Three from our worldwide studios group, one from a third party.
GO: Plans to expand that catalogue in 2009 or do you hold the line?
EL: We'll probably hold the line on the Blu-ray disc side, just because there's a lot of stuff that quite honestly is too big to deliver over the network right now. We can technically do it, but it might be a bit long for the consumer. On the other side, there'll be a lot of great original content coming to the PlayStation Network through the PlayStation Store for the PS3. In recent weeks, we've had a lot more support from our third-party partners and there's a ton more coming. I was checking the release schedule for the rest of the year, and it's really looking good. Lots of great content from both our worldwide studios groups and third parties. Tons of stuff in fact.
GO: What about PlayStation 2 backward compatibility, the oft, beaten, and flogged question. Is it possible to offer a software downloadable, flash-updatable solution to existing PS3 owners?
EL: It's something I couldn't answer right now without talking to some of the engineers.
GO: Eric Lempel's vision for the rest of 2009? Where do you want to be by the end of the year with the PlayStation Network?
EL: I'd encourage people to really explore the value of PlayStation Network. There's a ton of stuff under the hood. It's not just online gaming, and it's not just the store. There's a lot of other stuff that gets overlooked. Just to rattle through the list, users who have a PS3 have free access to the PlayStation Network, they've got Wi-Fi built in so it's easy to get connected. Once you're connected, you've got access to a ton more stuff.
So just to go through the list, you've got the PlayStation Store, where you can demo a ton of PlayStation Network as well as Blu-ray games. Of course you can buy a ton of great content, some of the content we've discussed, but you know, there's add-ons for games, there are completely new and original games, there are classic versions of games that have been updated, there's free trailers, there are themes, wallpapers, music. I mean, there's a ton of stuff available on just the game side, and a lot of that I think gets overlooked here and there. And I also would say that the games we put out on PlayStation Network are not these tiny bite-sized games. They're quite deep, immersive experiences, made exclusively for the PS3. You know, high-definition, great games. Great content that's actually high quality.
GO: Stuff like Flower?
EL: Yeah, something like Flower. Stuff that's unique. Stuff that if we just stuck to Blu-ray games, they probably wouldn't put it out Blu-ray because it wouldn't justify a $60 price point, and so it's really suited to the network. That's what I like about the network personally, that we can have these developers who we really couldn't work with in the past because we didn't have the right model or distribution method, but now we can. We can bring these guys in and let them go a little wild.
Moving over to the other side of the store you've got the video section, where we're constantly adding new partners. At E3 we made a significant announcement, adding a bunch of additional partners, and we've got all of the major networks, all of the major studios, for rental and for sell-through. We even have some high-definition movies that you can buy as well as rent, so again, lots of great entertainment, lots of great content on the store side.
And then we've got PlayStation Home. I'm sure you've seen the press lately. We've been adding a ton of great content there, really tying in a lot of the games that have been released recently into Home, giving people new experiences and such. That won't slow up. The Home team has a very aggressive roadmap for the rest of the year. They'll be adding a lot of great content and new features.
GO: Speaking of Home, right now if I want to access it, I have to stop what I'm doing, cursor over to Home, leave behind the XMB, go through this big launch process, and then presto, there I am, but now I'm cordoned off from the rest of the operating system. Has Sony every thought about combining the two somehow, to speed up access, or better integrate the experiences?
EL: I think we're already starting to focus on integrating Home into the regular gaming experience. But I think in a way you've answered your own question. I mean, we're giving gamers a choice. If you want to quickly jump into something and you know what you want to do, you can do that on the XMB.
But Home is really about an online gaming community. It's about going into that space, taking the time to wander around and explore. We do give you the option, you know, some of the integration pieces. You can launch games from Home if you like. So if you run into people, you start talking about a game, and you want to play that game, you can launch into it straight from Home. So we have it both ways. Home isn't a navigation system, it's a community, a very big, robust community. It was a massive undertaking by us, and it's doing quite well. We've got seven million users worldwide who've tried it, and a lot of them are using it on a regular basis. The average user spends about 30 minutes a session, which means they're wandering around actually doing things and enjoying their time enough to stay.
So it's not about navigating the same content you get on the XMB, it's about doing something different with other people. I don't think it'd be smart of us if we made Home the interface, because if you want to jump in and start a game, you're right, you don't want to walk to it. You probably don't want to wander around past a whole bunch of people who might want to talk to you, just to get to it.
GO: How about this then. You mention XMB-like features being added to PlayStation Home, launching games and such. How about the inverse of that, say bringing PlayStation Home features over to the XMB? The one I hear talked about most is avatars. Being able to carry your identity with you back out of Home and into the XMB.
EL: It's definitely something we're looking at. We launched Home late last year. It's technically still a beta. We wanted to see how it would do and it's doing quite well, and now people have become attached to their Home personas. Given that avatars are something they want carried across, it's definitely something we're working on.
fuente: http://www.pcworld.com/article/167966/s ... umors.html
traducido a español con google:
Is Sony's austere PlayStation 3's dashboard due for an extreme makeover, per recent rumormongering? What about universal voice chat? Searchable memory cards? Discrete feature updates? The battery display fluke de-glitched? And what's up with Hulu video service blocking? I tracked down Sony Director of Network Operations Eric Lempel to get answers to those question and others in the following two part interview.
Game On: There's a rumor circulating that Sony has something big planned for the PlayStation 3 this year, a firmware update on the order of Microsoft's New Xbox Experience. True or false?
Eric Lempel: We've released a bunch of firmware updates to date, and we'll continue to do that. We're aiming to release them quarterly, and sometimes there are a lot of great consumer features in them, and other times they're just updates to help things behind the scenes. I should say that a lot of times when we do these updates, there's a ton of stuff in them for our developers, and consumers don't see the benefits of those until they play some of those games that come out later on.
I think it's important to know, a lot of people wonder why we do these updates when it just says something about security enhancements or that playability of software will be better. Actually, behind the scenes, there are reams of documents sometimes with improvements for developers, where they can take advantage of a bunch of new tools, or new ways to allocate memory, or other ways to improve performance. So I'd start off by saying that.
You'll definitely see another firmware update this year, but it won't be like what the rumors say. We're working on some consumer features that consumers will definitely like, but it's nothing like what you're reading about, and at this time I don't want to confirm any of those features because they're not completely locked down yet. We're looking pretty good, and timing is a little rough, but just in terms of that rumor, it's not the case.
GO: Have you guys talked about something down the line, be it six months or two years, of doing something radical with the interface along the lines of Microsoft's NXE?
EL: We always look at different things. Behind the scenes we do a ton of research and I think sometimes you see some of that research out there through questionnaires. But we're always looking into what consumer want and gauging the appetite for change.
What we find is that people really like our current interface. We did redesign the PlayStation Store last April to make some improvements, make it faster, make it better, and we're always listening to consumers. But right now the XMB [XrossMediaBar] is an Emmy Award-winning interface and people like it. They're very comfortable with it. So we're not looking to do anything radical. We'll still do some research behind the scenes and see what can we do to make things better, or how can we make it so consumers find content faster, but right now we're pretty happy with it. No plans right now to do anything like what the competitor has done.
GO: When Microsoft debuted its NXE, it was shift from an interface that moved left and right to an axial thing, where you moved more visually left-right and up-down, kind of like the XMB, just with the vertex sitting down in the lower left corner and everything slightly stylized. What was your reaction to that?
EL: You know, I didn't really think about it that way. I mean, I saw some comparisons when it came out, but that's very interesting that you say that. You know, hey, it's great, if they like our interface and want to copy it, as long as that's legal, sure. I don't really know how they go about making their plans or the strategy behind them, but if they've found that we're doing something right and they want to copy that, more power to them.
GO: I've been reading through the reactions to your last PlayStation Blog post, the one about the 2.8 update, and noticed that a lot of the folks who reacted less positively to that particular update were doing so because they wanted more detail about what was in the update. Why the lack of disclosure there?
EL: Well basically in the updates that we do on the blog, it's really to tell consumers this is what you can do today with your PS3, or in the next few days when we release a firmware update. It isn't about diving into the tech and letting them know six months from now you're going to see a game that may have better effects in a certain area because we've put this in such and such update. That's not as digestible for the majority of consumers. It just won't work.
I mean, there are consumers interested in the tech, and they can probably deep dive in developer forums on that, but we usually don't release a lot of our developer info except to our licensed developers. It's kind of separating the consumer experience from the developer experience.
So, you know, that's why I'd love for them to understand that when we do these things, there's a lot of reason behind it, there's a lot of work that goes into it, a lot of testing, but they don't always get to see the benefits immediately. The blog is really to talk about here's what you can do with it, not here's what a developer you know and like might be able to pull off in the next six months.
GO: Have you ever considered separating out the updates into nondependent components? To allow some features to come out or get patched faster than others?
EL: You know, we very much thought about that, and actually with 2.8 we implemented something that we didn't talk a lot about. We actually gave consumers the option to update. What I mean by that is, prior to 2.8 you had to update. So you'd turn on your PS3 and it would say, you know, if you want to go in the store, if you want to play an online game, or go into PlayStation Home, it would say there's an update available, please update before moving any further.
With 2.8 it was an option. Users didn't have to update when we released it, and actually weren't prompted to do so, because there wasn't any consumer-specific functionality. I'd say a majority of consumers out there who just wait to get hit by these updates didn't even know about it. They might still not know about it.
GO: What about universal chat, by which I mean voice chat outside games. You can currently chat with other gamers from within an online game, but not when you drop out.
EL: Yeah, definitely, we realize that a lot of people want that. It's one of the most requested features, and it is something we're looking into. It's a very complex feature, but we are looking into it.
GO: Search functions for memory cards to find save files faster?
EL: That's actually something we're not working on right now, but it's something we can look at. I have seen that requested a couple times, but I think when we look at the priority list, it's not very high up there.
GO: How about the battery-life-of-controller glitch, where it cuts off the system time when you tap the PS button? I keep seeing that pop up, but it's like this weird fifty-fifty thing, where fifty percent are angry about it, and other fifty percent are angry at the people who're angry about it.
EL: You know, I'll tell you, I personally don't like that either, and it's something that's definitely being corrected. You can put me in the angry camp.
GO: Your reaction to Hulu [the online video service] apparently blocking PS3 users from watching videos in the browser?
EL: Last week we stared hearing that, and we've tested it out here, and it does seem you can't access Hulu. You can access the site, but when you go to play a video, you get an error message. We're not quite sure why that is. If I speculate I might guess it's because they refined their list of supported browsers and we were a victim, or maybe they're intentionally blocking the PS3, but right now it doesn't work, and you'd really have to talk to Hulu about why that is. We have an open browser, there's a ton of sites that do work, and it's compatible with other video streaming sites like YouTube and music streaming sites, so. But it's true, Hulu's not working right now and I'm not really sure why.
GO: Do any of your guys ever pick up the phone and just say hey, what are you guys [Hulu] doing?
EL: Yeah, sometimes we do. It depends. That is something we'll probably look into, but at the same time, our browser's there to let our users do what they want and browse wherever they want, and we can't always chase down all these sites and say hey, how come it's not working today? The browser's built on unique code, so it's not like any of the other browsers out there, and there are some things that are just incompatible.
GO: Let's hit the PSP Go. Today I can plug any model PlayStation Portable into the PS3 and download games or trigger PS3-related game features. Does that change at all with the PSP Go?
EL: No, it works pretty much the same way the other models interact with the PS3. The nice thing is, the Go really revolves around the network. It's all about getting content to it from the network. So it's kind of that PlayStation Network centric device that we've been hoping for and waiting for and consumers have been asking for.
GO: What can PSP owners expect to be pulling down yet this year via that network?
EL: Tthe first thing you can look forward to is a lot more content. You might have noticed in recent weeks that we've started bringing out a lot more of the UMDs in digital format so you can buy them from the PlayStation Store and download them. And then you've got the PS One classics, the emulated titles. These are titles some fans haven't played in years, sometimes 13 or 14 years, and we're bringing out as many of those as we can get the rights to. We recently released Final Fantasy VII, as I'm sure you're aware, and it's just unreal how well a 12-year-old game is doing.
I think a lot of people are just coming to gaming and may have never played some of these games. Others might have played them and wish they still could, but don't have the discs anymore. I mean, you can't buy those discs new anywhere, so it's great to get some of those titles back on the network.
The other thing you'll see aside from classics is new original games for the PSP through the network. Aside from all the great UMD content, and there's a lot of that still to come, there are tons of new, entirely original PlayStation Network titles made exclusively for the PSP coming out this year.
So first and foremost I'd say it's content, a massive amount of content through the network on the PSP. And then the next thing is just us improving existing services and adding new features and services. We made a couple of small announcements at E3 about some things we're adding for the PSP and there'll be a lot more to come.
GO: If you take a low-resolution PS One game that by my measure looks pretty awful due to blurry interpolation on a high-definition LCD TV, and you run the same game on the lower-resolution PSP, it actually looks decent. Is that a driving factor in rolling out the back catalogue?
EL: Yeah, definitely.
GO: Okay, let's cover the other digital distribution prong, the PS3. You don't offer any PS3 games directly download at the moment, right?
EL: We've offered a few, actually. We did three different games to kind of test the waters and try it out. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, SOCOM Confrontation, Burnout by EA is also available over the network, and Warhawk. So actually four of them. Three from our worldwide studios group, one from a third party.
GO: Plans to expand that catalogue in 2009 or do you hold the line?
EL: We'll probably hold the line on the Blu-ray disc side, just because there's a lot of stuff that quite honestly is too big to deliver over the network right now. We can technically do it, but it might be a bit long for the consumer. On the other side, there'll be a lot of great original content coming to the PlayStation Network through the PlayStation Store for the PS3. In recent weeks, we've had a lot more support from our third-party partners and there's a ton more coming. I was checking the release schedule for the rest of the year, and it's really looking good. Lots of great content from both our worldwide studios groups and third parties. Tons of stuff in fact.
GO: What about PlayStation 2 backward compatibility, the oft, beaten, and flogged question. Is it possible to offer a software downloadable, flash-updatable solution to existing PS3 owners?
EL: It's something I couldn't answer right now without talking to some of the engineers.
GO: Eric Lempel's vision for the rest of 2009? Where do you want to be by the end of the year with the PlayStation Network?
EL: I'd encourage people to really explore the value of PlayStation Network. There's a ton of stuff under the hood. It's not just online gaming, and it's not just the store. There's a lot of other stuff that gets overlooked. Just to rattle through the list, users who have a PS3 have free access to the PlayStation Network, they've got Wi-Fi built in so it's easy to get connected. Once you're connected, you've got access to a ton more stuff.
So just to go through the list, you've got the PlayStation Store, where you can demo a ton of PlayStation Network as well as Blu-ray games. Of course you can buy a ton of great content, some of the content we've discussed, but you know, there's add-ons for games, there are completely new and original games, there are classic versions of games that have been updated, there's free trailers, there are themes, wallpapers, music. I mean, there's a ton of stuff available on just the game side, and a lot of that I think gets overlooked here and there. And I also would say that the games we put out on PlayStation Network are not these tiny bite-sized games. They're quite deep, immersive experiences, made exclusively for the PS3. You know, high-definition, great games. Great content that's actually high quality.
GO: Stuff like Flower?
EL: Yeah, something like Flower. Stuff that's unique. Stuff that if we just stuck to Blu-ray games, they probably wouldn't put it out Blu-ray because it wouldn't justify a $60 price point, and so it's really suited to the network. That's what I like about the network personally, that we can have these developers who we really couldn't work with in the past because we didn't have the right model or distribution method, but now we can. We can bring these guys in and let them go a little wild.
Moving over to the other side of the store you've got the video section, where we're constantly adding new partners. At E3 we made a significant announcement, adding a bunch of additional partners, and we've got all of the major networks, all of the major studios, for rental and for sell-through. We even have some high-definition movies that you can buy as well as rent, so again, lots of great entertainment, lots of great content on the store side.
And then we've got PlayStation Home. I'm sure you've seen the press lately. We've been adding a ton of great content there, really tying in a lot of the games that have been released recently into Home, giving people new experiences and such. That won't slow up. The Home team has a very aggressive roadmap for the rest of the year. They'll be adding a lot of great content and new features.
GO: Speaking of Home, right now if I want to access it, I have to stop what I'm doing, cursor over to Home, leave behind the XMB, go through this big launch process, and then presto, there I am, but now I'm cordoned off from the rest of the operating system. Has Sony every thought about combining the two somehow, to speed up access, or better integrate the experiences?
EL: I think we're already starting to focus on integrating Home into the regular gaming experience. But I think in a way you've answered your own question. I mean, we're giving gamers a choice. If you want to quickly jump into something and you know what you want to do, you can do that on the XMB.
But Home is really about an online gaming community. It's about going into that space, taking the time to wander around and explore. We do give you the option, you know, some of the integration pieces. You can launch games from Home if you like. So if you run into people, you start talking about a game, and you want to play that game, you can launch into it straight from Home. So we have it both ways. Home isn't a navigation system, it's a community, a very big, robust community. It was a massive undertaking by us, and it's doing quite well. We've got seven million users worldwide who've tried it, and a lot of them are using it on a regular basis. The average user spends about 30 minutes a session, which means they're wandering around actually doing things and enjoying their time enough to stay.
So it's not about navigating the same content you get on the XMB, it's about doing something different with other people. I don't think it'd be smart of us if we made Home the interface, because if you want to jump in and start a game, you're right, you don't want to walk to it. You probably don't want to wander around past a whole bunch of people who might want to talk to you, just to get to it.
GO: How about this then. You mention XMB-like features being added to PlayStation Home, launching games and such. How about the inverse of that, say bringing PlayStation Home features over to the XMB? The one I hear talked about most is avatars. Being able to carry your identity with you back out of Home and into the XMB.
EL: It's definitely something we're looking at. We launched Home late last year. It's technically still a beta. We wanted to see how it would do and it's doing quite well, and now people have become attached to their Home personas. Given that avatars are something they want carried across, it's definitely something we're working on.
fuente: http://www.pcworld.com/article/167966/s ... umors.html
traducido a español con google:
Spoiler:
para que no tengas que traducir todo.
