Home Users Are Some of the Most Hardcore PS3 Users Around, Says Sony

Logan Westbrook

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Feb 21, 2008
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Home Users Are Some of the Most Hardcore PS3 Users Around, Says Sony


Sony admits that the launch of Home could have gone better, but says the service is getting better all the time.

It's easy to dismiss Home on the PS3 as the domain of the casual gamer, but according to the services overseer, nothing could be further from the truth. Sony's Jack Buser says that the average Home user is actually way ahead of the curve when it comes using their PS3s.

Buser said that Home users were "rabid consumers of media and hardcore gamers," watching more movies and playing more games than the average non-user. Buser said that the service had around 20 million users, and the average session time in apparently around 70 minutes. People used it in different ways, he said, with some dipping in and out between games, and other literally spending hours and hours at a time in Home.

However, while Home is hardly a flop, Buser admitted that the launch could have gone better. When the service launched in 2008, there wasn't a great deal to do, and Buser thought that some people had been put off by that initial experience. Not only that, but Sony learned that just sticking a bunch of gamers in a virtual room together wasn't actually the best way to get them talking to each other.

"It seems obvious in retrospect, but it wasn't obvious back in 2008," he said. "We thought 'here, we'll build these rooms and we'll fill them with gamers and we'll theme these rooms after games and then people will self-select and talk to each other.' What we discovered very early on, even in closed beta ... we realized that gamers talk to each other and they meet each other in the context of playing games."

Buser was coy about whether or not Home actually made Sony any money however, only saying that microtransactions - which Home makes heavy use of - tended to be profitable due to their low cost and the level of traffic on the platform. The service isn't about to lose its "beta" tag any time soon either, as Buser said that it reflected Home's constantly evolving status.

Source: GiantBomb [http://www.giantbomb.com/news/the-man-pulling-playstation-homes-strings/3445/]


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Black Watch

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Aug 9, 2010
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I still think it's crap. It took me about six minutes after downloading it to figure out that I would have a more fun social experience in a bar or a bowling alley.
 

Radelaide

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May 15, 2008
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"Yeah! Our users are more hard core than yours!"

Way to win a race that NO-ONE cares about.
 

DeadlyYellow

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Black Watch said:
I still think it's crap. It took me about six minutes after downloading it to figure out that I would have a more fun social experience in a bar or a bowling alley.
You had to download it to figure that out?

For some reason reading this article gives me the vibe that he's referring to the "hardcore" crowd as the type whose only social life is through the internet.
 

Black Watch

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DeadlyYellow said:
Black Watch said:
I still think it's crap. It took me about six minutes after downloading it to figure out that I would have a more fun social experience in a bar or a bowling alley.
You had to download it to figure that out?

For some reason reading this article gives me the vibe that he's referring to the "hardcore" crowd as the type whose only social life is through the internet.
Yea, well the guy blatantly comes off as a fluffer. He is probably just saying it to ease up on us in an effort to make us forget about the PSN outage.
 

Catchy Slogan

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Jun 17, 2009
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Can you brown nose any more Sony? I think I can see a little bit of bare skin.

Joking aside, Home has never appealed to me. If I wanted to talk to my friends, I would talk to them. Or go to thier actual house.
 

NezumiiroKitsune

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Radelaide said:
"Yeah! Our users are more hard core than yours!"

Way to win a race that NO-ONE cares about.
I think he's saying of the people who play PS3, the people who use Home are the more "hardcore" on average. Not that any self-respecting PS3 owner cares about that sort of thing either.

I haven't used Home in years, it takes an obscene amount of time to update each individual area, it's sterile, it's like playing the Sims without any life requirements and everything costs real money (and doesn't help in anyway)... it's just useless. The most interesting thing I did in it was make a maze out of free furniture in my room.
 

Mr Pantomime

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Jul 10, 2010
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I downloaded home once, made my guy and all that. They gave me an apartment with a whole bunch of furniture. So I made a fort that blocked off the door.

Maybe Home isnt a game, buta weird behavioural experiment.
 

AlternatePFG

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Jan 22, 2010
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If you spend money on it, you're pretty much paying them to advertise crap to you. I'm watching my little brother play it right now, it's such a scam.
 

Raddra

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Jan 5, 2010
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I downloaded it a few months ago tried to make an avatar and disliked the options, so quit out and didn't look back. They had mohawk's but didn't have general long hair for males.
 

GeorgW

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Aug 27, 2010
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I tried home once. I could never get my avatar right and there was nothing to do. So nope, apparently not hardcore.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
home just sounds like a g rated version of sl with only humies
 

Panayjon

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For some reason I read that as Sony's Jack Bauer... and then I became very afraid to disagree with the man.

As to the subject at hand, I actually liked Home. I first tried it late last year but after fiddling around with it for a while I stopped caring and just deleted it altogether. Much like with SL the idea appeals to me but the execution and the community is lacking. If all of my friends weren't PC gamers and/or Xbros I might have actually done something with it. After all, I've sat down in the Xbox theater with pals before. That was pretty amusing.
 

Slavik_91

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"Buser said that Home users were 'rabid consumers of media and hardcore gamers'"

well isn't that cute
 

Lord_Gremlin

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Apr 10, 2009
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Wrong. The most hardcore users all delete Home to use that extra 3 gb for even more PSN games and DLC.
PS Home. Rated P, for pussies.
 

mjc0961

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Nov 30, 2009
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Logan Westbrook said:
However, while Home is hardly a flop, Buser admitted that the launch could have gone better. When the service launched in 2008, there wasn't a great deal to do, and Buser thought that some people had been put off by that initial experience.
Said as if there's a great deal to do in Home now. I downloaded it to look at the little E3 booth thing (which sucked BTW, just a bunch of low quality trailers you'd seen before with button prompts to view them that were quite picky about whether or not they actually wanted to work), and there was still fuck all to do. Maybe if the bubble machine still amuses you or you like extra crappy iPhone flash style games, but other than that I think this guy is blowing smoke up everyone's ass. All the "hardcores" would want nothing to do with Home because there is nothing for them there.
 

commasplice

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I dunno. I mean, this whole thing is just flagrant promotion of a product that no one really cares about, but at the same time, it's much tamer and less corrosive than anything Kaz Hirai has ever said.
 

albinokid66

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Dec 25, 2010
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I saw the words 'Home users' and 'Hardcore gamers' in the same sentance and just started laughing
 

Ironic Pirate

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May 21, 2009
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Radelaide said:
"Yeah! Our users are more hard core than yours!"

Way to win a race that NO-ONE cares about.

Except he's also not running that race. Everyone always makes fun of Home, either they think it's only for casual gamers or like Second Life without flying penis attacks.

He's trying to do damage control, get people to try it, and such. I wouldn't be surprised if they're about to announce some new feature or something, drumming up interest.
 

NickCooley

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Sep 19, 2009
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THERE. IS. NOTHING. HARDCORE. ABOUT. GAMING!

Unless you game while rock climbing or sky diving or whilst in orbit or something, that would be pretty hardcore.