PlayStation Home Is More Popular Than You Think

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Last month, I wrote a piece covering some interviews with internet advertisers who said that they had no interest in advertising in PlayStation Home – Sony’s online virtual world that is free for all PlayStation 3 users. In that piece, an editor at a respectable gaming industry website said that PlayStation Home was dying on the vine, and that it wasn’t popular with PS3 Gamers. As it turns out, it’s a bit more popular than we thought and Sony is hoping to expand it.

At a session at the Game Developer’s Conference, Sony’s PlayStation Home director Jack Buser, said that the virtual world has roughly 12 million users. Many of these users aren’t one-timers who try it out either, he says that 85% of PS3 owners who create a PS Home Avatar return more than once. PlayStation Home has seen a lot of user growth. According to Buser, they had 6 million users in March 2009 and 10 million users in December 2009.

Buser’s session at the Game Developer’s Conference was mainly focused on developing mini-games that will run inside PlayStation Home. Sony is pushing this big time, they want a lot more content and games inside PS Home. Buser cited the importance of “full game integration”. Last year’s PS3 game, inFamous, offered mini-games and other content in PlayStation Home, as well as the full retail game. This is the kind of stuff Sony wants to see more of.

Buser didn’t really address the issues that the online advertisers complained about last month. To put content on PlayStation Home, they said that Sony asked for a six-figure fee, plus the advertisers had to supply their own 3D models of virtual storefronts and items. Even if developers are interested in developing mini-games for PlayStation Home, they might find it a lot more expensive than say, producing an Xbox Live Arcade game on Microsoft’s competing console.