Don’t Bet On Celebrating New Year’s In Home

By Paul Munn | May 6, 2008

When Home was delayed until “Fall” I figured that was it for 2008, and statements today from Kaz Hirai are only further throwing cold water on the prospects for the launch of the 3D avatar-driven meet-up space this year. Hirai has gone on record today saying not to expect Home until the end of the year.

That picks up the wriggling software, carries it past the 1-year-late mark and throws its marketing effectiveness clear into 2009. That means no buzz to help spur PS3 sales in the holiday season. Once again the console will have to tread water with individual titles all doing their own thing for online play. This strategy didn’t work so well last year.

Our own Joe Haygood has mentioned before that there’s at least one big problem with Home: nobody asked for it. While important innovations can be a surprise, if Sony’s inability to execute on a design created to leapfrog the competition ends up in making them so late to market that nobody is listening anymore you have a serious problem. Being this late with home seriously blunts any perceived momentum the platform will have had this year.

All Sony had to do was sit down and take notes on the best feature sets from all online game lobby, matchmaking, and communications systems and create a common system for developers to build into their games. Bring in some highly paid UI talent and you’d still probably have come in below what Home has cost them so far not just in development dollars but lost mindshare and PR opportunities.

Even some Xbox 360 games haven’t done things perfectly based on comments our own George Walker has made on how poorly the matchmaking on Gears of War (or was it Halo 3?) in one of our earlier podcasts but just the core unified services developers can rely on are better than having next-to-nothing unified, you’d have to agree.

See also: You Can’t Go Home Until 2009.

Via: PSU.