PlayStation Home doesn’t have the best reputation around the gaming press and hardcore gamers in general. The virtual world seems like more of a marketing tool and less of a useful service. PlayStation Home director Jack Buser acknowledges that the service has taken its lumps since launching in December of 2008. Buser says the problem is Home is just the new kid in school.
"Home is new. We're doing a lot of really new stuff that I think the industry is still wrapping its head around," he told Gamasutra. "We're seeing a lot of innovation in the space, and some of us have hit success. And I think it takes some time as the industry as a whole, whether that be consumers or whether that be the media, to start to shift their focus to these new types of platforms and see how people are actually spending their time with the console and with gaming in general. I think we are part of that evolution, part of that conversation."
"...The proof is in the pudding," he said. "With numbers like we have, it goes without saying that Home has been a huge success for our company, something that we have been very proud of."
Home’s sales and profits remain shrouded in mystery, but Buser is forthcoming with other numbers. Home boasts over 100 games on the service, average user sessions of 70 minutes, over 50 virtual Home spaces, and 14 million users total.
"We haven't talked too much about the platform itself, but what we have said is that every mature virtual item we have ever created has been profitable," Buser said. "We've released over 5,000 virtual items on the platform, and we know that once those items reach maturity, they are profitable. So you see us creating a tremendous amount of virtual items, because it is such a high margin business for us to be in."
Home retains higher profit margins as it's relatively simple to create virtual items and host them digitally. "In fact, I would say that it is a very good business model for PlayStation, and quite profitable, I might add," Buser added. "I like to say it's one of the highest-margin businesses in the games industry."
Micropayments and downloadable content are the current zeitgeist in the industry, and Home is well-positioned in that space. "I think today the idea of virtual items transactions is becoming par for the course for a lot of gamers," said Buser. "They're understanding that through micropayments, they can gain social context and social capital, or they can through gameplay context, upgrade their gameplay experience through microtransactions. And that's just becoming part of gaming."
Buser says he’s looking to push Home further, with more integration with full retail AAA titles, like the recent BioShock 2 and Red Dead Redemption Home features. "We'll also see games build out extensions to narrative, such as what you saw in BioShock 2," he said. "It's this whole idea of expanding the world of your favorite games inside home. That's another big pillar of our strategy moving forward."
"Our heritage is games, it's in our DNA, but it's also in the DNA of our users," Buser concluded. "Games are the glue that can bind the social network together."
