Rumor: "Proof" Home Is No Rip-Off?

via kotaku

Rushed Mii clones? The Sims copies? Second Life-ish? Take your pick. But, apparently Sony's concept of Home is a little more original than that. Back in 2005, the following posts appeared on the official PlayStation boards:

SCEA and SOE are developing MMORPG(something similiar to ffxi) style online service for PS3 right now. It will have online pack which it comes with HDD and the online software. You can go online and chat with people like mmorpg style. Your stats will have the list of games you have and scores(or ranks) for each game, and other great things. And if you want to look for someone to play online for certain game, you have to go to this certain area(or town) for that specific game or the game will automatically takes you to that town. Sony thinks "hyper links" technology is a history. They want to create a "virtual world" for PS3 online service where people can actually interact eachother like mmorpg style. There are more great details, but this is all I can get for now. I'm not expecting you to believe me

Game site You NEWB sent us the above quote. We did some leg-work, and various insiders confirmed that apparently Sony has been planning Home for at least the past three years — Pretty much Xbox Live blew the doors off everything. (Originally, Home had a more futuristic feel. Think PSO.) Even Kutaragi has supposedly been interested in a visual, 3D, online interface with personalized avatars since the PS2 days. The irony: It's been kept top secret to prevent competitors from copying it! Rome wasn't built in a day. What about Home?

doesn't really surprise me, something as intricate as HOME should have taken a long time to create. Especially for Sony.

I don't care how big Sony is in manpower, but they're not a software company, there's no way they could have created HOME in just 1 year or less (like what some Home critics seem to believe). Especially since until recently Sony was mainly a hardware company and didn't do much software stuffs (hence the lack of 1st party games).

Though, I do believe that MS have workers that are fast and smart enough to create something on LIVE that mimics HOME w/in only a year (MS is the only true software company in the console war). I doubt they would though, they don't need it.

I just hope HOME is really as good as it seems so far.

I really believe sony had been creating this for a long time as well. I just cant believe they really suceeded in keeping it a complete secret for so long. I dont think I have ever heard of anything in this industry going that long without anybody knowing about it. Im really glad to see Sony actually doing something right. It's been a while and I really didnt know what to think with all the bad talk going on about everything they have done recently. Everything I have read wether it was comments or articles they all have positive things to say about this new software and that is something you really dont see everyday. The last time I have seen people react so positive to something in the video game industry was probably when people saw the huge trailer for the game Spore.

I guess this is what Kutaragi might've meant by "4D" :thumbup: