Sony says 4 million go home to PlayStation Home

Home alone: The Ligne Roset collection you can afford.

(Credit: Sony)

In an interview with GameDaily, Sony's senior marketing vice president Peter Dille has revealed some stats on PlayStation Home, Sony's online virtual community, which was greeted with a rather lukewarm reception when it launched late last year. Word is 4 million people have come into Home and those who do stick around stick around for 55 minutes on average.

Sony doesn't differentiate between active and idle users (by idle, I mean you've gone in once, checked it out, and never gone back), so it's hard to say how many folks are really hard-core Home dwellers. However, what's clear is that now that it's had an opportunity to mature a bit, the company is making a push to publicize the virtual world that Sony officials have admitted has been a challenge to build and maintain.

The biggest gripe that critics have had about PlayStation Home is that it's long on Sony marketing and short on fun. But Dille says Sony is learning and will "nurture" and "develop" Home.

He says that while micro-transactions are a big part of what Home is all about, users aren't just spending money on the cheap stuff. "Surprisingly, some of the more popular items aren't the cheapest things," he says. "They're things that cost a little bit more, like an apartment upgrade."

Anybody out there a fan of Home? Or did you just check it out and never come back?

(Source: GameDaily via Kotaku)

[Stan_the_Engineer]

I went on this for a total of probbably an hour. Walked around and was overall un impressed. I do not understand the purpose or the draw to these type of games such as Second Life and Sony home. I cant believe people actually buy "virtual" possession. They are not even real and have no tangable wealth associated with them.

I just dont understand...

[chrkeller]

Agreed. I love my ps3 but cannot understand Home. It certainly isn't for me.

[stuntman_mike]

I tried out home a couple of times as a beta tester and then again when it went live. If it was implemented in a better way I think it would great.

They should do away with the XMB and have Home load up on start-up and have everything that there is on the PS3 integrated into Home. In this way it would feel more like a new user experience that would be worthwhile. Instead of navigating menus, you could navigate your avatar to different sections of your apartment to access everything that is in the XMB. To access tools, the avatar goes to the closet and opens a tool box that has options in it. To access your music, the avatar takes out an MP3 player and scrolls through the song list. To access movie files, the avatar flips DVD cases etc... Or something like that.

As it stands now, it is little more than a free demo for a 2nd Life type of game, where you all you really see are 50 male avatars surrounding one female avatar, and all of the male avatars trying to get her number. That's why I stopped going logging into Home.

If Home were an intuitive replacement to the XMB which loaded at start-up, and allowed you to be able to meet up with friends and launch games from it (all games not just Warhawk and a couple of others) and still be logged into Home so that you can have voicechat, while playing one game, with a friend that is playing another, then Home would be a significant upgrade to the PS Network and a worthy rival for Live. Until that happens, it will just be a 3D dating service.

[ca128]

Andy why do those 50 guys always wear the white long sleeves covered with a T-shirt? Still going for the 1992 grunge look?

[planblove]

Home has serious potential to be something great. But at its current stage it still needs lots of work, more venues and more content. As it is right now it just doesn't feel finished. I agree with the reply above me, if Sony ever figures out how to make Home its regular menu screen where everything on the system can be accessed through your apartment or house it will take off instantly.

[HomerJayRI]

I go on Home to play Ice Breaker! Watch out for snowballs!

[mngmikes]

overall 4 million people have tried playstation home... did they ever say how many repeat users they have? also 55 minutes was the average spent time... when i tried it out it took 55 min just for the thing to load...

[alphaneuron]

I've tried PS3 Home many times. On average, I'd say I spend an hour in home each time. I've never experienced a 55 min load time - more like 55 seconds.

What's the experience like? Home *seems* to have such tremendous potential, I just keep waiting for it to deliver. Every time I visit, there seem to be some improvements -- but not quite enough. There are games you can play within home, and some of the environments are interesting for a first look. But it fails to really hold interest. I usually log out of it after an hour.

Technically Home seems fabulous. But the amount of content on there is still very scant. I await the day when large levels from various games become available to Home users to hang out in. And possibly even user-created regions. Things are moving a bit slow.

[DragonStab]

The only thing I've seen in Playstation Home worth logging in for is the bowling. It's a little fun competing with others, but even the bowling game interface is a little weak in it's implementation. The pool table game is not to bad either, but in either case you have to be able to ignore all the immature jerks constantly spewing as much foul trash talk as they can come up with.......

[roachbrain]

Nah I'll stick with WoW. Who wants realism when I can bash my friends on the head with a 6 ft sword? Even though I wish I could have my own little avatar apartment in WoW like on Home but we can't have it all.

[Kendokill]

What would help Home would be game developers embracing it. For instance, before heading into a Call of Duty game, you could meet in the COD building in home and create a party. Discussions of tactics or what not could be had, and a group could enter the game together.

Also, there should be a showcase of your profile trophy collection in your apt. or osmething available. This would place a priority on playing more games for trophies and would make travelling to other peoples living spaces more appealing.

More free games would be nice, too. Customizations costing money also keeps people away.

[Stan_the_Engineer]

I still do not understand the purpose of a second life game. I do not see any sort of excitement in it at all. And if you "buy" something you are essentially buying nothing. I just dont get it. someone please explain

[swiggins]

Home could single handedly be the most depressing app on ANY console. I'm not sure what it is that does this, ... the muted colors, the blandness, the artistic design itself is more like it... It's very Pharmaceutical feeling, no warmth, that's something you get with both the Wii and the 360 avatars.

[inachu1]

I just bought the PS3 slim over the weekend and I love it!
But I am seeing youtube videos of people playing playstation @Home on windows
Is there such a thing?