There are a number of things within the article that are seem unprofessional, some more than others: "and, if I may recklessly dismiss and generalize something that I deliberately choose not to understand, are only used by lunatics and shut-ins." Here Jeff is essentially calling anybody who is interested in PS Home lunatics and social failures with no life. "Or is it because most people simply aren't interested in some creepy emote-based chat room where 30 guys are doing the robot while trying to hit on the one female avatar in the area and 30 more guys are trying to tell you that you aren't cool if you don't go buy some more virtual bucket hats and headphones for your already-far-too-metrosexual-looking avatars?" Once again, Jeff is grossly generalizing the kinds of people who go to these places. The fact he says he is interested in Home at the end is irrelevant as hes already thoroughly offended anyone who read this. "The Cross Media Bar could also use an update. A media hub needs more than simple vertical scrolling to make it useful for listening to audio or viewing video clips. If we all had five songs to our name, the current system would work; but many of us have a lot more songs in the real world where 30GB MP3 players are the norm. You don't vertically scroll your way through 5,000 songs." Here the author essentially calls the XMB crap, because you know..you have to have all 5,000 songs on a single list. Now, I don't know about the rest of you but I sure don't do that even on my MP3 player. What I do is I group songs/videos based upon group and genre. Also sometimes I use things like "Videogame music" to seperate a wide swath from the rest. Last time I checked nobody complained about iPods having this "vertical scroll" as he puts it. "Apart from being good bragging fodder, points, achievements, and the PS3's trophies serve no purpose. To make matters worse--and at the risk of sounding like an egotist here--I'm probably not going to care much about your trophy case, just as I suspect you won't give a sweet Christmas about mine. Instead, we're all simply concerned about our own collections." That just doesn't belong there plain and simple. Everyone KNOWS achievements are pointless, has anybody from Gamespot criticized Microsoft over this? NO, they rave about the stupid things and score games based partially upon them. The "Trophies" are more interesting than the danged JPEG icons on XBL in any case. Those kinds of things are designed to be useless, so why is he dedicating an entire paragraph to that? "The socializing aspect reminds me too much of Second Life and The Sims Online, neither of which makes interacting with others any more fun than sending an instant message or chatting on the phone. And it all strikes me as too cluttered to matter all that much. Aside from adding a few minigames, how much will Home really add to the core gaming experience? I'm interested in playing games, not in inhabiting a 3D interactive MySpace." This entire thing utterly glosses over the game-related functions that we KNOW are going into Home and minimizing the significance of such an interface on a game console as something so deep and graphical hasn't ever been done before. Once again, while they rave about Miis they are calling this garbage. Deferential treatment. "especially considering Sony's spotty history with hardware problems for both the original PlayStation and the PlayStation 2. What Sony needs to do to catch my eye, and the eyes of shrewd consumers, is to make the console a solid long-term investment overall in three primary ways. First, the company should ensure that hardware failures cause its users a minimum of inconvenience. There needs to be a fast, reliable way to get any hardware issue resolved (whether that be through mail-order, service centers, or both) along with a retroactive lifetime guarantee on every unit sold. Given the infamous track record of unreliability that PlayStation hardware has, putting down $600 (and much more in Euros) is a hard commitment to make, but a worry-free guarantee of fast and perpetual support for repairs would help." Heres an implication that PS3 has crap hardware and will break down on you, theres no acknowledgment that it is the most reliable console out there plain and simple. Theres no acknowledgment of that anywhere there. "Finally, Sony needs to provide stronger support of the hardware with value additions that make the PS3 more than just a game console. PS3 Home is an interesting start, but as a Blu-ray player, for instance, the hardware has stalled. Unlike the original PS2, which was arguably a Trojan Horse for the DVD format back in 2000 and sold extremely well as the first DVD player for many households, the PS3 hasn't been anywhere near as successful with the Blu-ray format." 1) The PS3 has more multimedia features than any other console ever released at launch did. 2) The PS3 has made Blu-Ray into the leading next-gen optical format. "This solution may sound absurdly simple, but try to remember the last time before the "Home" announcement that you read anything good about what Sony was doing with the PlayStation 3. It was a long time ago, wasn't it? It doesn't necessarily need to be big news all of the time, but let people know that things are going well. Tell us you've got a big game locked up as an exclusive, brag about a new original downloadable game, continue to release classic PlayStation games on the PS3 for play on the PSP, and while you're at it, make them playable on the PlayStation 3 as well." 1) Because PS Home, LBP, R&C Future, news of additional Resistance and Motorstorm content, Playstation Edge, ect. isn't enough good news for a month. They obviously need to release good news. 2) They are releasing new information on exclusives, releasing new info on downloadable games, in the 1.54 (or was it 1.6) firmware there is supposed to be support for PS1 games on PS3. The entire article is designed to start flame-wars and increase their hit count for month. Half of their 10 things have serious problems with them, the other half are already being acted upon. Call it an editorial all you want Gamespot but the thing reads like libel.

The methods of this are questionable...from startup? It takes approximately 5 seconds to get to the XMB, another 5-10 at least to travel to the UMD selection. They don't mention whether the UMD is already inserted or not..that means tack on another 10-15 seconds if that is the case. Way to go Gamespot!