PS Home = WOW. Sony is upping the ante.

[windbane]

TheSource said:2) Can't Nintendo (in Japan) essentially negate this service with a really cohesive Animal Crossing game as an online hub? I imagine a section of Tom Nook's store where I can download a portion of DQIX and send it via wifi to my DS, or a "Hotel", where I can meet travelling avatar who come to trade goods or (simply fruit) on the 'stalk market'. Previous iterations of Animal Crossing already had 'other content' like Donkey Kong, so I don't see why the downloads couldn't become more sophisticated on Wii. If Wii sells in the same pattern as the DS in Japan, AC Wii would reach millions, potentially far more successful than Home consider PS3 may not even have a million users in Japan until May....

shams said: Exactly right. Apart from "doing it first", there is no technical reason MS & Nintendo couldn't copy *exactly* the same system. The Wii may struggle in terms of caching (and will have less realistic avatars/Mii's), but apart from that - it could be exactly the same. Still - kudos to Sony for doing it first. Now they just have to make it real... and make it work (anyone remember Killzone/Motorstorm at E3 a few years ago?).

A few thouhts on this: I'm getting a Wii so I'm all for Nintendo expanding the service...but some have complained that they fear the Home will not make things accessible fast enough, that you'll have to walk to places to get to them. I think there will be a menu that zooms you places. I have not played animal crossing so maybe someone can help me here, but would zooming around be possible/fair in Animal Crossing? I guess teleporting to certain places or to a menu that goes to other games would be fair. The big difference though is that the PS3 has a HD that will have more on it to access from the Home than a Wii could from a S/D card. Anyway, my favorite quote here is "doing it first" because this truly is a unique combination of features in a fantastic looking world. Creating a similar world would be copying Sony. Sony may have borrowed some features but it's features that are common to many devices and are just common sense. Kudos to Microsoft for being the first to do achievement points (although other games have leaderboards and such, but over an entire console is nice), but really, is it that unique of an idea? Why should other companies be called "copy cats" for coming up with something that keeps up with progress in games. NCAA Football has a "trophy case" from winning stuff. EA also did achievement points across all of their games first on the PS2 at least. It saved on the memory card and auto unlocked stuff when you loaded a new game based on how many previous games you played. Microsoft got the idea from other uses of rewards. Anyway...Sony is not the first to do a social online world, they are not the first to have avatars, they are not the first to stream content in a "game" world (music at least...not sure if video streaming has been done...), BUT they are the first to combine all these into a console based world and make it so good looking. I do hope they add unrealistic avatars though. I'd rather not put myself in there...maybe I will...