Last night I got the chance to go along to ThreeSpeech’s event at the PlayStation ThreeRooms in London.
It’s basically a massive swanky pad, crammed with ubercoolische interior design, a big free bar, Piles of Blu Ray movies littering shelves, PSPs in toilets that play music at you, oh - and lots of 52” 1080P Bravia TVs. And of course, PlayStation3s.
Kind of like Sonys vision for the digitally connected future home (perhaps without the PSPs in the loo, mind...)
They invite lots of people along to come play games and see PlayStation3s functionality. There are lots of photos on the wall of various people who’ve been and gone - Celebrities, Magazines, Humble gamers and even local primary school kids. It’s quite a good bit of PR.
During the evening there was an exclusive demo session with Phil Harrison, followed by a brief Q&A session. He showed everyone a live demo of Home, and talked extensively about the features available to users and developers. The demos of media sharing were very cool. He took a photo of us sitting in the room, popped the memory stick in and within seconds the photo was in a picture frame placed in his ‘Home apartment’. In another room, he placed a bravia TV on the wall, then made a Casino Royale trailer play on it (it has proximity related audio which was very nice too) and then picked up the TV and threw it down some stairs - with the video continually playing. Looked very silly but everything worked fine.
After that he demoed with 3 other SCEE peeps the rather awesome LittleBigPlanet. Which really was great. It’s so cute! And so much fun to watch, let alone play. Phil pointed out that it's "one of the few games that's as good to watch as it is to play". I took some video.
During the Q & A - which was quite short, I managed to get two questions in.
Is the lobby size of 64 users in Home ever likely to be increased?
He pretty much answered no, saying that if a lobby gets full, new lobbies are, rather obviously, just spawned to cope with extra users. He also said that physically, existing lobbies appear rather crowded when you’ve got 64 people walking around talking to each other. Although in an answer to another question, he did say that it may be possible to increase the user cap on rooms where media sharing is not enabled.
When will the PS3’s remote play functionality be available from outside the home?
This was one question I had to ask - and one of the major reasons I wanted a PS3 in the first place, it's a really great piece of media functionality. I missed this question in the Q&A but managed to ask him afterwards. He said "Remote Play from wireless hotspots? It’s included in the 1.6 update". It’s an awesome feature - allowing you to access any photo, video or audio media stored on your PS3 at home, using your PSP, from anywhere in the world. Nice.
There was lots of other interesting information revealed too, probably a bit too much to take in but Phil did state that the number of working BC titles on the newer PS3 hardware is now at 1200 and rising steadily.
I managed to take some pics and some video, although for some reason my camera decided to tell me my brand new batteries were flat. Typical…
Comments
Great pictures! Very bright and clear. they summarise the evening well.
Andronix
Posted 6 hours 17 minutes 31 seconds after the item.
Hi, I have a question, though I’m not sure you can answer. Just from what you heard, will owners of the 20GB version of the PS3 now be able to use Remote Play as well? (with the 1.6 firmware update) I have a wireless router in my house, and I would really like to be able to access my PS3 via my PSP.
Another question, does the 1200 number of BC titles on the PS3 include PS1 titles, or is it only referring to the number of PS2 titles? I ask because Phil Harrison had originally stated that the PS1 BC list has not changed, and only PS2 titles are effected by the hardware changes.
Trioptical
Posted 1 day 6 hours after the item.
Hmmm - not sure about the remote play on the 20Gb version. But thinking about it - I can’t see why it can’t work. So long as your PS3 is on a network, surely it can connect to a remote PSP elsewhere without the need for wireless (apart from at the PSP end, obviously). Who knows!?
Backwards compatability for PS1 titles is stated to be around 99.9% of all games, so that 1200 figure is mostly PS2 games. Seeing as there were apparently something like 2300 titles released in Europe for the PS2 (er, I think) then they’re already at around 50% which ain’t bad.
But if you’ve already got a 20Gb PS3 - what you worrying about - you’ll have the PS2 game playback via hardware as opposed to us Europeans, who get the Software version… :)
Tom Kiss
Posted 1 day 8 hours after the item.
Thanks for the extra info. I’m just concerned for my fellow PS3 gamers across the pond. No one should have to miss out on God of War II. No one. :)
And some other stuff coming out too.
Trioptical
Posted 1 day 8 hours after the item.
The Japanese press release for version 1.6 of the PS3 software doesn’t mention anything about being able to access your PS3 from any hotspot. It does, however, say that you will be able to use Remote Play on a 20GB PS3 using an external wireless access point (which is good news, since I have a 20GB model). Maybe the other functionality is coming later?
http://www.jp.playstation.com/info/release/nr_20070319_ps3_160.html
icruise
Posted 5 days 8 hours after the item.
does anyone know if the psp can be used as a remote control device for the ps3?
i am not really interested in the feature of streaming ps3 music or movies to the psp. what i would like to do is, for example, browsing through the music library of the ps3 via the psp and selecting songs, skipping and so on, without having to turn on the TV, but still hearing it via the audio system connected to the ps3…
does anyone know if thats possible?
mautzi
Posted 5 days 20 hours after the item.
icruise, you just kind of answered your own question…
Basically, remote play can work from any wireless hotspot - that’s the same as accessing externally too.
mautzi, that’s all possible via remote play.
Tom Kiss
Posted 5 days 21 hours after the item.
aha ok,.. i thought that maybe remoteplay would redirect the sound to the psp and disable the sound output of the ps3 since some of the sites wrote that the ps3 enters some kind of remote play standby mode ...
that means, on the psp in remote play mode, you can select whether the sound should be redirected to the psp or to the sound output connector on the ps3?
mautzi
Posted 5 days 23 hours after the item.
As far as I know - all sound / video is streamed to the PSP.
That’s the way it work currently too, when I’ve tried it at home.
Tom Kiss
Posted 6 days 1 hour after the item.
oh i see… too bad :(
mautzi
Posted 6 days 1 hour after the item.
Just downloaded the update. AFAICT remote streaming is not possible outside the home. While it connected just fine with my wifi hotspot in my house this morning (the hotspot my 60GB PS3 used to download the update) ... I get a “no PS3 systems located” message when I try to connect from work. I think this 1.6 remote play update is more to allow 20GB PS3 users remote functionality in the home, rather than worldwide PS3 access from PSP. Disappointing. That worldwide wifi integration was a big reason why I bought both systems. Hopefully it is still to come. MAYBE it’s a problem with my work wifi??
R
Posted 7 days 20 hours after the item.
Its a real shame to hear that. Maybe he misheard me ask about external access. Although - Lets wait and see. There must be a way of forwarding the PSP to your home IP address…
If its not doable then it *must* be in a future update. Gah.
Tom Kiss
Posted 7 days 21 hours after the item.
“icruise, you just kind of answered your own question…”
I don’t think you understood what I was saying. The press release had no mention of accessing the PS3 from wireless hotspots (these are place *other than* your own wireless network.
icruise
Posted 8 days 4 hours after the item.
Heh - I dont think I understood what you meant either ;)
Well, It was Phil who said ‘wireless hotspots’ so I’m really disappointed in the news that 1.6 doesnt do what he said it would do…
Tom Kiss
Posted 8 days 4 hours after the item.
I don’t think it’s possible to access your PS3 via Remote Play from outside your private network YET, because just imagine, if you’re connected to a hotspot other than your network, then you can access anyone’s PS3 around the world, though that would be cool…
Yes I know… you’re able put passwords, blah blah blah…
And then again, if you could do it over the internet, then it would be pretty slow if you had slow internet. Plus if it somehow displayed everyone’s PS3 from around the world, you would have to go through a LOOOOOOOONG list to find yours, unless it was somehow automated…
Just a thought. ^_^
flipout707
Posted 12 days 15 hours after the item.
Really i Like those three interior design,And also I like those three pictures.Great pictures! Very bright and clear. they summaries the evening well.I would like to thank you for sharing your thoughts. You are putting very good effort into the stuff you post. Keep up the good work. I will continue reading more
Stephen Joseph
Posted 1 year 8 months and 30 days after the item.