Home....no it will be released

A PS3 Fanboy tipster (left anonymous to protect his identity) told us about a new update to the Home beta. The update adds a few redesigned locales, like a brand new Home Square. A new music application is being added to the central square as a meeting place for Home's virtual citizens. Here, they can listen to music as a group and even virtually dance.

The beta program will continue to expand over the next few weeks, and looking at the version number -- it won't be long until this baby reaches good ol' one point zero. At that point, is Home considered officially "ready"?

(ps3 fanboy)

Oooooo here we go, this is looking promising, by my calculations this should see Home arive in 4-8 weeks.....I'll let you do the math and the speculation for yourselves.

Quote PS3 fanboy

Qore, Future's monthly PS3 video magazine, has a history of delivering (with questionable timeliness) betas for many popular Sony titles. Well, it looks like they may also grant access to the open beta of Home. A comment on the PlayStation.Blog from Sony's Kevin Furuichi hints at the possibility. "We're working on this for the current Extended Closed Beta. We are trying to get you guys [Qore subscribers] into Home before the official public beta. We hope to have more information in about two weeks."

Quote from PS3 Fanboy
On top of the list of common misconceptions here at our fine site is that there is never any good news concerning Home. We kid, we kid. We do actually have some good news though -- during Sony's Japanese press conference, it was announced that Home's open beta is on track for release in Japan later in the month. The open beta will end in November, at which time we take for granted, in the absence of proof to the contrary, that the final product will be released.

Additionally, it was announced that 24 additional publishers have just signed on to create content for Home. Jem noted that Square Enix is conspicuously absent, but the inclusion of some of the big boys like Disney and Activision does provide a bit of relief. No word on whether this carries over to the North American or European versions.

OK so if you've noticed theres a Firmware update due out tomorrow (see Firmware thread) the fabled 2.50........why fabled? Well thats the majic number which knocks the Home beta from the 0.9X verssion to version Home 1.0........thats the point where Home goes from a closed Beta to an open beta, ie it's openly available to the general public..........ooooeeerrrrrr! Now if you've followed this thread then you'd have noticed the date is very much in the air but The link was the Firmware update which as of today has been nailed down.........Yeah stuff like this usualy gets info released about 2 days or less by sony LOL
So anyway heres a little bit of factual meat to put on all this "sketchy" info, the following is quote from various sources mostly eminating from Sonys official blog.

Posted on the 19th of september......
A tipster from the Home beta took a snapshot of this recent thread in the beta message board. A bug affecting Home users got a response from the Home Manager, "TedtheDog." The bug currently freezes PS3 systems running the beta and also gives users sporadic Network errors. He says that the bug will be fixed in an upcoming system software update. "2.5 is what we're waiting for and 'October' is what I've heard, later October is my guess."

The firmware update will also be released in conjunction with Home version 1.00, according to the post. Currently, the beta is at version 0.98. The simultaneous release of firmware 2.50 and Home 1.00 has us thinking that perhaps this could mark the beginning of the wide release of Home. Stay tuned.

Update: Since writing this article, the PS.blog has updated about the expansion of the Home beta. More invites are being sent to users right now. The continued growth of the beta adds even more weight to the possibility that the final version of Home will be available next month.

OK so the release of home 1.0 dosn't coincide with firmware 2.50.....but it dose come "shortly" after it........Now were less than 24 hours till 2.50 all eyes are on the release of Home....There is quite alot of speculation on it hitting a just before the 360 firmware update......but I'll let you go find when that is, well I'm not doing all the work LOL

Qore subscribers will be given the keys to Home today so, naturally, the assumption was that European beta invites will be sent out around the same time. While it seems that won't be happening today it shouldn't be too long. TedTheDog, community manager at the official European PlayStation forums, has said that a new wave of beta invites will be sent out once Home gets to version 1.0

The names of those who will be receiving invites have already been chosen, so it can't be too far away. If you're not on the list, though, Ted says not to worry as "Open Beta will be along within weeks of" the invites being sent out. Things are looking good for a beta launch happening before Christmas. Did you ever doubt it? Yeah, so did we.

In the scheme of things looks like the "get home out before the 360 update is big on sonys agenda. this is from the official sony home site, posted by the forums comander in chief. Seems home is nearly with us.

Excited? Me too
Frustrated? Sorry, but not long now.

Heres a rough overview of the coming weeks:
The version 1.0 Patch Notes will be published in the closed beta forum so they know what to expect and to help plan testing.
A couple of days later Version 1.0 will be released into the Closed beta. That will not happen this week.
SCEE will be inviting a large number of extra testers into the closed beta to load test and that process will start within a day or so of v1.0 going live. We wont invite them all straight away, we'll ramp it up over a a period of time. We will be inviting non-English speaking testers for the first time. Languages covered will be English, French, Italian, German and Spanish. Please remember these are languages, not countries, so more than the immediately obvious countries will be included to a degree. The lists have been chosen already, dont try changing your language to get included!
Once we start inviting people in to the Closed Beta the public SCEE Home forums will become the Home beta test forums.
The date of Open Beta start will be announced in advance
Open Beta starts and that will be just as it implies, Open to all


Theres more detail that I'll bring to you about bug reporting, forum changes etc closer to the time.

Finally, Home Open Beta is the start of a long journey, not the end of one. I know I've said this a lot recently but I see many of you are thinking of Home Open Beta like a game release in that you're expecting the final version to be launched with just some patches and maybe some DLC to come afterwards. Home Beta is a service that will grow from the foundation of v1.0 over the coming months and years so thinking of it as a start rather than a finish will help you understand where its going and what its all about. We all appreciate you've been waiting a long time to be a part of this journey and we hope you enjoy it once your onboard with us.


Ted

Quick heads up I've stolen / aquired a host PS3 that will be on at specific times given on the forum! this means Online Fanboyz will have it's own area within Home on the PSN! this will be on a specific gamer tag which I'll PM to people when the rooms up in the next few weeks. if that gamertag is active on your friends list it means the forum home area is open guys. from here we can run games post up pics and time trials and a few videos as well, All clan matches will also start from here with some of the specific game rooms being tied into it.....if you see a note on the wall saying "gone to SOCOM room" you'lll find us there running some tactics on the maps and waiting for other clans LOL

It's going to be a little rough around the edges at first and all imput will be welcome, one main area is to use it to pull in new forum members for instance so expect to see quite a bit of forum content up on the walls and on the Home TV system including race pics time trial results and future events.

Latest info from those in the know ove at the offical Home forum is that the system is now being put under load with European users in final testing over the next couple of weeks ready for the "Open Beta" stage this means it's Ready!!! Home will be available to download for FREE in the next few weeks as soon as the servers are stable. Got a quick go in the closed beta recently and yes it's been worth the wait. Don't expect this thing to re invent the wheel as it's still very much work in progress and will be for the next 12 months but its core elements and those that we will be using are very much polished and ready to go!

Online fanboyz clubhouse people?

Complete with dancing girls & drugs.

Dancing girls and soft drinks on the forums budget I'm afraid, and the "girls" could be a dubious description LOL

Home released tommorow 11.12.08 Expect Fanboyz club to be up and running by end of play, PM me for invite if your not on my friends list already.

Owen