Home Launch To Be Subdued

No 'Big Bang'

Posted by Staff
Home Launch To Be Subdued
When PlayStation Home launches Sony hopes to avoid its typical model for a games industry product launch - scantily dressed girls, B-List celebs, Hummers with logos placed over logos and free booze to all assembled journalists, instead the company going for a quieter approach.

Speaking in an interview, Sony's vice president of Worldwide Studios, Jamie MacDonald, said, "There isn't going to be this 'big bang' launch. That's how you do it in the web 2.0 world, if you're familiar with the launch of Gmail or something like that."

As far as Sony's concerned, the launch is going to require a different approach to its gaming properties. "One of the challenges that we have is to get over the mentality of Home being your typical product launch. In the past we'd make a game, put it on a disc and launch it in the shops. But this is so different. It's a constantly evolving thing. Week by week and month by month it evolves”, MacDonald said.

Not only that, but Sony's doing something no one else has done before, apparently, "What we're doing with Home is essentially a new software platform, and that's never been done at either Sony or anywhere else", MacDonald said.

Sony has yet to take a firm stance on when Home will launch, but Autumn was mentioned when the service was first announced at the Game Developer's Conference. As to where Sony's up to now, MacDonald said, "It's already out there in a closed beta and we're going to an open beta in the next couple of months, and then it will be available on the Cross Media Bar soon after."

Details of how the open beta will be run remain vague. "We haven't worked out the exact way of doing it but it will be invites to people to ask if they want to be part of it, and then depending on what the response is, we'll have to have some way of deciding who can and who can't take part", MacDonald said.

Yesterday SPOnG brought you news of how Home might just feature adult content beyond the expected 18+ videos.

You can read SPOnG's recent interview with Jamie MacDonald here.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz
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