Another important event at this year’s Game Developers Conference was the Sony keynote. Obviously aimed at mainstream gaming media, Sony unveiled some planned titles and elaborated on how they fit with their online strategy. While much has already been written on this, our analysis of the event takes another angle, which should provide some food for thought for our readers.

Sony’s keynote centered on their Game 3.0 idea, a concept empowering users to socialize with others, to create new content, to share their exploits, etc. In effect, all their new announcements revolved around this community-centered theme.

PS3 Home

Home - Sony’s answer to Microsoft’s Xbox Live - was Sony’s major announcement (rumors started a few days earlier). The new title will be unique for console systems, offering a Second Life-type experience, a way of interacting with your friends, and other users through a 3D avatar system. For a full preview, check out IGN’s coverage.

Home is a very interesting venture for Sony. The idea is to build on the concept of communication and community introduced by Microsoft’s Xbox Live, and take it to the next level.

It is still in the early Beta stages, but as it stands right now, it is incomplete, and will be lacking in certain key areas:

• Non-persistence of the apartments (your friends need to be online for you to visit them).
• Achievements/Milestones cannot currently be implemented by developers, who expect this area to be opened to them quickly.
• Inability to launch multiplayer games from within Home (or anywhere else for that matter).

Sony did state that all these issues will be addressed further down the line. The streaming/updatable nature of the system will ensure that such features can be smoothly integrated into the product.

Home holds a lot of promise, and if anything, is a very interesting experiment for Sony to undertake. It is difficult to judge how consumers will react. The linchpin rests with Sony’s promise of regular new content, without which Home will become a simple novelty for most users. At the same time, Home is sure to attract a small yet vibrant community of users interested in the social interaction aspect of Home. It remains to be seen whether such a product will attract the same level of interest from console players as it has on the PC market.

We’ll provide a deeper analysis of Home in the coming days.

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Posted by Raoul on Friday, March 30th, 2007 at 8:07 pm.