Hey everyone!
Great news: On Thursday, November 11th, PlayStation Home will update to version 1.4. This update to the core client will have an enormous impact on users and developers alike, as it is literally jam-packed with new and revised features. A full list of these features will be posted next week, but before the weekend hits I wanted to hop in here and give you all a sneak peek at some of the exciting new features that will be coming with this update.
Grouping and Voice Chat
That’s right – voice chat is coming back! With version 1.4 you will be able to form a “Group” with up to 8 people and chat with one another in both public and personal spaces. The best part is that these groups will have dedicated voice and text chat channels that allow you to speak to members of your group regardless of where each of you may be located in-world! New voice and chat channels will also be made available for clubs, making communication with other members of your club much easier.
Wardrobe Improvements
Alongside improved voice chat, many of you have asked for additional inventory/wardrobe management features. Our development team has taken your requests very seriously and have instituted sweeping improvements, including:
- You will now have the ability to mark items as “Favorites” – making commonly-used items much easier to relocate.
- Newly-acquired items (along with categories that contain new items) will be marked accordingly.
- Options for filtering and sorting items have been added, giving you greater control over which items you see and how they are displayed.
There is also a new “Storage” section that will be added to your wardrobe so you can store away items that you do not regularly use. For those with a lot of items in their wardrobe, placing items into storage will result in your wardrobe loading faster, and will make it easier for you to browse your main wardrobe. This system is very flexible and allows you to quickly restore items to your main wardrobe when you need them.
While these are some of the most important changes associated with version 1.4, this does not represent the entire scope of the update. Trust me – we have tons of cool stuff in store for you next week ;) Stay tuned to this blog for a more in-depth list of all the awesome features and improvements coming your way next Thursday.
See you in Home!
Extra Kudos to the person who came up with the idea of groupingthe chat feature. It would be chaotic to have everyone taking over each other. Thank you. I hope this will open the door for cross game chat soon.
Sony.. Locust… Please.. Advertise Home again.. With this feature you guys can actually create a commercial with real people conversing through their avatars. A very interactive experience.
Music, trophies, personal videos.
Until these things come to personal spaces, this will only ever be a passing gimmick for me. Once a month or less is all I’ve used it in the past… well, pretty much ever since it showed up on the XMB.
OMG! i’m so excited about this update! I hope the big surprise is a Trophy Room.
very nice
Fantastic news L_S! I cannot wait!
For me Home is becoming more of a starting point into the PlayStation universe! I launch into games, movies, ext.. straight from home! These improvements are awesome! @Locust_Star I have been asking to use my Home avatar as my PlayStation avatar forever now! How can I be down?
Do the move works with home?
is there going to be a HOME for the Mexican PSN? if there is, when? thnks!
I’m impressed! The chat idea is great!
I hope things load faster too! The SW Cantina takes forever – I don’t go there anymore because of that.
About time chat comes back….but I forclosed on my Home long ago, don’t think I will be coming back.
It will only take ONE thing to make Home REALLY popular : Trophy rooms. Anything to do with trophies: Awesome trophies pavilion, awards, all-time trophy leaderboards, etc etc etc. They do that, and millions of users will swarm the streets of Home.
Love it. Next up bring these features to ps3’s XMB.
hard to believe.
so are you saying that this update is truly not about your wallets? it’s about what we’ve been asking for?
that’s impossible!!!
Very cool! I can’t wait too see all the new features! (Hopes to see new emotes)
This is sweet. I cant wait to download it. I also have an idea for playstation Home but I dont know how to let them know about it?
This sounds like a great update.
So now when are Sony going to allow games to include your avatar.
The PS3 avatars are so much higher quality than the competition, yet the competition’s avatars have their own games. But Sony should go one better and have first party title that unlock the ability to use your avatar in their games! Imagine yourself in GT5 or Uncharted 3 with the ability to play through the game a second time with your avatar. Win! Win!
Wow, an update at long last! You’d think something in beta would have updates more frequently… but this is PSHome. Faster wardrobe loading sounds good to me. Hoping the other changes this 1.4 brings are substantial. Any chance on preventing attention horses from standing on top of things not meant to be stood on?
What I would like is a better preview on saved files. Its hard to know what outfits you have saved when the save file icon is just the head. Naming them too would also be nice.
This is fantastic news. I haven’t really been on Home since voice chat was disabled, not really because of a “stick it to Sony for removing it” move, but because I don’t have a text pad, don’t plan to get one, and don’t enjoy typing out long messages to people via the on screen keyboard. At least with this I can grab a few friends and TALK to them. I now have a reason to visit Home again. Thanks for that.
This adds a couple of very badly needed features to home assuming you can get it working bug free. but a lot more is needed, the main thing being rid of Lithium & their terrible mismanagement of home. Especially the random bans, I and many others have said before the random bans against victims of stalkers & pedophiles must go NOW!
Hi Locust_star. How about allowing us to take a screenshot of our Home avatar so we can use as our PSN avatar?
Sounds great news!!!
very awesume on the storage and wardrobe feature.. really looking forward to this update.
OMG!! So exciting! I’m thrilled to hear news of a new client update to Home! I wonder if these new group chats will eventually make their way to game launching – i.e. cross game party chat that everybody keeps talking about… Either way, I know PS Home is the future for social gaming on playstation 3 and it’s definitely a HUGE step ahead of the Wii and the XBox! …Just yesterday a group of friends and myself hopped through Home playing tons of games together, this is the future!
What I would like to see is some improved social networking features in PS Home (or the XMB for that matter) where we can get some kind of feed similar to Facebook’s News where recent accomplishments or events from our Friends are logged. For example, if one of my friends has recently purchased a new outfit in Home, or obtained a game trophy, I’d like to see a feed with that information someplace. And, of course, I’d like to be able to make comments or quick link to sending them a message in reaction!
Okay – anyway, keep up the great work PS Home team, you guys seriously rock!
Hopefully the Trophy Room comes in this update ^_^
Where is my GT5 release date!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??????????????????????????
Home is really starting to come together. Great job guys!
@Groovy341
You could buy a headset but not go out to walmart and pick up a $10 USB keyboad?
Sounds great. I just hope load times for… well for anything is greatly improved. Current load times for wardrobe and shops is horrendous. Biggest reason I don’t bother visiting all that often.
whens the other half of the star wars cantina being opened up,i can see games tables n video screens on the other side of the curtain for months but its never opened up.
can we have a ghostbusters,god of war and a killzone area.
Goodies from games really need to be implemented in Home. You guys should work with developers to figure out some way that you can have trinkets from the games we’ve mastered, such as treasures from Uncharted in display cases, not just trophies which I don’t care about.
Also, I know cross game chat and messaging are popular. But I want an option to BLOCK them. Many of us don’t want to be bothered if we’re playing an involving game like Ratchet & Clank or Gran Turismo.
how about an update where ur PS home Avatar is standing next to ur gamer card when u press the ‘X’ in ur friends PSN name?? that would give gamers a new whole reason to enter Home and make their avatars and play the games on HOME dont u think? let me know what u think :)
I just want stability, sometimes home lags like crazy, it happens in some spaces while it doesn’t happen in others. While i understand happening in personal spaces with lots of items, but why public spaces?
Also please make the in game xmb faster.
For some reason, it happened twice to me only in home. My ps3 turned off automatically. It only happened twice in home.
This is good news.
See now why can’t that “group up chat” feature be used out of PS Home and into actual games..
I was here during the closed beta and remember how it was with the chat then. We had people playing their music over the mics, language that wasn’t too appropirate for some people and the Verizon commercial being played out over the speakers. I’m hoping it doesn’t crash the systems or lead to shutting off speakers because of what is coming from others.
Group chat? Say no more :D
It Might be, It Could be, IT IS! A HomeRun, HOLYCOW!!!!!!
@ 81
That’s up to the developers if they want to invest the time/money to do that.
The wardrobe would be a lot faster/smoother if it didn’t preview the item on your avatar when you browse over it.
Where’s that fabled trophy room?
Nice .. we should need a report system. Im tired of the cheaters , lag switchers , ETC please add a report system.
I am just wondering if it will help my D4000 error. I can’t figure out what is wrong.
@ 90
I believe the report system is available upon pressing select.
YAY!!! now i can put all those t-shirts in a box of forgetting TY Home team!!!
coolz, cant wait!
thankz!! *(^O^)*
Woohoo, now if only I can get a nice car in there to drive around in..lol I do want the TV that was promise ages ago where you can stream your movies and watch them with friends, same thing with the music. Whatever happen to that?
Will these groups also work with the Game Launching feature?
Home is heavyweight and cumbersome, but it’s also (for better or worse) the most robust way to get a party of players together on PS3.
OMG!!!!!! This is AWESOME!!! Yeeeeesssssss!!!!!!! Cant wait, cant wait, CANT WAIT!!!! Can u blame me for being excited?
Cross home chat hey? Interesting…
Just wanted to say thanks for the Voice chat in Home.
I was in Home beta when chat was available initially as well as Region travel.
A lot of people left Home after voice chat was taken away as they didn’t have a keyboard or just thought it too much work to type out everything.
I agree back then that in some spaces it was hard to not overhear others talking when more users came into Home and it was a little frustrating at times when you didn’t want to hear another groups conversation. So a little control of chat is nice to hear.
I think this may bring a few more people back into Home.
Hi,
Please test very carefully and run full tests with new wardrobe options, I would not like to see my items disappear next Thursday November 11.
Thanks and good work! (I hope)
María…