Sony boss Phil Harrison, who will be doing a keynote at the Game Developers Conference next week, has previously said PS3 fans would be “very happy” with his announcements. His surprise has now been preempted!
To quote: “Basically, you get to make an avatar for your console (like a Mii) and this avatar has a room. As you play games and accomplish certain tasks, you will receive items with which to adorn the room that are specific to the game (like Achievements). The kicker is that this is going to be a new requirement for every PS3 game.”
On bringing social networking to PS3: “So we move from product based to service based, starting with packaged product augmented by downloadble content. We’ll enhance this with social networks, the MySpace experience, this will be a key part of the PlayStation3 going forward. What brings it to life is the voice chat, the text chat, the video, the social features we’re building in for the future.”
Kotaku received this news from a Sony source that led the head of SCEA PR to blacklist them yesterday because they reported the news against Sony’s wishes. While normally Sony would respond with “we don’t comment on rumors”, they in effect confirmed the news as Mr. Harrison’s upcoming announcement! Obviously Sony thought they could control and time the info they put out to the blog and sought to stronghand the blog into submission by threatening to take away their PS3 and cancel all interviews, which they did, until public outcry forced Sony to make up. Despite all the drama, at least now we know what the HOME button on the Sixaxis PlayStation 3 controller is really for.