Levi Buzolic

Well it’s here. Just not here.

China, Japan, USA, Australia and Europe have all received their limited initial shipments and the numbers aren’t too impressive. It will probably be weeks before pre-orders are filled in most places, though it looks like Australia’s numbers are the worst of the bunch.

Rumours floating around DP Review and OCAU suggest that Australia’s first retail shipment was just shy of 80 units, 7 of which were said to have made it to Western Australia — that’s not many at all.

The good news is; additional shipments should be arriving every week through December. So I’m hoping I’ll have mine in hand well before Christmas.

If you didn’t even know about the 5D MkII yet, here’s the short version:

• 21 Megapixel Full Frame Sensor
• 3.9fps RAW Shooting
• 1080p High Definition Video
• A massive 50 – 25600 ISO range
• And a lot more

Vincent Laforet said this thing is going to be a real game changer, and provided proof to back it up.

I’ve been a part of the US Closed beta for more than two months, and I’m now in on the Australian beta too. Though is it really fair to still be calling it a beta when the software version is already up to 1.01?

So, you download the ‘game’, install it, run it and create your ‘character’; where you get to choose from an amazing range of six shirts and five pants! And if that’s not impressive enough, you then get to spend what seems like an eternity loading the first level (Home refers to them as both ’scenes’ and ‘locations’) which turns out to be an mostly empty room (MER) that, no matter what you to do it; will look almost exactly the same as everybody else’s MER.

From here you’ll predictably try head out to the ‘Plaza’ where you’ll be greeted with a painfully slow download, followed by yet another strangely tedious loading sequence. Then whoosh! You out into the Plaza and this seems much more like it; there’s people here and plenty of room to stretch your legs. But be warned, upon ’stretching your legs’ you’ll come to realise something; this place is just as boring and uneventful as being locked in your little ‘Harbour Apartment’. Sure there’s some chess tables and posters on the walls, but, beyond that; not much really.

The one small thing Home has going for it at the moment is that the graphics are quite pretty. But, with the graphics aside; it’s slow, clunky, empty and boring.

The thing about home is; I really don’t think Sony knows that they’ve made it for.Is it just a slow and awkward chat window, or severely gimped version of The Sims? It just doesn’t make any sense. The closed beta has been going on for what seems like forever; during which they’ve added a couple of locations, revamped the plaza but really Home today is almost exactly the same as it was when I first downloaded it more than two months ago.

So if you’re not in on the beta yet; don’t feel too dissappointed, you’re not missing out on much.