That’s the message from Kaz Hirai, president and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. Home, a virtual world for PlayStation users, has been in development since 2005 and has been dogged with a series of delays. Initially intended to launch in late 2007, it was then postponed until spring 2008. The latest timescale is an open beta to be launched in the autumn of this year.
According to Hirai, the reason for the delay is the desire to get Home right first time: “had we launched it before we thought it was the right time and the right features and functionality to launch it - with the high anticipation, people would go there in droves the first time around, they would check it out and say, “This isn’t fun at all, so I’m not coming back again.” With virtual worlds so dependent on user numbers –an empty virtual world which is supposed to be all about socialising isn’t much use- this may well be a sensible position to take.
The promise of Home is certainly great. Xbox 360 has enjoyed phenomenal success, and has turned into a real revenue generator for Microsoft. Home could potentially go beyond that, with advertising revenue on top of sales of commercial content and microtransactions between users. The graphics capabilities of PlayStation 3 may also enable the development of by far the most graphically impressive 3D world to date- developers will be able to rely upon content being processed the same way given the identical consoles.
Before that promise can be fulfilled, though, Home has to launch. Whilst it is still benefitting from good hype at the moment, too much delay could easily lead to a loss of interest, and the delay exacerbates any possible initial disappointment with the product. It’s a high stakes game; Sony could still get it right, and win big, or things could go very wrong.
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