Sony's PS3 looks to be inching its way closer to the number 2 spot in consoles sold, and increased support for initiatives such as PlayStation Home might possibly help get it there sooner. Sony recently celebrated the 17 millionth registered user for the Home service, close to the 2nd year anniversary of launch.
To put that into perspective, at launch in 2008 the service saw about 200,000 users with 9 games. Today though, Sony has around 17 million with 236 games and support from multiple studios such as EA Sports. Even more interesting is that Home is actually profitable with over 7,000 high-margin virtual goods available to gamers.
What this means is that regardless of the popular notion that virtual worlds such as Home and Second Life were doomed to failure, Home is not only doing well, but expects to see even more revenue growth. To do that though, Sony must bring killer apps to Home, says Home director Jack Buser in an interview with Gamasutra.
"Games are the killer app for the platform,” he stated. "I think once gamers find out that they have hundreds of games built into PlayStation Home, most of them free-to-play, [they will try Home]." As Home is free to all users who sign into the PlayStation Network, the PS3 becomes an even larger experience with the included games.
It is that inclusion and the free-to-play model of Home that is going to “significantly” drive revenue growth in the near future. Sales of virtual items have been doing well, and with a high profitability, things are looking up.
"If you look at the first quarter of this calendar year, we actually tripled revenue from the same time period of the year prior," Buser said. "...The business model works, and we like it quite a bit. It's one of the reasons we're able to offer PlayStation Home as a free service."
The future of Home as a platform is an interesting one, no doubt. While PS3 owners are able to play within a virtual space within the PS3, that 17 million user mark is only a registered amount, not an active amount. With the inclusion of more and more games that are offered through Home, the micro-transaction model will be put to even more use as gamers are hopefully attracted to the service.
"Here we are in the console space becoming very comfortable, very familiar with the latest and greatest business models of the game industry, putting us just miles ahead of the competition in this regard," he claimed.
