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PS3's Home celebrates its two-year anniversary! So... who here gives a shit?
cloudeagle
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I know that this strange realm has become so forgotten it's nearly become myth, but if you've got a PS3 chances are you've got this thing taking up space in your hard drive. Aaahh, Home. Let's recall its joys, shall we?
And yes, it's still active! Well, supposedly. Every so often Sony execs pop up and remind us of how awesome it is.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32102/Buser_Killer_Apps_Will_Drive_PlayStation_Home_Adoption.php
So who here has been to Home in the last two years? Has it changed much at all?
And yes, it's still active! Well, supposedly. Every so often Sony execs pop up and remind us of how awesome it is.
This month, Sony said its free-with-every-PlayStation 3 virtual world PlayStation Home hit its two-year anniversary with 17 million registered users.
It's an important landmark for the Home initiative. First announced back in 2006, just as it was becoming clear that online virtual worlds were busting following the boom, naysayers argued that the time for Second Life-wannabes was over -- gamers don't want to walk around a 3D virtual world to access content, they want easy accessibility.
Nevertheless, the free Home, which only requires users to sign up for a PlayStation Network account, has soldiered on since its beta launch in 2008, growing from just 200,000 users and nine games to 17 million users and 236 games.
The virtual world also offers a catalog of 7,000 high-margin virtual goods, which lead to Home's previously-reported profitability.
But while 17 million is a big number, it's still only about a third of PlayStation Network's 50 million worldwide users. And the number of active Home users -- a figure Sony reveals to dev partners under NDA -- is somewhere even lower than the registered user mark.
What's going to drive further adoption of Home, according to PlayStation Home director Jack Buser, is gamer appeal. Bringing in more games, making relationships with more developers and embracing emerging online business models is the future of the platform.
"Games are the killer app for the platform," said Buser in an interview with Gamaustra.
It wasn't always that way; originally, Home was more of a respite from gaming that happened to be accessed through a game console. "I think once gamers find out that they have hundreds of games built into PlayStation Home, most of them free-to-play, [they will try Home]."
Sony doesn't break out PlayStation Home's revenue or profit figures, although Buser said PlayStation Home has seen "significant revenue growth." And with Home's continued sale of high-margin virtual goods, that means profits are on the rise too.
"If you look at the first quarter of this calendar year, we actually tripled revenue from the same time period of the year prior," Buser said. "...The business model works, and we like it quite a bit. It's one of the reasons we're able to offer PlayStation Home as a free service."
The director said the Home team is continuing to work on trying to bring smaller, independent developers to the service. PlayStation Home sponsored IndieCade this year and had a presence at Game Developers Conference Online in Austin. PlayStation Home's team also inked a deal this summer with indie game publisher Codename to bring games to the service.
Buser also sees a future in virtual item sales and free-to-play microtransaction-based games -- two business models virtually absent from PlayStation 3 competitors. He called microtransactions the "bread and butter" of PlayStation Home.
"Here we are in the console space becoming very comfortable, very familiar with the latest and greatest business models of the game industry, putting us just miles ahead of the competition in this regard," he claimed.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32102/Buser_Killer_Apps_Will_Drive_PlayStation_Home_Adoption.php
So who here has been to Home in the last two years? Has it changed much at all?
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cloudeagle on
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Whatever happened to launching games and multiplayer shit in Home? I think there was that Warhawk room and nothing else. Same with the trophies.
Remember when you were fourteen and you'd spend time talking to complete strangers in AOL/MSN Chat?
That's basically what Home is.
So it's nothing but people yelling "omg asl"?
Danced around, made crude gestures at people, talked about random stuff. It really isn't all that terrible, just not for me. Patrick Klepek wrote a series of articles about Home when he was still at G4, likening it to a form of AOL chatroom. People were talking about their kids and their jobs and their lives to complete strangers who were sympathetic.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
Yes. Yes it is.
Anyway, Home is awful, and I think it's telling that this threat may not last very long. No one even cares enough about it to think of something to be pissed about. Disappointment isn't very interesting when it isn't a surprise.
I bought up a club house (yes, paid money) and decorated it and invited PA people over. It all seemed to go ok, people visited, played the arcade games I put in (well, some people couldn't for some weird reason) then we hit the maximum user cap for the club of 20.
Then I realised it was awful and never ventured there again. I wonder if my club house still exists...
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
A couple months ago I got curious as to what it looked like and booted up Home
Not only was it shitty, but my shirt was nowhere to be found, despite me checking the download file and downloading it again to make sure.
Honestly, I can imagine it would be stupidly easy for Sony to be making a profit off Home even if relatively few people are in it. Beyond the server costs and whatever teensy updates it gets, the only other expense would be making hats and crap for people to buy, and that can't be very labor-intensive. So with such relatively little overhead, you only have to sell a few hats per day to wring some money out of it.
Really I would have been happy if all home was was a chat room lobby where you pick which game you want to play, wait until sufficient resources (hardware and player wise) and launch. But then they couldn't sell (as easily I guess) millions of dollars of virtual goods and, like Torso, make me weep for humanity....sorry Grinch :P
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That's it, I'm logging back in, digging out the club house I paid for and changing it from a "PA" clubhouse to a "No EvilMonkey" Clubhouse. Everyone else is invited.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
That's fine, I'll build my own clubhouse! Behold; Ewok Village 2000!
This makes me angry.
All that plus a $60 a year membership fee. For peer-based multiplayer.
Huh, I guess you're right.
actually, you can do this on the PS3 now, assuming that you know at least one person who wants to party who pays for PS+. I think they also have Voice Messages too.
Why does everyone have a Santa hat now
No, no we don't
At least, I've never seen a way to do it, and I have PS+