The Homerun – 11th June 09; Xi is complete and more
Welcome back. You're a regular here, so why not follow us on Twitter too...
This week on the Homerun we discuss the end of the Xi reality game in PlayStation Home, as well as a Killzone 2 apartment.
So let’s dive in! The big news this week is an end to an era – Xi has finished. The final fragment became available and for everyone who completed all 24 of them on Wednesday, and access through the door at the end of the hub room became available to discover the true identity of Xi.
Today however it is open to everyone and we won’t spoil the surprise if you have yet to check it out but it’s sad to say the ending is a bit of an anti-climax to be honest. All you get for completing it is a couple of ornaments for your apartment that are pretty worthless.
Don’t get us wrong, it was a mostly fun and interesting experience over the past weeks, but we were expecting more for all the hard work we had done. The project feels a bit unfinished and its potential not taken advantage of.
Still if you are new to Xi or feel like completing some more of the challenges, you still can but be aware that there may be people lurking in the hub who feel like spoiling the ending for everyone else so be careful. And remember, once you walk through that door you cannot come back!
This week we mentioned that the start of hopefully more integration for Killzone 2 had been announced with the unveiling of an apartment to celebrate the game. It is good to see Guerrilla Games show an interest in the online virtual world and we will be keeping our eyes open for more developments in the future.
Home now takes you to other planets! Welcome to Helghan Home avatars!
In the last Homerun we mentioned that a feature film would be getting a special promotion inside of Home. We now know that said game is in fact Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as we suspected and what they are doing sounds quite cool.
They will be running what they call a Treasure Hunt where posters promoting the game will be planted around Home featuring a mini-game when you select it. Completing a game will earn you a unique voucher code to redeem for some exclusive merchandise in PS Home. For full details read the press release here.
By the way we have news courtesy of the European PlayStation forums on the Buzz! space that was pulled down due to a problem last week. The developers have discovered the problem and are now working to fix it and we shall hear more on this before the end of the month. We guess there’s little chance we will see it again within the next two weeks then.
There are no new notable content updates this week for both major regions although with the E3 conference last week, it’s no wonder that its a bit quiet this week as a lot was announced then with spaces set to arrive in the near future. Luckily we have heard that there will be another content update for Europe next week – No news for North America though.
So there you have it for this week’s Homerun. We wish there was a bit more to talk about but there really is nothing much to discuss since most announcements came from around E3. We’re looking forward to seeing what’s new next week!
Xi wasn’t long enough for me, ill be getting freebies though
Having messed about with Xi for longer than I would have liked I got to wondering about the point of it all.
Of course its about Sony Testing out the capability of using Home as a tool for corporate collaboration on different projects. Product design, system development etc. I can see software developers using the tools we messed about with in home to share and co-operate in game development.
Link this to the article you ran a couple of days ago about the secret teamsters in the dungeons of naughty dog sharing code. Imagine developers actually sharing across a private zone in Home.
Forget about emailing files and VPN, it’s all in a virtual developer studio and server in Home.
And it’s not restricted to Sony. Any company can do the same with their product, be it shoe design, machinery, molecular biology or software development.
Nice observation Turk – only had a brief look at it m’self (too many other games to play, not a bad curse to have
) but admit didn’t realise the possible underlying reason. Think home keeps getting better though – the recent Star Trek promotion was cool (helped by the movie being really good, but Transformers looks promising as well 
), and new apartments and spaces are always good – thanks for another sterling update whoelse 
.
I just completed Xi with all fragments and butterflies. I thought it was pretty well done. Some of the puzzles were pretty tough. I’m looking forward to ….Xi-2?
Wow! a Killzone apartment,
i hate Home i thinks its pants lol but this might just tempt me back into it.
[...] very happy because unlike in the last Homerun, we have a tonne to fit in this week so lets go straight into business and talk PlayStation [...]