Despite early skepticism and predictions that PlayStation Home would become a failed social project, the application has gained a lot of steam in recent months due to strong support from game developers and a huge growth in userbase. [shal]Peter Edward[/shal], the SCEE director of Home, released some startling statistics for the fledgling platform.
- Since launch in November 2008, Home claims to have seven million users, three million of those are in Europe and have downloaded six million items.
- Average Home session duration is 56 minutes, and while Sony expected 90 percent of its users to be 18-35 year-old males, the average is around 80 percent.
- During the three months leading up to the [shal]Watchmen[/shal] film releases, 812,544 users watched an exclusive video with director Zack Snyder which amounted to 9.3 million minutes of view time. The Watchmen area of Home generated 3.2 million visits, and the Rorschach and Nite Owl costumes were downloaded 1.6 million times.
- 450,000 costumes were sold during the two-week [shal]Star Trek[/shal] movie campaign, the video was watched 250,000 times.
- [shal]Red Bull[/shal]’s Air Race game has been played by 873,136 users, which equals 2.5 million visits and 575,000 hours played with an average of 39 minutes spent on the game for the fist 5 months of launch. The game cost €110,000 to create with an estimated marketing value of €1.5 million.
- Users playing the [shal]Transformers[/shal] puzzle games to net a free t-shirt for their avatars reached 125,000 with completion giving users a Trophy for their virtual spaces.
With almost a third of the PS3 userbase participating in Home, it’ll be exciting to see just how much the platform evolves and expands over the next few years.
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