14 DAY TRIAL // Online services are one of the most important things when buying a console for quite a lot of customers. Whether it is Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or Wii Channel, every console needs to have something that will give it the edge over its opponents.
For Sony's PlayStation 3, it is the Home service, which aims at offering players a unique virtual meeting place where they can interact and meet people just like them. They can also buy new things for their avatar or see ads, from which, as Sony has revealed, a considerable amount of profit is generated.
In order to gloat some more, the company Home direct, Jack Buser, has revealed that the service currently has over 5 million users worldwide, with 2.2 million of them residing in North America alone. But while the number of users may seem impressive at first, don't forget that there are over 22 million PlayStation 3 consoles sold worldwide, leaving a lot of people who either don't connect to the Internet or who don't want to use Home.
But there are good news for the Japanese company, as the people who are in fact using Home spend around 55 minutes per session, meaning that the ads rented by Sony are displayed for quite some time, thus the profit being ensured for the large corporation which isn't going through the best of financial times.
Hopefully with more and more new areas being built in Sony's Home, like the recently announced Guitar Hero one, people will be more interested in it and the user base of the program will increase exponentially. Until then though, we still have quite a few things to enjoy there, like the Red Bull Island or the other private areas dedicated to specific games, like Far Cry 2, Uncharted or even Resident Evil 5.