While many gamers consider PlayStation Home to be a bit of a flop, the online plaza has enabled a number of companies to grow at a rapid rate over the past five or so years. One such outfit is nDreams, the British-based developer behind the virtual world’s free-to-play Aurora space. However, as the online service teeters towards irrelevancy, the Farnborough firm is now turning its attention to the future – and the PlayStation 4.
“I’m delighted to be able to officially announce that we are working on a PS4 title, which will launch in 2014,” said company CEO Patrick O’Luanaigh as part of a message to stakeholders. “More details will follow next year, but it’s the most ambitious game that we have ever created, and we can’t wait to reveal more about it – it’s going to be something truly special.”
Fascinatingly, in addition to its work on PlayStation Home, the studio has also been experimenting with Oculus Rift, creating the popular SkyDIEving demo for the virtual reality peripheral. With Sony rumoured to be hard at work on a headset of its own, we can’t help but wonder if the platform holder may have enlisted the developer to come up with some software to support the device.
Either way, the company’s not entirely done with PlayStation Home just yet. “Equally important will be our continuing support of [the virtual world] with a host of new items, outfits, spaces, games, and some exciting new technology,” continued O’Luanaigh. “We’re very proud to have had over 14 million visits to Aurora since it started, and we’re planning several new updates to Aurora for 2014 along with some surprises.” You better practice your Running Man performance, then.
[source s3.ndreams.com, via playstationlifestyle.net]
Comments 7
"While many gamers consider PlayStation Home to be a bit of a flop."
On PS3 I would be one of those gamers. It would take forever to load up and more times than not it would end up freezing anytime I used it.
There were a few decent game on Home but in the end I found Home to be more a hassle than anything else.
I don't have a PS4 but hopefully it runs better on it than it does on PS3.
@Splat Tellingly, it's not available on PS4...
Recent core updates have cut loading times greatly and added new menu functions, and the new "Challenges" have been a big hit. n'Dreams made it quite obvious in their statement that they have more to do and new technologies to be introduced. While Home may not be to everyones liking it's still the best virtual world out there still growing while others have died. There's still no official word on Home for PS4 but I've seen articles where Home dev's and Sony employees mention Home in the cloud, with the Gaikai service still a year away we may have a long wait to find out. The cloud could possibly take Home off of the console and direct to TV and web connected devices, even tablets and mobile devices. And BTW I haven't done the running man in ages, The Harlem Shake or B-boy Moves are now the rage with Locomotion items allowing for more choice in personal customization. Playstation Home is far from irrelevant or disappearing anytime soon, even if it doesn't make the PS4 it will still thrive and grow on the PS3 for many years to come.
I liked PlayStation Home. Yeah it took some time to load, but once I was there, I met a lot of cool people and did a lot of bowling.
I think it should be brought over to one of the PS4's cloud servers, it seems like something that would really benefit from it.
I didnt care much for PS home either. It was a cool concept and had a lot of potential but in the end I think it turned out to be a glass half full. It just failed to fully grab my attention and I often overlooked it. One thing that I will say is I think PlayStation Home was well ahead of it's time. When you look at what's going on now with Social network sites like Facebook, Twiiter, Instagram, etc. Some kind of evolution of PS Home seems like the next step. Imagine if Facebook were to do something like this. In fact I expect they will someday.
Home is just too slow to be usable. If loading times were faster, it would be interesting.
PS Home had a great concept but the current technology wasn't just enough to properly implement them, extremely long loading times, constant download times turned the game into a headache.
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