With PlayStation Plus being recently launched, are there any sort of plans to merge the two?
Jack Buser: Nothing to announce at this time, but I will say that both PlayStation Home and Plus are evolving services, so what we say with Home is if users want to see a particular feature, technology, program implemented in Home, tell us. We don’t build Home based on what we think is cool, we build Home based on what our userbase thinks is cool. So get in the forums and tell us what you want to see. I’m not kidding when I say I read those things every day. My entire team is in there all the time. We are constantly gathering feedback from the community and feeding it into the development teams to guide development. Let us know what you want to see, and we take it very very seriously. If enough people want it, it goes on our roadmap.
You mentioned Home is constantly evolving – hence it still sports a beta tag. Do you ever see that going away?
JB: The beta tag has actually been very useful for us, and that has really kind of driven Home at a high level. [It fits] the philosophy of the platform, that it’s always evolving. It’s always changing. We haven’t announced anything other than that, we currently are in Open Beta, it’s free to use, available to everybody that ever bought a PS3 to come on in, check it out and play games, earn rewards, meet friends. So nothing really to announce at this time. It has been quite useful in building out awareness that when you come into Home and what you see is not necessarily what you’re going to see a week later or two weeks later or six months later. So if you haven’t been in Home in a while, if you came in when we first got into Open Beta, come in again now and you’re going to be so surprised with all the great content that’s coming out on the platform.
Any plans to support stereoscopic 3D in Home?
JB: I would put that in the same area as the beta tag and PlayStation Plus – nothing to mention at this time. Home is an evolving platform, and our development roadmap is based on user feedback. So if users want to see a particular technology, feature, game, you name it, tell us. We take it very seriously. No joke, it guides development. Some people don’t believe us, but it actually is true! The recently-launched new spaces were created directly due to user feedback. The community managers say [to the community] “you told us to build this, and we did!” You’ll see that all the time.
Any more information on the infamous trophy room that was teased when Home was first announced?
JB: Supporting trophies in Home is something that we’re doing. For instance, with Street Fighter IV, you get select trophies and are able to display 3D replicas of those inside your personal space of your choosing. Resident Evil 5 is the same, where certain things are unlocked based upon trophies in the game. Other games will even unlock items in Home based on accomplishments that may or may not be linked to trophies. Some things that you unlock insert Easter eggs, you’ll just have to find them. So, the idea of trophies in Home is something that we have already started to support, and we are committed to supporting the trophy experience. Nothing more to talk about at this time, but stay tuned if you’re into the concept. We’ve already got a track record of showing that we’re serious about that commitment.
Sony has stated on several occasions that the PS3 is planned to have a ten-year lifespan. What kind of lifespan would you say Home has and will it continue onto the next console?
JB: PlayStation Home is part of the PlayStation 3 experience. As you know, anyone with a PlayStation 3 can get into Home and access it for free – it’s right there on the XMB under PlayStation Network. Can’t really talk about [continuation onto the next console]…
Crystal Braswell: We get asked the question quite frequently when it comes to PS3 – people ask “when is PS4 coming in?” One of the things that we say is, and I think you saw some great examples of today, is that no one has created a piece of hardware that can do what the PlayStation 3 can do, and we’re just starting to see people really harness those capabilities in some of the games and entertainment options that are coming to the platform. I think Home falls into that – it’s constantly evolving, and when you see games like Sodium/Salt Shooter, you start to see the platform come into its own and develop into this platform that has an immense amount of potential. So I think it applies pretty much across both of those.
Jack Buser: We haven’t seen the peak yet. It’s still continuing to grow. With Home specifically – 14 million users, 70 minute average session duration…and those numbers continue to grow. For us, it’s such an exciting time as a platform. We’re not going anywhere, we are a part of the PlayStation 3 experience, right there on the XMB. I think the industry as a whole has really started to realize what a huge portion of time is actually being spent in Home. This idea of a console experience as a whole – from games, to movies, to Home, is such that Home is an extremely significant portion of so many people’s experience with the PlayStation 3. It’s so core to the platform, it’s also such a loyalty catalyst for the platform, where people are playing games on the PS3 because they know that games are going to unlock all kinds of cool free stuff in Home that they can go and show off to their friends. We were talking about trophy support – that kind of stuff is no joke, and I think that a lot of folks in the industry that are used to more traditional consoles and more traditional types of gameplay are really seeing these new technologies and innovations such as Home really change the way people interact with their console fundamentally. It’s really pointing towards the future of our industry. People are still wrapping their heads around it, but our users aren’t – they’re there!
Crystal Braswell: If you put it into context, Jack mentioned 14 million users are now on PlayStation Home – during E3 of last year, there were 6 million. So in a year’s time it more than doubled the userbase.
Jack Buser: Revenue for Q1 calendar 2010 is three times greater than the same time period of 2009. It’s amazing to see those kinds of things even from a business standpoint in terms of the growth of PlayStation Home. We have no intention of slowing down.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly – if you were stuck on a Home island and you could only bring three in-Home items with you, what would they be?
JB: [Joking] Three Home things? Do I have to be stuck on an island or do I get access to all of Home? Is the island all of Home? [Laughs] If the island is all of Home…Number 1, I’m going to get the Sodium pilot jacket, that way I unlock all 50 levels of the Sodium Salt Shooter, I need that. I’m going to get the green ticket, because I’m so good at Midway now, I can unlock so much stuff with that one green ticket, so that will get me tons of virtual items! The third item I would get is my “Industry” shirt since it is such a part of my identity.
PlayStation LifeStyle would like to thank Jack Buser, Crystal Braswell, Jeff Gullett, Alex Monney, and the entire team at SCEA for taking the time to sit down with us and discuss one of Sony’s major areas of the PlayStation experience in such depth.
