Phil Harrison interview pt 1

[Domination]

Gametrailers (http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=17702&type=mov&pl=game)

downloadable link (http://download.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_ps3_gdc07_philharrison_int_gt.mov)

I thought some of you might find it a little informative on the way it first evolved. A very detailed description by Phil, indeed.

The Official Home thread (http://forums.e-mpire.com/showthread.php?t=70122)

gamevideos (http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/9879)

downloadable link (http://www.gamevideos.com/download?videoId=9879&url=http%3a%2f%2fdownload.gamevideos.com%2f9879%2f gv.com.GDC2007PhilHarrisonInterview_640x480.mov)

Home details (http://www.ps3forums.com/showpost.php?p=1393542&postcount=1)

Confirmed Home details (http://forums.e-mpire.com/showpost.php?p=1531204&postcount=1)

Complete Home details (http://forums.e-mpire.com/showthread.php?t=73740)

[curryking1]

Phil Harrison rocks my socks.

[Garfunkel]

Phil rox.

But i was slightly alarmed when he said "well we've made no statements about keeping it free forever"...

i hope he does.

[Kabbage]

Phil rox.

But i was slightly alarmed when he said "well we've made no statements about keeping it free forever"...

i hope he does. Well there is nothing that is guarantee, and Sony is the last person would make an absolute statement about something being a certain way forever.

*This Just In From Kotaku* Sony plans future charge for online service!! Straight from the Sony Headman himself, Phil Harrison.

[curryking1]

I hope to God it stays free.

Judging from the strategy they have right now though and how they want it to be used, it definitely seems that way. From what I can see they want to make the money back off of microtransactions, extra content, etc etc. And advertising.

PH even says it himself, he gets directly asked (by gametrailers? in the vid interview part 1 I think - EDIT - that seems to be this one... lol!) about how they expect to keep Home running and get the money back, and that's exactly what he says.

[Kabbage]

I hope to God it stays free.

Judging from the strategy they have right now though and how they want it to be used, it definitely seems that way. From what I can see they want to make the money back off of microtransactions, extra content, etc etc. And advertising.

PH even says it himself, he gets directly asked (by gametrailers? in the vid interview part 1 I think - EDIT - that seems to be this one... lol!) about how they expect to keep Home running and get the money back, and that's exactly what he says. I think they were advertisements, microtransactions and something I cant rememeber

[LiquidEagle]

Sponsors creating spaces & such is the 3rd source.

[Garfunkel]

Yes, they will get money from sponsors for competitions and stuff.

[LaLiLuLeLo]

He's just covering his ass so if by some cruel twist of fate they have to start charging for it people won't ding him for it.

"We didn't say anything about forever, but yeah that is the idea."

[Domination]

Phil rox.

But i was slightly alarmed when he said "well we've made no statements about keeping it free forever"...

i hope he does.


Don't be -- Ken said the samething. Basically, he felt that consumers weren't ready to start paying for PlayStation Online/Network gaming yet due to it not being a huge space right now (kinda like PayPer View is to cable,) which is why PSN is free. Overtime, this could change when it becomes a necessity. I'm thinking
hot zones, not spots, are going to be the turning point where online will become a requirement for all users. By then, Sony will have a reason to charge consumers since much more can easily be added and you having confidence that 80 and 90% of your users are going to adopt it.

Watch out.:stirpot:

[curryking1]

All I want to say is...

Please please please please please Sony... Never charge for online gameplay, talking to friends, or jumping into games together.

Charge for other stuff. Just please, don't charge for stuff that is akin to Yahoo pool or something or things like flash games I can play online. Or online gaming which has been free on so many platforms for soooo long. Please!!!

Charge for d/ling movies! Charge for extras for the 'house.' Charge for the extras! Charge for d/ling music! Maybe even charge for renting servers or something!!!

Just not the base stuff, the built in stuff, the stuff I normally get free everywhere else!

Charge for stuff that has become the norm to charge for!!! Be inviting and at the same time give the opportunity to spend, please, it's the most ideal way I think for everyone. It's both attractive from a 'free' point then because you get all these amazing features and minigames like bowling and that helicopter game, just charge for the tiny extras!

Copy what the freaking internet on the PC does! Have all this free stuff that runs on advertising and little extra d/ls!!! Don't charge for the minigames as well pleaseeeee.

Only the bigger 'minigames' that are like Warhawk or LBP sized, but not like bowling or pool or that heli game.

Make more advertisements in the background! I have no problem with them, they are very unobstrusive, like going to a mall. I don't want to pay to go to the mall Sony! Don't do it!!! Don't give in!!!

[Kabbage]

*Pokes curryking with a stick*

Settle down there buddy.

[Smokey]

*Pokes curryking with a stick*

Settle down there buddy.

lol

[Rip3001]

You have to remember...

Forever is a very long time. No company would ever want to say something to that effect. I mean...what if in 2008, God announces that everything online should have a fee...what could Sony do?

[curryking1]

*Pokes curryking with a stick*

Settle down there buddy.

*Breaks stick in half*

NEVER!~!121~1!@!

[cliffbo]

*picks up stick, sticks it together and pokes Kabbage*

[Garfunkel]

You have to remember...

Forever is a very long time. No company would ever want to say something to that effect. I mean...what if in 2008, God announces that everything online should have a fee...what could Sony do?

well, sony does not have any cooperate religious ideals, so that would mean nothing.

[jaxmkii]

You have to remember...

Forever is a very long time. No company would ever want to say something to that effect. I mean...what if in 2008, God announces that everything online should have a fee...what could Sony do?

denouce god...

[LaLiLuLeLo]

well, sony does not have any cooperate religious ideals, so that would mean nothing.

Well I'm sure if god suddenly parted the clouds and spoke everyone would have some kind of religious ideals :uhh:

"SHIT! HE'S REAL!"

[jaxmkii]

if that happend all i could think about is all the kittens i have killed...

[cliffbo]

if that happend all i could think about is all the kittens i have killed...

you know i could rapidly go off some people :gunner:

[LaLiLuLeLo]

if that happend all i could think about is all the kittens i have killed...

roflcopter.

[jaxmkii]

you know i could rapidly go off some people :gunner:

ok i dont think you get it... have you ever heard the phrase

"everythine you masturbate god kills a kitten... please think of the kittens."

[indiekid4]

ok i dont think you get it... have you ever heard the phrase

"everythine you masturbate god kills a kitten... please think of the kittens."


oyy, derailed! *error* *system terminated* lol

[VG Aficionado]

http://streetpreacher.privat.t-online.de/movielist/masturbate.jpg

*looks for crashed train picture*

[cliffbo]

ok i dont think you get it... have you ever heard the phrase

"everythine you masturbate god kills a kitten... please think of the kittens."

no i haven't but i was joking anyways lol... you know i love you. (post the usual heterosexual disclaimer here)

[jaxmkii]

*looks for crashed train picture*
her ya go!
http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r246/jaxmkii/245-Trainderailment.jpg

[cliffbo]

interview part 2:

http://download.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_ps3_gdc07_philharrison_int_2_gt.mov

[Z]

ok i dont think you get it... have you ever heard the phrase

"everythine you masturbate god kills a kitten... please think of the kittens."

that is scientifically not feasible. you see, if it was true, then in a mere 5.3 minutes, all the kittens in the world would perish. consequently, Brazilian Samba would have not existed and Chinese would be eating noodles with their feet.
don't ask. just trust me on this one. I know what I'm saying. it's all numbers talking.

do you see Chinese eat noodles with their feat? then kittens are safe and we can continue to 'fire away' at will....

[cliffbo]

part two of the interview fellas above

[LaLiLuLeLo]

http://streetpreacher.privat.t-online.de/movielist/masturbate.jpg

*looks for crashed train picture*

What bothers me is that Domokun is God's minion for kitten extermination.

[cliffbo]

nobody interested in part two of the interview then? above

hd version:

http://www.gametrailers.com/downloadnew.php?id=17720

[Sephiroth_VII]

Domo-kun is God. :duh:

Anyway, this is turning into the madhouse. Let's TRY to stay on topic.

Cliffbo: Downloading now, mate :angel:

[jaxmkii]

the interveiw did not reveil anything new...

[Garfunkel]

meh, it was an interesting read none the less.

[Domination]

Wired News with Phil Harrison

WN: Tell me about the history of LittleBigPlanet. Did you personally see Rag Doll Kung Fu and think, I've got to get these people?

PH: I can't take credit for that. It was one of my producers who knew what those guys were doing and had nurtured that relationship. And he brought them to us. Part of the role of the producer is to go out and nurture the relationships, for individuals who are currently occupied elsewhere but might want to come and work with us in the future, and that was indeed the case with the founders of Media Molecule is that they were gainfully employed at -- I guess I can say this -- Lionhead, and Criterion, and they came to us and said look, we're thinking of setting up on our own, we've brought this idea which we'd like to share with you, but we think it's too weird for you and we don't think you're going to like it. And I loved it. And I said not only is it not bad, it's great, and we want you to go for it even more.

The point where I got involved was after the initial contact had been made, but I was lucky enough to get the pitch from them, and I said, look: this is fantastic. We definitely want to work with you guys.

WN: Are they now working collaboratively with Sony designers and producers?

PH: Yeah, we funded them, and they're working exclusively with us and they formed their company and hired some great people. I mean, they are the most amazing group to work with. Their output is phenomenal, their iteration speed is phenomenal. They're very experienced artists and designers, they might look a little unorthodox, but they really know what they're doing.

WN: As a player of this game, what kind of options do I have to change what's going on? Is it pretty much just that every object has a defined set of characteristics, or can I tweak things?

PH: You can tweak things.

WN: Give examples of what I might be able to do. Take the soccer ball. What could I do to the soccer ball to change the way it reacts?

PH: We are going to take a deeper dive on Little Big Planet probably in May, on the next Gamers' Day. Or maybe at E3 in July. And we'll take you through that in more detail. But there are ways to… think of an object being in certain classes: things that are spherical have certain spherical physical properties, things that are square kind of more square… you can see, you can change the shapes, you can extrude things, you can cut things out, you can blend things together. But you can also allocate behaviors to shapes as well. And that allows them to become alive. And that's where the really interesting gameplay comes from.

WN: I get the sense that what you're presenting to us, the fact that it's a soccer ball and an orange instead of just a sphere and a smaller sphere, is to get a sense of it in our heads immediately as to what the properties of those things are going to be. But are you going to be able to skin a sphere with whatever you want?

PH: That's what we showed you today.

WN: Oh, yeah, you could put the faces on [the orange]. But will you be able to totally change that?

PH: Yeah, totally, yeah.

WN: So the release plan was kind of laid out in the sense that there is a demo coming this year…

PH: That's not what I said. It'll debut on the PlayStation Network. And there will be a Blu-Ray disc release next year.

WN: Okay. At some point the words, I think it might have been in the press release that came afterwards, it said "demo."

Dave Karraker, director of communications: Yeah, that's what's in the press release.

PH: My bad.

WN: Okay. So the question is, what is meant by "demo"?

PH: It will be a commercial release. It will not be a free demo in the traditional sense.

WN: Is the content going to be identical on the download version versus the Blu-Ray version?

PH: No.

WN: Is the idea here to…

PH: Yes. [laughter]

WN: And will I be paid for my contributions?

PH: How did I know that was going to be your question? The possibility of that -- syndication of content -- is not lost on us.

WN: Obviously the video you showed was very much a mock-up of what it's going to be like to trade your stuff, that's not final --

PH: Yeah, that is the interface. There's a concept of a little planet where there are spaces on the planet and each space is a badge, a pin that goes onto the planet. And each one of those is a LittleBigPlanet level that's been created by somebody. We have this kind of idea of that growing as users add more and more.

WN: But that in the first couple of days is probably going to get stupidly huge. How do you filter out and manage and push the best -- besides simply user votes?

PH: We're going to have a number of different filters, and as you can see on that presentation, filters for recently added, most ranked… we're going to have some kind of way of recommending levels that we think are cool, we might have a "What's Hot" level design club where we have the best levels that have recently come on, or ones that the designers or team think are great. But ultimately it's all about empowering the community. We want the users to decide. Now that will involve a little bit of trial and error by users, but very quickly not only will the best levels get ranked to the top, but the best level designers will get recognized for their work as well. So I think, and this is a good thing, it might be a little chaotic to begin with, but it'll form some structure of its own afterwards.

WN: What about offensive content, if somebody were to do something with the game you might not want people to see, is there going to be a system in place that'll shut that down/

PH: Yeah. Sure.

WN: So, moving on to Home. Obviously you can view all this information in the context of the game itself, but -- it looks like you're running high-definition video, it's processor-intensive, so you need to devote the PS3 to doing this exclusively. Is there a way to get this information within the context of a game -- press the PlayStation button and there's a list of my friends who are online, achievements -- er, trophies that I'm working on… is that going to go along with this?

PH: So, there are certain elements which are going to be unique to the Home experience, they'll stay inside the Home experience because that's the way they're being crafted. But Home sits on top of the PlayStation Network platform. So as new features are added to PlayStation Network, they will not only be available inside Home, they can also be exposed inside other games as well.

WN: So what features will not be exclusive to Home?

PH: We'll come back to you on that. The roadmap for the platform is very well-defined internally but we haven't shared that specifically.

WN: This represents a change in position for Sony, because when I talked to Jack Tretton before the PS3 launch, he said that Sony had no, they had no interest in pursuing at that point a pan-platform system that ranked achievements in games. So why the change in attitude towards this idea?

DK: I can preface that. What he said was that we had no intention of mimicking Xbox achievements. We recognize that gamers see that as important, but we weren't going to simply replicate that exact system on the PS3.

WN: Well, the idea, I think the quote was "pan-platform": that individual games could do it, like Resistance did that, and I think what he really said was if I'm playing SOCOM, I don't care what happens in Madden.

DK: What he was getting at was the total score, so I've got this great score of 1200, but I've only gotten it playing sports games and I'm gonna play a shooter with you.

PH: And I think he's spot-on. The beauty of trophies, and the fact that they're expressed in 3D in your own hall of fame is a great way of individualizing the experience and allowing your friends to see it as well. And I think that what we're doing here with Home, what we've announced today with Home is totally compatible with what Jack has said.

WN: So the idea of displaying 3D trophies, that might be an example of something displayed in Home, but then across the PlayStation Network, that might be expressed differently in other applications?

PH: I’m not sure I follow the question.

WN: Where I could press a button during a game and my list of achievements in that game opens up. It's not just trophies that appear in Home.

PH: We don’t use the word "achievements…" [laughter]

WN: I'm sorry. You're very on-message. That's good.

PH: Let me show you something so you can get a sense of this, because we didn't have time to go into details. [boots up Home on PS3 in room] When you come back to the Cross Media Bar, you can see that we have this Home icon. But also, underneath it you can see we have Favorites and Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame icon lets you jump straight into Hall of Fame, you don't have to go into Home to get there. And this is where what you just described will be exposed.

Inside Favorites, you'll create bookmarks, shortcuts to the spaces you want to visit most often with your buddies. So it could be that you like hanging out in the SOCOM barracks room, something like that. You just bookmark it, and that will appear as a long list of thumbnails in that area. Next time you log into PS3 you can dive straight in there. Your personal apartment will appear there as well.

WN: And speaking of that, one of the things I wanted to ask was how do you get one of those big houses?

PH: What we wanted to show today was the sense of progression: this is the basic one, this is a more advanced one -- not necessarily the most advanced one, because it'll continue to grow from there. But users will be able to upgrade by purchasing new items, by being gifted new items from games that they purchase, and from buying items that we provide into the network ourselves as the kind of benefactor of everybody in the world. So to get the best, biggest apartment users will most likely have to buy it through microtransactions. I'm not going to get to you on your next question, which is how much is that going to be?

WN: How much is that going to be?

(silence)

WN: That's interesting because as we've seen with other platforms, there's a really fine line that needs to be walked between giving people extra content and making them feel like they're being ripped off forwards and backwards. How do you balance out, what's the value proposition to somebody, why do I want to buy a bigger house? What's that really going to do for me?

PH: We believe that users want to express themselves by physical objects that they own within the universe. Home allows people to expand and customize their space so they can invite their friends round, they can hang out with their friends in their space, they can have premium items in their space like pool tables or arcade machines, and that allows people to say, you know what, I'm going to hang out at Chris' place because he's got some cool art on the walls, or a cool patio, or he's just got the new Mount Fuji view. I think there are really compelling reasons to invest your money in fully tricking out your space.

Now, it's hard for me to answer your question fully without telling you how much. Because it's difficult for you to get a sense. We think pricing should be from this much [makes a tiny hand gesture] to this much [opens hands wide] and everything in between.

WN: You're talking about personalizing this as much as possible. Are users going to be able to create their own content? Can I make a shirt for my character, draw it?

PH: Come back in May, and we'll show you some stuff in that area. We wanted to show Home today, and announce it in a way that everybody could get the basic message. But you can clearly see -- I can tell that you get it -- how this could expand over time. Most of the answers to your questions that I could probably give are, "Yes, that's on the list." The list is incredibly long. And it's our job to prioritize it.

WN: Moving on to Singstar, what labels do you have signed on?

PH: We work with pretty much every record label that there is. We have done over 40 SKUs now, US, all European countries, we've worked with majors, worked with independents, worked with artists directly. Sony BMG, Universal, Warner, EMI…

WN: Are they all signed on to the idea of downloadable content?

PH: We are in advanced discussions with our music partners.

WN: Okay. As far as the video playback in Home, what formats are going to be supported? Is it going to be digital video that you have on a memory stick? Or DVDs, Blu-Ray…

PH: Not DVD, not Blu-Ray because those are copy protected. Any content which is open standard and not copy-protected on your hard drive or memory stick is supported.

WN: And I'll be able to invite my friends over and say, sit in my place and we're going to watch something on my big screen TV.

PH: Exactly as we showed today.

WN: What is going to happen with getting that content up there? Are you going to have to sit there and upload that content to your servers?

PH: It's streamed peer-to-peer to other users.

WN: Okay. What about -- I wanted to ask about you using the PlayStation 3 to give your presentation. Is this an official switchover? Is Powerpoint being phased out?

DK: What's Powerpoint? Who makes that? [laughter]

PH: It was a liberating experience to be able to jump from a slide straight into [a video] really quick. It's a great way of showing it. The one part of the equation that I didn't control was the video switching, which is where we had our little snafu. That wasn't me, that was someone sitting at a desk.

WN: Well, that speaks to the usefulness of using a PS3 for the presentation in the first place, because when the video wasn't switching over, you could just swap back to the first PlayStation and load up Home on that. Which for me, having seen the event last night, was like, "Oh, they're not engaged in any trickery here. This is actually…"

DK: No more trickery! That's our motto for 2007.

PH: If you write that, that will make me feel so much better about the snafu, because I hated that.

WN: I will write that.

PH: That will make my day. Because while we would never deceive you, we wanted to make sure that you get a sense of what we're doing. Last night, I thought went great -- so polished that I thought you might even suggest that there was some subterfuge.

WN: The other thread that I wanted to follow up on about Home was the publishers adding their own spaces. How is that working -- is that something where you're just so into this that you're telling publishers, create your space and we'll host it for free, or is this a thing where they're basically paying Sony to be a part of it?

PH: Forgive me for not sharing all the business models with you in this forum. But we have recently started very detailed discussions with our third-party partners about the potential of Home, and I'm pleased that their reaction was as positive as your reaction and others' today. So we're looking forward to working with our partners on that.

WN: Because it seems like a lot of this is a good advertising venue for you guys. The lobbies are plastered with advertisements. Do you think that is going to draw any pushback from players, who are like, I just want a virtual world to live in, I don't want a giant billboard feeding me advertising constantly?

PH: I think you're absolutely right, I think we do need to be sensitive to it, I think we are sensitive to it. And that's why users can customize their space in their own private apartment, and that's the environment they control, and they are masters of their domain. Not in the Seinfeld sense of the word.

WN: I think at this point, what do you see as the PS3's biggest challenge going forward, after a holiday season that's put you guys at third place in the console race? What do you feel needs to happen from the software side?

PH: Sorry to sound like a broken record, but measure this over a ten-year cycle and not over a three-month cycle. PlayStation 3 has got all the things that we need in order to maintain not only our market leadership but also our growth in the entire industry. We've got the hardware, we've got the software, we've got the network services, we've got the multiple media offerings. I'm very comfortable.

WN: Then what's going on? If all those pieces are in place, why is it not performing to the level you thought it would?

PH: We've outsold our preceding platforms for the same time frame, PS1 and PS2, both of which went on to sell more than 100 million units each. We have great momentum in the marketplace, in Japan and in the US and in Europe where we're shipping in just a couple weeks' time. We're shipping over a million units into the European market, which we've never had that on Day One going into PAL markets before.

WN: This is what I mean about you being very on message. And actually speaking of that, one of the things that you had said prior to launch was that backwards compatibility was a "core value," that you were building a platform with PS3 and that it was so important. But now there's a dialing back on the amount of titles that are going to be backwards compatible with PlayStation 3. How do you reconcile that statement of purpose with what's going on right now?

PH: Well, there's a huge amount of games that are available for PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2. The vast majority of games that people want to play are going to be compatible on PlayStation 3. So I stand by what I've said. I think there's been some confusion in the marketplace about the numbers, but on March 23rd when we launch in Europe there are going to be over a thousand games playable from PS2.

WN: I have a first-run PS3 in the US, with the Emotion Engine chip, and I love playing PS2 games on it. Is that functionality going to be killed with a future firmware update? Are they going to switch all the PS3s over to software emulation?

PH: You can't switch it off.

WN: Are the American PlayStation 3s going to remove the EE/GS chip in future iterations?

PH: I have no idea.

DK: We have no announcements regarding that.

source (http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/03/interview_sonys.html)

Interesting. I saw this the other day, but got to doing so many other things that I didn't get to comment on it. It's goo to know what those icons were for.

[Domination]

Three Speech interview with Phil

Q: Home looks great, but it begs a few questions. Presumably there will be moderation, at least in the public spaces?

PH: Exactly right. Public spaces will be moderated, and we’ll use the same rules of parental control as we do for the PlayStation Network, so parents can control whether people have access to the network or not. Then, in the private spaces, it’s unmoderated - exactly in the same way that you can send an e-mail to somebody with an attachment on it, or you could have a video chat with somebody.

Q: In terms of some of the actions you can do within the world, presumably there’s no adult content there?

PH: Well, it’s absolutely deliberate that there is no physical impact between characters, between avatars. We are going to have animations that will allow you to shake somebody’s hand or to have some social touch but in a very, you know, appropriate way. But no, we’re not going to have ‘those’ kind of animations that I’m imagining that you’re thinking about.

Q: What about uploading porn from your PS3’s hard-disk to your private space? And maybe inviting people you don’t necessarily know back and them being slightly offended by what they see, then going to a moderator?

PH: Well I’m disappointed that you would use those as the first questions. I think Home should be used for a much wider and more beneficial scope than that, but I think that people can express their creativity inside Home in a wide variety of ways and it’s not necessarily for us to dictate what that should be. However, if somebody feels uncomfortable about an encounter on Home, it’s very easy for them to ban that person from their friends list…

Q: So if people offend you, you’ll be able to blacklist them?

PH: Your friends list is here just the same way as it is on the PlayStation network, it appears inside the virtual PSP and you can make all the same changes to it.

Q: Is there an area where you can just get a list of all the things you want to go to in Home without having to physically walk to all the areas?

PH: You’ve got shortcuts which are built into the virtual PSP. You’ll be able to go to what — this is a working title – is called the World Map. this is just our internal model. This is still being worked on, but there’ll be search in here, there will be ways to filter, there will be ways to group, there will be ways to identify particular spaces that you want to go to. This will be a lot more sophisticated than what we’re showing at the moment – it was intended just to give a sense of a vast galaxy of connected spaces where you can find a new space and download it, check it out and, if you like it, it’s just like bookmarking a webpage. So you can dictate that the Socom barracks, or whatever, would be your landing point every time you come back into Home.

It’s exactly like a Web browser, but it has a very clever twist, in that when you create the bookmark, it renders a 3D screenshot of the place you were standing when you bookmarked it, and then the next time you come back into Home it will populate a list of favourites. When the service is up-and-running and new spaces are being added on a daily, or even hourly, basis, you’ll want to be able to check back into the world map to see the new spaces that have been added. There’ll be a sort, search and filter control over this, and your friends can also recommend spaces to you.

Q: In terms of the virtual cinema, you talked a lot about trailers, that kind of thing, will you be showing full films in there?

PH: No. The best place to show a film is running off the Cross Media Bar. But short clip content yes, user-created content definitely and possibly news and daily programming.

Q: But no TV shows?

PH: I wouldn’t say no TV shows, but I don’t think you would want to stand there for an hour watching a TV show when the best way is to watch it from the Cross Media Bar.

Q: But I assume that’ll be linked, if the film is available, on the online store, then there’ll be a one-click buy?

PH: That’s exactly the intention. You would be able to preview something in the preview theatre and then link to the store to be able to download it, exactly right.

Q: Do you think different types of PS3 owners will use Home in different ways, maybe hang out in different places? Can you give examples? I can see the hardcore guys sort of maybe spending more time in the private apartments than the public areas for example.

PH: Absolutely. We’re creating a platform, and populating that platform with a few content ideas ourselves, but ultimately we want to democratise it and allow anybody to build spaces in Home, and those would be the kind of extremes of experience that you would get on the platform anyway. There might be a SpongeBob space in Home, and there might be a Killzone space, and you know, everything in between. I think that when non-game brands come into the space as well and offer particular themed areas which appeal to particular groups of people – girls as well as boys, older people as well as younger people – then you’ll start to see that difference be more pronounced.

Q: Are you going to charge brands for having a space on Home?

PH: We’ve not made announcements on the specific business model, but the three basic sources of revenue for us are in advertising, in item sales, and what we loosely call B-to-B, selling opportunities to different brands, but I’m not going to go into any more details today on that.

Q: Will there be incentives for users to run adverts in their private apartments, like ‘run this ad, show it to your mates and we’ll give you something,’ say?

PH: We haven’t considered that, but it’s an interesting thought. In the last 48 hours since we’ve shared Home with the world, every time I sit down with somebody to have a discussion like this, the list of ideas gets longer and longer and longer, which is fantastic. That’s what resonates with me so strongly, the fact that we’ve got something here which has sparked everybody’s imagination.

Q: Are you going to allow players to set up their own online businesses? Selling, I don’t know, T-Shirts and that kind of thing.

PH: I think, if I’m imagining where that question’s coming from, in the kind of Second Life sense of the word, no. Because Second Life takes a very different approach. It’s all about user generated content, and doesn’t provide any content. We’re all about entertainment, we provide a lot of the framework for entertainment to take place in. Having said that, we do hope to offer some kind of user-to-user transactional elements in the future, but it won’t be day one.

Q: We were discussing outside the prospect of getting bigger apartments in Home and A) how much that might cost and B) whether you’d be able to get an extension to your apartment if you get a certain number of trophies, or something like that. Have you been thinking along those sorts of lines?

PH: Yeah, once again we’re not talking specifically at this moment but I’ll give you a general flavour of what we’re going to do, so here we’ve got a patio, but why not have a bigger patio, why not have a patio with a dock that goes down to the lake, and why not have…

Q: A Sunseeker?

PH: Yeah, or rather than an alpine mountain scene, why not have a desert island? There are lots of different ways that we can extend that; users will be able to extend their visual experience to customise their apartment through buying items from the store, by being given items through playing PlayStation 3 disk-based games or through items that we ourselves donate into the community.

Q: Regarding LittleBigPlanet, how much pre-made content will go out with it? And secondly, how important would a tutorial be, for example?

PH: We’re going to debut the product on the PlayStation Network first, as a commercial release, and then it’ll be on Blu-Ray disk in 2008 — hopefully early 2008 — and our goal is to be able to access some of the user-generated levels onto the disk when we sell it at retail. Maybe not the first version that we sell at retail, but future versions that we sell at retail can have user-aggregated content on them.

As far as a tutorial is concerned, I’m sure we’ll do something to make it easy for people to start off, but that’s also part of the interesting cross-over between Home and LittleBigPlanet; we could have a LittleBigPlanet space in Home where you can show expert user videos — imagine that in a classroom setting where you’ve got people sat down who are LittleBigPlanet designers and somebody going: “This is how you make boxes, this is how you make spheres, this is how you assign behaviours to them.” That’s really interesting.

Q: What’s the reward system going to be — what will you get if you make the number one played level?

PH: We’ve got some interesting ideas on that which we’ll share a little bit later, but we hope that star creators will be recognised and rewarded for their efforts.

Q: Maybe with jobs in the games industry?

PH: Why not? Why not? If that is one of the side benefits of what we do with LittleBigPlanet then I will be extremely happy, because that will help address some fundamental challenges that we have in training and creating new human resources to take our business forward.

Q: And I assume if your level is put on the Blu-ray disk you’ll be paid as well?

PH: Like I said, we’re not ready to talk about the specifics and I’d really prefer not to get drawn into that too much right now, but we’ve got some cool ideas.

Q: It seems to me the key to a game like that is finding out all the best things you can do that maybe not everyone else knows about?

PH: But that’s the great thing about the social element of audience-created content or user-created content. The fact that somebody makes an innovation, they upload it to the network and instantly everybody can see that innovation and it filters to the entire network. That’s the emergent entertainment that we’re most excited about, that we are not going to define, we’re not going to set the rules, so we’ll just see where people run with it.

source (http://threespeech.com/blog/?p=347)

There are a great deal of things Phil discusses with Three Speech in this intertview that are considered new announcements, but I think one of the most important to me is the movie theater's content that will be displayed on screens. I suspect this area will be exactly like You Tube but with a few twists here and there.

Overall, it was a pretty good read.

[OmniCloud]

Yeah if you can upload your home movies to the theater in hi-def!! That would be freakin' awesome!!

Home is definitely shaping up to be a killer-app for PS3. Just drop the price Sony so every1 can make a character on it!! I hope Sony can afford to drop the price at least $100 for this Holiday season man:-(

It's a shame more people aren't experiencing Motorstorm and flOw right now..