Home abusers can be turned off and banned, warns Sony (LINK)

Home boss discusses bannings and branding for mature users

Peter Edward, director of the Home platform for Sony, has told an audience at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival that users who consistently abuse the upcoming Home service face having their machines banned and disabled from being used online.

In an admittedly radical but possible step, Edward noted that a serious abuser would "have to move house and buy a new PS3 before they could get online again."

Edward was discussing supervising the Home environment, although Sony doesn't intend to become a "virtual police" force. Instead, it will be providing different areas within Home depending on the age of the user, helping to apply appropriate non-game branding for products such as cigarettes and alcohol.

"Ultimately we know a users details, we know machine details and we know where they live," said Edward

"If you really feel like you've been abused or that someone has just shown wholly inappropriate behaviour then you are able to complain about it. If you really, really misbehave you can have your console disconnected at a machine level, so you would actually have to move house and buy a new PS3 before you could get online again.

"Clearly that's not something we would want to be doing very often but as a disincentive to mess round too much it's in our power," he admitted.

Rather, Sony expects players to police themselves and other users, taking advantage of various methods for blocking communication with any users that are disruptive.

"It's a hard line to draw because we don't want to be walking around telling everyone off for saying 'bloody' so we've got to strike a balance there," said Edward.

"We're going to be relying on users assessing what's appropriate to them - if they've been subject to behaviour they don't like they can complain about it rather than we walk around as virtual police."

With a presentation featuring potential branding from Durex, Marlboro and Bacardi, Edward said that it's not Sony's intention to offer a sanitised experience, and that more mature gamers can expect to see the same products advertised online as in the real world.

"It's relatively simple to be confident that somebody is over 18. So it's no problem to have areas that are only open to those aged 18 years' and over. We are able to do that quite comprehensively, we have access to the log-in data that they use for the PlayStation Network," offered Edward.

"Undoubtedly there are going to be some things and some brands that we are not going to want to be involved in the environment at any stage.

"But a large proportion of our demographic is over 18 so we will make a point of catering to that demographic - we certainly don't want to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator," he said.

Link

Hopefully this should curb the inevitable ad's that were going to spring up, i mean did any of you play WoW? Had people randomly shouting about free gold and stuff. I imagine it would be the same.

FREE TROPHIES HEREZ!!11 PAY US $20 KTHX

Hopefully this should curb the inevitable ad's that were going to spring up, i mean did any of you play WoW? Had people randomly shouting about free gold and stuff. I imagine it would be the same.

FREE TROPHIES HEREZ!!11 PAY US $20 KTHX

Raio_

does Home allow you to sell stuff? if it doesn't... then i don't think that problem woul occur.

i'm just worried about users going around and saying "wanna see young teens? check my XXX site at blahblahblah.com/XXX"

[QUOTE="Raio_"]

Hopefully this should curb the inevitable ad's that were going to spring up, i mean did any of you play WoW? Had people randomly shouting about free gold and stuff. I imagine it would be the same.

FREE TROPHIES HEREZ!!11 PAY US $20 KTHX

c0mplex

does Home allow you to sell stuff? if it doesn't... then i don't think that problem woul occur.

i'm just worried about users going around and saying "wanna see young teens? check my XXX site at blahblahblah.com/XXX"

I'm sure that is inevitable from the looks of it.

-777-

do u think there would be virtual store in home?? like for example a virtual 3d eb games where they even have a shop assistant, where u can purchase a ps3 game with a credit card from the store??bigLLL

Hopefully the shop assistant isn't a 360 fanboy. :P

We're obviously at a threshold - with the PSN and MS Marketplace and Nintendo's vending. There is a real possibility that the next few generations will eliminate physical copies of games. It was said it couldn't be done with music, then iTunes came along.

It would be funny to see actual Sony HOME police officers, in their police uniform and patrolling the place. :P

It would be funny to see actual Sony HOME police officers, in their police uniform and patrolling the place. :P

Thomas-Crown

This is dewmandew7 and I support this post.

We're obviously at a threshold - with the PSN and MS Marketplace and Nintendo's vending. There is a real possibility that the next few generations will eliminate physical copies of games. It was said it couldn't be done with music, then iTunes came along.

Caduceus06

That could be cool, not having to load in discs to switch games, but I doubt it'll happen and here's why:

The amount of music that is stored on a CD is minimal compared to the average PC's and iPod's storage capacity, making it practical to condense several CDs into your pocket to listen to whichever songs you wanted.

With games starting to take up more and more space and Blu-Ray discs being able to store sickening amounts of data, Sony (and other console makers) would have to provide gamers with enormous hard drives - I'm talking upwards of 1000GB for it to even be possible to store somewhere between 20 games (@ 50 GB ea) and 50 games (@ 20 GB ea). That's not really a lot of games.A hard-core gamer could buy around6 games a year for8 years and that's 48 games. If Sony plans on using the PS3 for 10 years, then an 8-year PS3 isn't unheard of...

It would be funny to see actual Sony HOME police officers, in their police uniform and patrolling the place. :P

Thomas-Crown

Thats a good ideal.They should do that.

[QUOTE="Caduceus06"]

We're obviously at a threshold - with the PSN and MS Marketplace and Nintendo's vending. There is a real possibility that the next few generations will eliminate physical copies of games. It was said it couldn't be done with music, then iTunes came along.

rptransam09

That could be cool, not having to load in discs to switch games, but I doubt it'll happen and here's why:

The amount of music that is stored on a CD is minimal compared to the average PC's and iPod's storage capacity, making it practical to condense several CDs into your pocket to listen to whichever songs you wanted.

With games starting to take up more and more space and Blu-Ray discs being able to store sickening amounts of data, Sony (and other console makers) would have to provide gamers with enormous hard drives - I'm talking upwards of 1000GB for it to even be possible to store somewhere between 20 games (@ 50 GB ea) and 50 games (@ 20 GB ea). That's not really a lot of games.A hard-core gamer could buy around6 games a year for8 years and that's 48 games. If Sony plans on using the PS3 for 10 years, then an 8-year PS3 isn't unheard of...

I feel like they might run into false reports if they're only going to go off of people's complaints. Let's take the example that some person insults you, so you get mad and leave that server. That user who insulted you could file a complaint that you said something to him that was inappropriate. They need a way to review what actually happened to make the right call and not go around banning people's consoles going off of what one user or a group said about them. I can see entire clans filing complaints just because they lost to some guy in a game.The_Rick_14

well if that wer true then everybody would be banned from xbox live considering there's more immaturity than an elementary school.

plus i doubt unless you did something like put gay porno all over your private space and invite everybody in sony wouldn't care. and even fi they ban or something they'll give you a warning first or ban you for like a week or something.

"If you really, really misbehave you can have your console disconnected at a machine level, so you would actually have to move house and buy a new PS3 before you could get online again."---Yea, right. Why do sony execs feel the need to exaggerate all the time?feryl06

Imagine if you buy a refurbished PS3 only to find out that machine has been disabled... how mad would you be?!

[QUOTE="feryl06"]"If you really, really misbehave you can have your console disconnected at a machine level, so you would actually have to move house and buy a new PS3 before you could get online again."---Yea, right. Why do sony execs feel the need to exaggerate all the time?PonyPS3

Imagine if you buy a refurbished PS3 only to find out that machine has been disabled... how mad would you be?!

Good point.. didn't think about that.

Will home be free ?AgentA-Mi6

Yep

I feel like they might run into false reports if they're only going to go off of people's complaints. Let's take the example that some person insults you, so you get mad and leave that server. That user who insulted you could file a complaint that you said something to him that was inappropriate. They need a way to review what actually happened to make the right call and not go around banning people's consoles going off of what one user or a group said about them. I can see entire clans filing complaints just because they lost to some guy in a game.The_Rick_14

To the_rick, That is an absolutely brilliant deduction! I could totally imagine it happening. I guess the only way to protect yourself is to enable any chat ability with people that you actually know and then not try and tick them off. Brilliant my man....brilliant!