Several new interesting facts to report on Home, Sony’s upcoming free product for the PS3. None of this is especially earth shaking, but many of our readers would be nonetheless interested:

• Currently, Home limits the number of users in a single room to 64. This seems to be a performance related issue as the frame rate dips significantly with 60+ players. This will surely be addressed before the product is released.
• Based on some beta feedback, developers of Home have made travel between different zones in Home a lot more straightforward. The length of time it took to move from one place to the next became a major weakness in terms of usability. As a result, the different areas have been reduced in size, characters can now run as well as walk, and quick access to any area is available through the PSP interface.
• There are people within both the developers of Home and the larger Sony organization who would very much like to see Home completely replace the XMB. They would like users to directly be put into Home when they boot up their console.
• The version of Home to be released this fall won’t in any way resemble the final version of Home. Work on the primary features of Home is expected to continue for at least a year. Initial versions released to the public this fall will be quite incomplete.

This last point is both encouraging and disappointing. It is good to see that Sony will continue to improve the quality of their product (which they are distributing for free after all). While the XMB has substantially improved since its first release – and continues to do so –, we would expect that this launch does not suffer from too many missing or incomplete features just so the product can be pushed out the door before Christmas.

As for Home replacing the XMB: Aside from whether this would even be feasible, we can’t stress enough how bad of an idea it is. Home, as it stands, is an interesting experiment, but it will not appeal to all consumers. We believe that many consumers will grow tired of its novelty after a few uses at least in the short term. It is very possible that it will gather momentum as it matures, and more critical features are added. Sony, in its effort to address the feature gap between its XMB offering and Xbox Live is pitching Home as the next-gen interface for consumers. Unfortunately, most consumers only want a simple, easy to use and direct interface to play games, communicate with friends and be entertained. We are therefore skeptical about its potential as a replacement for a simple interface.

From what we’ve seen of Home, it is not there yet. They’ve taken steps to address some of the issues, but it is not ready to replace the XMB (as incomplete as it is). If anything, some of the new features shown in Home will hopefully be rolled into the XMB (like launching a network game with your friends from within the Home lobby). We don’t think Sony Japan will allow Home to replace the XMB, and, in this case, that reluctance will benefit consumers.

Having said all this, we sincerely hope to be proven wrong. The task that the developers of Home have chosen to tackle is huge both in terms of ambition and scope. If they actually pull off such an immersive experience that is both entertaining and easy to use, it could herald a completely new way for home console users to interact with each other. Despite our concerns, we look forward to the launch of Home, and hope it is successful.

Posted by Raoul on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 10:36 am.