Online services are quite important these days for consoles as almost every gamer who wants either an Xbox 360, a Nintendo Wii or a PlayStation 3 intends to connect it to the Internet and start interacting with their friends and family.
That's why online services such as Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network are so popular. But Sony decided to go on the offense in this type of service and released PlayStation Home, a dedicated social network for all PlayStation 3 users around the world.
Filled with many spaces dedicated to either video games, like
Resistance 2 or Resident Evil 5, or real life brands, like
Red Bull or stores from famous clothing brands, PlayStation Home also generates a lot of profit for the Japanese corporation from
microtransactions.
But Home isn't about
making money, says Peter Edward, the director of the service, but about the community, as he recently spoke to GamesIndustry. He went on to reveal that people needed to experience the great things about the service and that the money would arrive seamlessly.
“Our belief is that if you make the community happy, and get good content on to the platform, if you get a platform that people want to keep coming back to, then the monetisation aspect of it will almost take care of itself. It's certainly not something that should be the driving force, not something that's the driving priority at this stage of development. We have to focus on making sure we're giving the community what they want, and making sure the platform itself is sufficiently capable and robust, and that the content is there. That's definitely our priority.”
So, it seems that Home users aren't being exploited by Sony for their money, as they are the main reason new things are coming to the online service every week. Are you pleased with PlayStation Home? Or do you think that it needs more features and spaces, even if they are branded with real life companies?
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