PlayStation Home might not be more than a blip on the radar of many gamers at the moment, but Sony is still committed to making the service an integral part of the PS3 experience, calling it the “starting point” for PS3 online.
PlayStation Home has yet to really take off the way it was supposed to, but Sony still sees the service as a central part of the PS3 online experience. “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,” Sony Europe’s Peter Edward said. “This will become an essential component for all PS3 games.”
The Game Launching feature, which allows you to, well, launch a game directly from within Home, currently only supports a handful of titles, including some major ones like Street Fighter IV and Warhawk.
Last month Edward reported that Home users are on the rise and argued that the service is at a tipping point of sorts, where everything is looking up from now. The service certainly has users: 7 million total, with 3 million in Europe, according to Sony. Those are big numbers, but keep in mind that there have been over 21 million PS3s sold worldwide – which means that only a third of them are plugged into Home.
Regardless of how many people are in Home, those who are using the service seem to be doing a lot more than just milling around and making their avatars dance. According to Sony, Home-bodies (this is what I’m calling them now) have downloaded over 6 million virtual items, including plenty of promotional gear for things like the Star Trek movie.
Making dough, however, is not the point of Home, says Edward. “For Sony, revenue isn’t the main driver for Home,” he said. “We’re in this for the long term.”
[Via MCV]
