Currently in sunny/rainy (it can’t make up its mind) Brighton, the Develop conference is enduring the indecisive nature of the weather. At said conference, Peter Edward, Director of the PlayStation Home platform group tried to give us a reason as to why the European version of Home is still so lacking in spaces and content compared to other territories – especially for an EU developed platform. I say tried, as we knew the reason he gave, but do we really accept it? I’m not sure I do.
Edwards put the delays down to localistion. “I think localisation is a big part of that,” he said. “The expectation that spaces will be localised into at least the EFIGS (English, French, Italian, German and Spanish) languages leads to delays.” I don’t know whether this is just me being cynical, but why not just hire more people to localise? Or start localising earlier, who knows. All I know is that I’m fed up of waiting for these spaces, bring them here already!
European users have downloaded a huge six million free and paid virtual items, a figure of paid items would be rather interesting to see how much Home is actually generating for Sony from it’s seven million users, three million of which are based in Europe. 80% of its users are aged 18-35, which according to Edwards is also suggesting a broadening of the console’s user base.
Source: Edge-Online
