The bubble machine isn't working.
Well, it is working--the little green basket is pumping out bubbles at a furious pace--but it isn't producing the desired effect. We're with Jack Buser, director of Sony's upcoming PlayStation Home, and we're sitting in a conference room watching his avatar trying to start up a dance party in Sony's virtual world.
We have everything in place. We switched the jukebox to a catchy tune and dropped the all-important bubble machine to let people know that we're serious about dancing. Jack pulls up a list of dance moves on his virtual PSP menu and his avatar busts out with the robot before chaining the moves into a clap. We stay for a while but move on when it looks like nobody is coming to join us.
It's still fairly early in the afternoon, so it's understandable that people aren't quite ready to head to the dance floor just yet. A small cluster of seven to eight bubble machines left over from a prior gathering over in a nearby pavilion probably also reduced the beckoning power of Jack's lone bubble maker.
The jukebox area is part of the central plaza, a wide-open outdoor space that connects all of the virtual world's areas. The plaza's concrete and glass buildings, as well as the green landscapes, are a big upgrade over the indoor halls we've seen in past Home demos. Smart landscaping and architectural work helps divide the plaza into smaller areas to give players cozy places to congregate. One area might have brick or elaborate stonework underfoot, while a neighboring area has concrete. Several video screens border the edges of the plaza; the largest one had a Star Wars: The Force Unleashed trailer running in a loop.
Jack ran his avatar over to a group of people chatting with each other nearby. Apparently, one Sony insider just got home from work where he had the arduous task of playing LittleBIGPlanet all day long.
Players can talk to each other using text and voice chat. Text will appear as chat bubbles above the avatar's head. Each new text entry will create a new chat bubble, bumping up older chat bubbles. The chat progression design makes it easy to follow the conversation if you arrive late.
We didn't hear anyone using voice chat, but we asked Jack how Home handles voice communication. Will it be a global, voice-of-god type of thing, which would be both terrible and awesome? Or will it be based on relative location to the speaker? Jack explained that all conversations, voice and text, are proximity-based. Only people nearby will be able to hear each other or see each other's chat bubbles. You'll see a group of people off in the distance, but you won't be able to see or hear what they're talking about until you walk closer to the group.
Wii Sports, Grand Theft Auto IV, and now PlayStation Home. Yup, bowling is big with video game fans.
During our chat discussion, Jack took the opportunity to show off Sony's new wireless Bluetooth keypad for the PlayStation 3. The attachment sits snugly on the controller and provides a full mini-keypad to speed up the text-input process. The camera angles in the official press images for the accessory didn't show whether or not the keypad obstructed the shoulder buttons. Sony isn't the kind of company that would let a product design gaffe like that make it through to production, but we took a peek at the combo just to make sure. Sure enough, the keypad is thin enough to provide full access to all of the buttons on top of the controller.
The keypad should ship sometime this November, and, judging by how long it takes people to type out messages to each other with the gamepad alone, it looks like it'll be a must-have upgrade for hardcore Home users.
Before we left the group, Jack demonstrated how a player can set up a game server and find players to join from within Home. He pulled up his virtual PSP and configured a Warhawk server on the spot. A gamepad icon then appeared above his avatar's head to let people nearby know that he was seeking more players. At that point, other players avatars can walk up to him and join the game.
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