| GameBump |

Voice Chat Temporarily Removed From Home

Zach Lott — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:55:54 -0600

In an attempt to alleviate some of the technical issues that are currently plaguing the Home beta, Sony did some system maintenance this morning and issued a patch that upgrades Home to version 1.04, which includes a temporary suspension of voice chat, according to the Playstation Blog.

"As soon as we are ready to resume the voice chat feature, we will inform you via PlayStation.com and PlayStation.Blog. In the meantime, we encourage users to make use of the Wireless Keypad for PLAYSTATION 3 or any USB or Bluetooth-enabled keyboard for text chat and also the 'phone friend' features to communicate within PlayStation Home," said Abagail Murphy, PR Manager for PSN.

Sony has been garnering harsh criticism from those frustrated with the numerous error codes and connection issues as well as those upset with the lack of content, but at least they're trying to fix things on the technical side. We'll let you know if any other announcements regarding the situation are made.

Wrath of the Lich King Prepares For Beta

Zach Lott — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:24:37 -0500

Attention, World of Warcraft fans: WoW Insider is reporting that Wrath of the Lich King, the next WoW expansion, is no longer in alpha and will soon be entering beta. This means that those selected from the pool of entries for beta access should soon be getting their invites.

Blizzard has a website set up that contains information for those of you who get beta keys, like how to create a Blizzard account and access client files needed to play.

Remember, there are quite a few beta scams out there, so make sure you're careful with where you disclose your account information.

Sony Plans Open Beta For Home In 2008

Zach Lott — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:31:32 -0500

After years of promises and hype, it looks like Sony is finally getting ready to start an open beta for Home, their virtual community service for the PS3.

Chris Kohler over at Wired squeezed the information out of Susan Panico, senior director for the Playstation Network, in an interview yesterday. She told him that the beta is still on track for the promised 2008 release and that the "rollout will be similar to Gmail."

With E3 coming up next month, it wouldn't be too far out there to speculate that perhaps Sony will reveal more details at their press conference. Stay tuned.

PlayStation Home (beta) Receives Update 0.7.7

Shiva Stella — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:20:00 -0600

We haven't heard much lately regarding PlayStation Home, but to prove that Sony is in fact working on it here's the most recent beta update (version 0.7.7) with appropriate fixes or new features:

Theres a new building in the world, but you can't yet enter it
You are finally able to enter your Home Spaces patio
You can now use your own pictures in your Home Space
A game launching option has been added, though it is not functioning completely at the present time
The cinemas movie theaters have transferred from the second floor to the first floor
America, Japan, and Europe each have their own server now

For more information on Home straight from the very talkative beta testers, head over to the the PS3 forums. Here's an interesting snippet from a tester:

It's funny, but I've been messing around with the beta for the past half hour and I can't do anything that's new. I can't select my own pictures from my HDD because whenever I go into that option the whole PS3 locks up and I have to manually shut off the system. As far as launching games goes, that's another no-go. Disc-based games never boot up and games on the HDD simply reset my PS3. Thus far it's nice to see the options there, but not so nice that I can't actually do anything right now. This is by and far the best update they've ever done, once they get the bugs worked out.

Hopefully Sony will launch this service with all the features gamers have been asking for, primarily headed by in-game messaging demands.