PlayStation Home to Be "Evolving, Living, and Breathing" Platform

Home, the console-based virtual world for the PlayStation 3, has had a long journey thus far. The product has been delayed several times due to executive-level concerns, but now it's been promised to appear in open beta by the end of the calendar year. While there's been a long wait, Jack Buser, Sony's Director for PlayStation Home, says we'll soon see a rapid expansion after the launch.

"We'll launch within open beta. That means two things," Buser explained. "It will be available to all PlayStation users at no cost. But there will obviously be a certain percentage of people who want to stand out from the crowd and customize their avatar with certain items or have a premium space and they will have that option within the PlayStation Mall, but it is not required. Second, we are calling it an open beta for a specific reason. Home will always be evolving. You will be seeing new stuff, including new technology. The platform will always be evolving and living and breathing."

When asked if that meant that Home would be in beta like Gmail is--near permanently--Buser simply said that "We haven't talked about that specifically, but we do believe open beta will be a phase for some time."

That doesn't mean that the open beta will be a period of instability, though. The lengthy closed beta has been a time of load testing and tweaking, with other observers already seeing reduced load times and higher quality experiences. That's important because Sony isn't the only company that's going to be developing in Home.

"It's important to realize the scope of PlayStation Home. When you look around, it's just the icing on the cake," Buser said. "The cake is that it's a development platform for third parties to develop content on. We want Home to scale rapidly, and we figured the best way to do that is to get third parties involved. After launch, you're going to see Home grow rapidly with new media, new content, and new experiences, coming quite rapidly. That's absolutely been the demand from the users."

That development comes in two ways.  Some brands or publishers, especially gaming companies, may want to develop their Home content in-house as it were. For those who don't have the capability, Sony maintains a network of managed vendors that it works "very closely" with to help companies get into Home. Buser said the network is "wide" and "always growing," but declined to comment on specifics.

Buser says the company is already seeing excitement from a wide range of third parties, whether for marketing or selling virtual goods as a revenue stream. While using virtual worlds as a way to reach out to consumers hasn't really taken off for the 18+ market, Buser says brands are interested in reaching the roughly 18-35, mostly male PlayStation 3 users who are ravenous consumers of everything from games to movies to comics to music in a very different way.

"I think at launch you're going to see wide, wide adoption from game publishers. They are very excited about Home, but also consumer brands. Consumer brands really see Playstation Home as a huge opportunity to get their message out to the PlayStation demographic that wasn't possible before, whether that's creating an immersive community, whether that's media that you build around, whether that's  virtual items and taking a brand or IP and letting users make it part of their identity. And it's important to note it directly leverages the PlayStation 3 hardware, such that you're creating an immersive, rich environment that wasn't possible before."

And Home offers a variety of ways to connect in that environment. One of the more recently touted features is media sharing that lest users connect to listen to music or watch videos. The video features right now seem to trend toward the promotional--Buser cited as an example a trailer for a Dead Space Blu-ray feature alongside the game that created an active community talking about the product--but there may be the potential for more. For example, eventually movies or TV shows could make their way into Home, and Sony is already experimenting with similar projects in Gaia, but Buser couldn't promise anything at the moment.

"It's the idea that when viewers watch videos online, it's traditionally very solitary. You might be watching with 100 people, but you'd never know it. Now you can actually see everyone around you, and it's actually akin to watching a movie in the theatres. We actually have a theatre with rows and rows of seats and the ability to play including trailers or viral videos or even potentially movies and TV shows," he explained. "The thing is is that Home is a living, breathing technology platform. You're going to see a lot of education happening as we approach launch, but you're going to see even more information as we go on an ongoing basis."

Likewise other rumored elements like a mobile connection or the selling of third-party physical products through the Sony Mall remain "certainly something we've talked about" or "we're still investigating."

All of that sounds especially promising given Buser's talk of a platform that will change rapidly as it grows--and soon after launch--not only with new content and experiences, but in technology.

Of course, the most important thing, though, is whether the initial experience and then the changes can capture the user's attention. Adult gamers haven't been particularly excited about 3D virtual worlds like Second Life that offer more social experiences than game worlds like World of Warcraft. That may be why Buser and Sony aren't calling Home a virtual world.

"We're calling Home a 3D social gaming community. It really is centered around the PlayStation gamer. It's a place where PlayStation 3 users can go and meet friends, either meet up with existing friends or meet new friends," he explained.  "We see PlayStation Home as a world class gaming service. It enables a social network for gamers that just hasn't been present before. We've leveraged the power of the PlayStation to give you this 'you are there' feeling, which up to this point has been the holy grail of social networking experiences."

That connection extends to casual games like pool or bowling available in public areas as well as to tight integration with existing and upcoming PlayStation3 games. Players can use Home for matchmaking, establishing settings in online games, and jumping in and out of experiences whether they're in their own private apartments or in spaces themed around popular titles. The experience is, at the very least, certainly richer than that of Xbox 360's Dashboard service, which is being transformed into an avatar community later this month as well.

"As a platform, you can realize how extremely important Home is to the PS3 as a huge differentiator. It's allowing us to create an experience that absolutely leapfrogs anything else available," said Buser. "It's a place for gamers to go and see games they haven't played or to talk about games."

That open space is critical for gamers, said Buser, when making friends. Gamers connect in their social networks either with existing friends or with other players they meet in-game. The problem with the second method is that if your only context for a relationship is a headshot, you may later realize you don't actually have much in common. On the other hand, if there's a more social space, you my realize you share much more--at least a common taste in other games.

As I noted, though, gamers haven't always thrilled to virtual worlds, and some, like MTV's Stephen Totillo, are receiving that very pitch relatively coolly. That's part of why the closed beta isn't just about  firming up the technological end of things. And, notes Buser when asked about balancing social needs with gameplay, Sony isn't just about gamers.

"We've been building up the closed beta community to have a community at launch. We've received extremely positive feedback. It's not us sitting up on a mountain top saying these are the things that are cool. We are there actively engaged with the community, delivering content that they want to see. So when they come in, it's a living bustling community," he explained. "We're focusing on the needs of PlayStation 3 owners. The needs are quite broad, though.  It's not just a game console. It's a movie player, and a fine one at that. It's a place to download movies. Games are included—and the heart of the PlayStation brand, but it's not all of it. Home mirrors this philosophy. Home is there to build on the needs of the gamer, but the opportunity is there to really leverage all aspects of the lifestyle. It goes hand in hand."

One aspect that seems to twist both ways is the stark realism of Home. While the apartments may be a little fanciful and game-themed rooms are certainly far from the daily norm, at the outset users can only create human avatars, albeit some with very different skin tones. That may change in the future.

"We wanted to create an experience that the PlayStation community could be proud to call their own. Let's start with avatars, they've become kind of par for the course within gaming networks now. But look at ours and they're very realistic. It's highly realistic and customizable to make it something that people would be proud to call their won," said Buser. "We made a decision to make it realistic. You're creating people. There will be certain people that want to create something that are a little more fantastic. For them we're going to have costumes you can buy in world, and you can imagine that some of them might be themed off of IP."

Already, he said, users are taking it upon themselves to create fairly fanciful avatars, with zombies dressed in all white with pale skin or groups of avatars decked out like Old Snake from Metal Gear Solid. It shows a base creativity, says Buser, with limited tools that's only going to grow "As we get closer to open beta and open the pipe line on all our assets."

That opens the question of user-generated content. Sony has previously said there will be user-generated content, though just not in the way that people expect. On that front, again, it comes down to Home being a product that seems to be driven by change.

"Home  is a very flexible platform, and what you see on day one isn't necessarily what you'll see 12-18 months down the road," said Buser. "On day one you'll see a Lego brick approach to UGC. You remember, you're a kid and you take a box and dump it over and there's enough bricks to create. Talking about more detailed UGC, that's something we're investigating, but don't have anything to announce yet."