Home to be “Essential”

SCEE’s Peter Edward has predicted that the virtual space will become an essential part of the PlayStation experience, integral to future games.

Gamasutra are reporting the numbers associated with Home and they certainly do give companies a compelling reason to investigate the value of the service. With seven million users, six million downloads of virtual objects and massive attention for the marketing campaigns run recently around movie releases of Watchmen, Star Trek and Transformers the service is starting to show its worth as a method of getting your product “out there”. Recent initiatives such as the Xi alternate reality game and the step-up in introductions of new spaces have seen the service become more popular amongst originally sceptical consumers.

Add to that the recent rumours of deeper integration of Home with the XMB and it seems that Sony are putting more faith in the virtual world. The coming months will see the introduction of the currency system within Home and Pay2Play features seeing the light of day but Peter Edward is adament that it isn’t just about revenue for Sony, stating

“For Sony, revenue isn’t the main driver for Home. We’re in this for the longterm… Home is the starting point for PlayStation 3 online, and that’s something that gamers are going to expect as more games support Game Launch from within Home.”

So what direction would you like to see Home take? Do you love the marketing campaigns and spaces (such as the Red bull Air Race) or are you more interested in the possibilities of Game Launching and strategising (like the US Warhawk space)?

Source: Gamasutra