Sony has been giving the media a sneak peek of the biggest makeover in the short history of Home – the games platform and online virtual world accessible through the PlayStation 3.
Games are being placed front and centre in the redesign, which was announced last month and will be introduced in the autumn, and the Home environment itself will become a game with the introduction of quests.
Jack Buser, director of PlayStation Home, said that this was both a major reconstruction and a rethink of Home, which launched, after a longer than expected gestation, at the end of 2008.
“We’ve invested quite heavily it’s much more than a fresh coat of paint and one of the most exciting things is the questing system – just the amount of R&D that went into building that system is pretty staggering,” he said, while demonstrating the new version to the FT.
“But it’s extremely powerful, because there are a large number of gamers who want to approach it as a game and for the very first time they will be able to do that.”
Sony has discovered over time that Home appeals mainly to hard-core gamers, rather than those wanting a Second Life-style social experience.
It is therefore “reducing the time to fun”, in Mr Buser’s words, by cutting out much of the avatar and environment customization on entry and taking players straight to the central square or hub, where the latest game is prominently advertised.
At launch, the featured game will be Cogs, a simple puzzle from an indy developer – a sign that Sony will support independent studios as well as the big players if they can come up with the right types of games – in this case, something for hard-core gamers to snack on in-between long sessions on more sophisticated fare.
The central hub also features an Activity Board where players can get started straightaway on advertised quests. In addition, they can teleport instantly to one of four new gaming zones – an Action District for the hardest core gamers, an Adventure District where players land in a lush jungle, Sportswalk, an area for sports games of every kind where live scores and highlights from real-life games can also be seen, and Pier Park, a casual games section.
Sony says more than 23m gamers have tried Home and the average session length is a pretty remarkable 70 minutes.
With Sony providing core back-end services, Home is an attractive and easy environment in which publishers can develop, experiment and evolve their titles. It is pushing a freemium model of free-to-play games with players able to buy virtual items.
More than 9,000 currently exist and Mr Buser said the conversion rate of players going on to buy items was as high as 25 per cent on one prominent game, Sodium.
