Sony: In-Home Game Launching The Developer's Responsibility
See Full ImageSometimes, it helps to get your information correct. For those who wish to blame Sony for the lack of games that support in-Home launching, bear in mind that it's up to the developers.
Ever since PlayStation Home launched in December of last year, one of its most appealing attributes was the ability to launch multiplayer games from directly within the application. Full capability didn't actually arrive until a few months ago, but since then, everyone has been asking when more games will start supporting this nifty feature. Well, according to the North American Home Manager, known as Locust_Star to the PlayStation Community, this is entirely in a developer's hands. As he said on the PlayStation Blog:
"We’ve built the game launching feature in on our end. It is up to the developers of these titles to implement on their end. If you want to encourage a developer to patch their title to support game launching in Home, we fully encourage you to email them, leave a message on their forums/blogs, etc."
In other words, the responsibility kinda falls to the gamer and the game designer; Sony has provided us with the opportunity, and we need to take advantage. Sony certainly can't force developers to allow in-Home launching for every game they make, so if we want it, we gotta ask for it. The more popular it becomes, the more developers will opt to utilize the feature and then this won't be an issue any longer. But like we said at the start, just be sure who you're accusing...
7/22/2009 John Shepard
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Comments (30 posts)
WorldEndsWithMe
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 @ 11:03:21 PM
5 up, 1 down
Highlander
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 @ 11:39:48 PM
You are correct.
@Migabyte
Home was supposed to be viable as a primary interface for PS3 users. Not to replace the XMB, but provide an immersive alternative. Game launching from within Home is part of that.
With Game launching you and your friends can get together and kick off a multi-player game session right there.
4 up, 0 down
migabyte
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 @ 11:45:39 PM
2 up, 1 down
kevinater321
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 @ 11:56:55 PM
1 up, 5 down
kreate
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 12:30:21 AM
if u are in a personal space, than u can talk to everyone freely without phoning anyone. and everyone near u can hear u when u speak. even the ones who are not on ur friends list.
game launching is not necessarily important. but it becomes important cuz there are people who wants to launch their games in ps home. and it is a feature sony promised so we should get it. but this article explains whats been going on with the game launching feature.
2 up, 0 down
KevinCairo
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 @ 10:57:08 PM
Reply
3 up, 0 down
Jojoman
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 @ 11:31:33 PM
Reply
3 up, 0 down
Highlander
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 @ 11:45:25 PM
Reply
That said, I don't understand why it would be up to the developer for basic game launching where you simply launch the game as you would from the XMB. I can see it being up to the developer to implement the multi-player launching. But for a single player local start of the game, Home has to be able to do that.
2 up, 0 down
kevinater321
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 12:04:11 AM
Reply
2 up, 1 down
kreate
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 12:37:50 AM
its always a common complaint about ps home lacking content by people. but what more does people want sony to do?
they've been giving us free mini games every month. even M rated games. we should appreciate sony more for giving us so many mini games in home as well as providing such a service for free.
but... it seems like no matter what sony does, people always want more.
Last edited by kreate on 7/23/2009 12:38:16 AM
3 up, 0 down
kevinater321
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 2:12:28 PM
0 up, 0 down
kevinater321
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 12:04:28 AM
Reply
2 up, 6 down
CH1N00K
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 8:39:31 AM
2 up, 0 down
Ben Dutka PSXE [Administrator]
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 11:07:57 AM
1 up, 0 down
kevinater321
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 2:10:51 PM
@ Hezzron...thats just messed up.
@ ben, you have no idea how right you are :P
0 up, 0 down
barotrauma
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 2:51:56 AM
Reply
1 up, 2 down
Highlander
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 3:47:57 AM
Putting game launching support into a game is more of a question of API calls than anything else, it's not a huge effort on the part of the developer as long as it's done up front, retrofitting game launching from Home into a existing game is a more involved process because you have to do a lot of re-testing. Compared to the complexity of programming AI, a render engine, Physics model, or any of the other things you listed, adding game launching support for Home is a walk in the park.
Frankly, the current mania for shoe horning an online multi-player component into games is responsible for infinitely more headaches for developers than adding standardized support for game launching in Home.
2 up, 0 down
CH1N00K
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 8:42:06 AM
1 up, 0 down
___________
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 5:10:39 AM
Reply
M$ force updates on the developers.
sonys like meh its up to you, if you dont want to support it thats fine.
devs are lazy, there only going to do the work they have to.
there not going to use these features until you force it onto them.
2 up, 1 down
The Stig
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 6:50:43 AM
1 up, 0 down
Highlander
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 10:00:53 AM
But now, forcing something on developers is considered a good thing when it's Microsoft that does it, and making something optional is a bad thing because Sony does it?
Say what now?
@TheStig
Again, it's incredibly ironic that people say that Sony should be more forceful. Sony has spent the better part of four years defending the use of BluRay technology against the charge that they forced the format on consumers.
2 up, 0 down
The Stig
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 5:46:15 PM
I remember way back Sony saying we will have this feature and that feature, which they have delivered on, but are optional and the developers dont seem to want to use them.
My point being, If they want Home to be the great success they were predicting it to be then I think game launching for all games would be a step in the right direction.
0 up, 0 down
Highlander
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 11:45:45 PM
I agree 100% about game launching being important to Home's success and wider adoption. I think that Sony may ultimately make it mandatory, but will probably just push it publicly with Home users and PS3 users for now in the hope that developers take the hint. I bet that it'll be like trophies though, and Sony will announce in late '09 that game launching support will be mandatory in '10. At least as far as being able to start a game directly from within Home.
0 up, 0 down
___________
Friday, July 24, 2009 @ 9:06:37 AM
Reply
plus if it was such a big problem/ so difficult and time consuming well i dont hear devs complaining that M$ does it.
0 up, 0 down
migabyte
Reply
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 @ 10:16:32 PM