Soul mates????

Wait, so you're saying that if you did a podcast for over three years, and Sony approached you with this opportunity, and the chance to get your material in front of Millions of new people, you wouldn't do it? Seriously??!!

One thing to remember here also, Sony doesn't dictate what games etc that we talk about. We can't curse, but that's about it, and that's more to do with the fact that it's all under the ESRB umbrella.

You say that what Josh is insulting, but what do you think that you're doing? We've been working our asses off since February to get this together, and you just roll in with your hate. You can have your little conspiracy theory etc, but to actually invoke something like “Uncle Tom” is insulting in so many ways, least of all to us.

Dude, you think calling us “Uncle Tom's” is constructive??

I get what you're trying to say, but it seems like you're making-up your mind about the whole thing before you know any of the facts. We still don't even know if this is going to work-out, but I sure as hell didn't want to be the one to say “what if?”

My first thought was to congratulate Glenn and the guys for all the hard work this must have taken, and for the unique exposure and corporate support that comes with this. This is probably the single coolest thing to happen to both Home and PSNation, and it's a great synergistic partnership.I am compelled to revisit Home to at least check out how it has grown because of this announcement.

However, it's just interesting to see how the attitude towards Home is changing because you're now part of it. Whatever happened to the media sharing, game-launching, and cross-game-chat potential? Did they even re-enable voicechat in public spaces? These things have hindered what could've been an awesome Second Life type of platform in and of itself.

Spending real money on fake clothes and doing the running man in a barren lobby is not my idea of a good time, and you guys should continue to call out Sony on the BS, not do a 180. But see, Sony is not going to sponsor you so that you can come in and trash it on their own platform. I think this is what Thgilyad is saying…that maybe your objectivity is put into question.

You guys are still awesome, and this is still wonderful news. But Home has a long way to go, and as gamers we've been disappointed by its offerings.

The problem is that MNR for PSP has a voucher in the box to activate online play, so you may have issues with it if we sent the game to anywhere outside of the SCEA region, which is why we separated the contests.

I don't feel like any of us has suddenly done a 180. My attitude _has_ shifted over the past year, before I was on PS Nation actually and I talked about it on 360 Nation on and off. If you listen back, I don't believe any of us have said that Home doesn't still have problems. Glenn has talked about playing poker in the EA space since it launched a year ago and he raved about Sodium 1 before Sony ever approached PS Nation. It's not like we were all saying Home sucks! and now we're all saying Home rocks!

You said “Spending real money on fake clothes and doing the running man in a barren lobby is not my idea of a good time” and that's fine for you, but it sounds like you've either never been in Home or haven't been in since around the time it launched because I have yet to go in there and find it barren. Any time day or night there are hundreds of people gathered in all the different spaces I've been in. The vast majority of them have paid for “fake clothes” so more than a few people actually like it. There are more people in Home than you realize and they're actually having fun with the mini games or even just the social aspect of hanging out text chatting with a group of friends. Go in and check it out, you may be surprised, but if it's not for you, it's not for you, no big deal, just understand that there are a lot of people out there that like it a lot.

Does Home still have problems? Absolutely, and you've articulated some of them here, but… game launching was added back in September 2009 with a firmware update. Remember when they took away the PlayStation 3 logo and chimes when starting up games from the XMB? That was partly to facilitate a more seamless transition from Home to the games. I don't see where cross game chat has anything to do with Home on it's own however. So, from your list, that leaves us with media sharing and voice chat in public spaces. Both of these are definitely issues that bug me personally so you know what, I bugged the crap out of the Home people at E3 every chance I got and, big surprise, they are very much aware of it. There actually is a very passionate and loyal Home community (crazy, I know) that bugs them about these and other issues constantly. I didn't really get an answer about the media sharing beyond “we're working on it” but I did find out that voice chat in public spaces is mostly a matter of bandwidth. They are however still looking for a way to make it work because they know that people want it.

Also, let me state this as clearly as possible, Sony doesn't want “yes men”. When I was introduced to the Home people at E3 and the first words out of my mouth were “I've got issues” they said, “Hit me”. I'm not going to go into all of it here because quite frankly, we talked for a long time. What I came away with however was the sense that they genuinely want to make the service better and they listened to everything I had to say. I was also reminded that Home is a bureaucracy within a much larger Sony bureaucracy so getting things done can be slow some times. Does that make it right? Not really, but I do feel better and quite confident that the Home group is already well aware of Home's shortcomings and they are working towards correcting the issues. I still want my media sharing and I'm gonna keep bugging them until it's in there. Pictures have been there for a while and are a decent start, but I want my music and video available too.

As for Sony not sponsoring us so we can come in and bash them on their own platform, we have only 3 things in the contract that we can't do, No alcohol references, No foul language and No talking directly about current gen competitors. Everything else is wide open and up to us. We're still figuring out what we want to do in there and because of geographical considerations, recording game footage and doing voice over video reviews seems the best way to go for us for right now. Footage from E3 (what little we got with the camera fail) should show up in our next videos but where we go from there, who knows?

Yeah, Glenn and I went into Home a week before our launch in anticipation just to look around. We came away with a pretty funny experience that we shared on the podcast. This doesn't mean we love Home or hate Home. Home is what it is. It's an evolving platform that's very different from what we were first shown several years ago. In some ways it's better and some ways it's worse but it's still evolving. I can now point out issues directly to people at Sony, and believe me, I will. Personally, before this deal, I didn't spend lot of time in Home. I'd go in maybe once a month, once every two months usually just to see what was new. Now that we're in there, yeah, I will be in more, mostly to meet people. You'd be surprised by the number of messages I had in my inbox when I turned on the PS3 coming back from E3, I was certainly floored. There are a ton of people who don't listen to podcasts but liked what they saw in Home and sent me some really nice messages. While I still think Home needs a lot of work, I do believe it has more to offer than most people realize. That's just me though, and I realize that it's not for everyone.

Ultimately we do this show for the community. If we can reach out to a different segment through Home, I'm all for it. This doesn't mean that we endorse Home, it's just another avenue to reach potential listeners and open up some doors at publishers. In the end, more listeners and better access means everybody wins, and yes, I will keep bugging the people at Home about the problems there, I'm just not going to bore the listeners with it every week on the podcast.

I don't feel like any of us has suddenly done a 180. My attitude _has_ shifted over the past year, before I was on PS Nation actually and I talked about it on 360 Nation on and off. If you listen back, I don't believe any of us have said that Home doesn't still have problems. Glenn has talked about playing poker in the EA space since it launched a year ago and he raved about Sodium 1 before Sony ever approached PS Nation. It's not like we were all saying Home sucks! and now we're all saying Home rocks!

You said “Spending real money on fake clothes and doing the running man in a barren lobby is not my idea of a good time” and that's fine for you, but it sounds like you've either never been in Home or haven't been in since around the time it launched because I have yet to go in there and find it barren. Any time day or night there are hundreds of people gathered in all the different spaces I've been in. The vast majority of them have paid for “fake clothes” so more than a few people actually like it. There are more people in Home than you realize and they're actually having fun with the mini games or even just the social aspect of hanging out text chatting with a group of friends. Go in and check it out, you may be surprised, but if it's not for you, it's not for you, no big deal, just understand that there are a lot of people out there that like it a lot.

Does Home still have problems? Absolutely, and you've articulated some of them here, but… game launching was added back in September 2009 with a firmware update. Remember when they took away the PlayStation 3 logo and chimes when starting up games from the XMB? That was partly to facilitate a more seamless transition from Home to the games. I don't see where cross game chat has anything to do with Home on it's own however. So, from your list, that leaves us with media sharing and voice chat in public spaces. Both of these are definitely issues that bug me personally so you know what, I bugged the crap out of the Home people at E3 every chance I got and, big surprise, they are very much aware of it. There actually is a very passionate and loyal Home community (crazy, I know) that bugs them about these and other issues constantly. I didn't really get an answer about the media sharing beyond “we're working on it” but I did find out that voice chat in public spaces is mostly a matter of bandwidth. They are however still looking for a way to make it work because they know that people want it.

Also, let me state this as clearly as possible, Sony doesn't want “yes men”. When I was introduced to the Home people at E3 and the first words out of my mouth were “I've got issues” they said, “Hit me”. I'm not going to go into all of it here because quite frankly, we talked for a long time. What I came away with however was the sense that they genuinely want to make the service better and they listened to everything I had to say. I was also reminded that Home is a bureaucracy within a much larger Sony bureaucracy so getting things done can be slow some times. Does that make it right? Not really, but I do feel better and quite confident that the Home group is already well aware of Home's shortcomings and they are working towards correcting the issues. I still want my media sharing and I'm gonna keep bugging them until it's in there. Pictures have been there for a while and are a decent start, but I want my music and video available too.

As for Sony not sponsoring us so we can come in and bash them on their own platform, we have only 3 things in the contract that we can't do, No alcohol references, No foul language and No talking directly about current gen competitors. Everything else is wide open and up to us. We're still figuring out what we want to do in there and because of geographical considerations, recording game footage and doing voice over video reviews seems the best way to go for us for right now. Footage from E3 (what little we got with the camera fail) should show up in our next videos but where we go from there, who knows?

Yeah, Glenn and I went into Home a week before our launch in anticipation just to look around. We came away with a pretty funny experience that we shared on the podcast. This doesn't mean we love Home or hate Home. Home is what it is. It's an evolving platform that's very different from what we were first shown several years ago. In some ways it's better and some ways it's worse but it's still evolving. I can now point out issues directly to people at Sony, and believe me, I will. Personally, before this deal, I didn't spend lot of time in Home. I'd go in maybe once a month, once every two months usually just to see what was new. Now that we're in there, yeah, I will be in more, mostly to meet people. You'd be surprised by the number of messages I had in my inbox when I turned on the PS3 coming back from E3, I was certainly floored. There are a ton of people who don't listen to podcasts but liked what they saw in Home and sent me some really nice messages. While I still think Home needs a lot of work, I do believe it has more to offer than most people realize. That's just me though, and I realize that it's not for everyone.

Ultimately we do this show for the community. If we can reach out to a different segment through Home, I'm all for it. This doesn't mean that we endorse Home, it's just another avenue to reach potential listeners and open up some doors at publishers. In the end, more listeners and better access means everybody wins, and yes, I will keep bugging the people at Home about the problems there, I'm just not going to bore the listeners with it every week on the podcast.

you should get these made up and give them as prizes for extra life